1. Bring the policy statements to the forefront; put the lengthy “background” discussion of “free speech” vs. “walled gardens” and the like in a brief FAQ or discussion section at the end. The first line of the policy statement should be the one beginning “Most of the burden of moderation …”
Reason: Most readers want to know what the policy is — so that should come first. Most of the people who want to argue about the theory of the policy are looking to have an enjoyably clever argument, which the “background” provides — so that should be there, but not in front.
2. Use formatting to emphasize the document’s structure. As it stands, there’s not enough visual structure for the eye to pick out the little numbers that indicate new points. More notably, the paragraph that separates the “more controversial” items looks structurally like it should be the explanation of the spam item.
3. Readers have heard of the common cases. Spam, harassment, and posting of personal information are things that lots of forums ban; LW is not unusual in this regard. In gist, if it’s against Reddit’s policy, it doesn’t need a lot of explanation.
4. Careful about spam and SEO. A major (possibly primary) to delete spam is that spam is clutter that gets in the way of people reading the forum. If someone posted a thousand posts that just contained “foo”, that would be spam and would be deleted; even though it has nothing to do with SEO. Commercial spam is bad because allowing it creates a monetary incentive for endless clutter production.
5. Harassment section is too specific. There are a lot of forms of harassment that I suspect you’d want to get rid of that don’t involve “following a particular user around and leaving insulting comments”.
Also:
The violence section is much better explained than in the previous post discussing it. Specifically, the unwelcoming effect of “hypothetical” violence proposals is a really good point.
Concrete suggestions:
1. Bring the policy statements to the forefront; put the lengthy “background” discussion of “free speech” vs. “walled gardens” and the like in a brief FAQ or discussion section at the end. The first line of the policy statement should be the one beginning “Most of the burden of moderation …”
Reason: Most readers want to know what the policy is — so that should come first. Most of the people who want to argue about the theory of the policy are looking to have an enjoyably clever argument, which the “background” provides — so that should be there, but not in front.
2. Use formatting to emphasize the document’s structure. As it stands, there’s not enough visual structure for the eye to pick out the little numbers that indicate new points. More notably, the paragraph that separates the “more controversial” items looks structurally like it should be the explanation of the spam item.
3. Readers have heard of the common cases. Spam, harassment, and posting of personal information are things that lots of forums ban; LW is not unusual in this regard. In gist, if it’s against Reddit’s policy, it doesn’t need a lot of explanation.
4. Careful about spam and SEO. A major (possibly primary) to delete spam is that spam is clutter that gets in the way of people reading the forum. If someone posted a thousand posts that just contained “foo”, that would be spam and would be deleted; even though it has nothing to do with SEO. Commercial spam is bad because allowing it creates a monetary incentive for endless clutter production.
5. Harassment section is too specific. There are a lot of forms of harassment that I suspect you’d want to get rid of that don’t involve “following a particular user around and leaving insulting comments”.
Also:
The violence section is much better explained than in the previous post discussing it. Specifically, the unwelcoming effect of “hypothetical” violence proposals is a really good point.
Formatting added.
Yay! Thank you.
Either that or it isn’t specific enough and he could have come out and said what he really meant.
It was annoying to think I knew what you were referring to by reading this comment in isolation but it was depressing to be right.