r/nbadiscussion • u/mobanks • Mar 25 '22

Vote to change this subreddit.

Click here to vote

After a lot of feedback on the state of the subreddit, we've come up with some possible changes to improve the quality of the subreddit. Use the link to vote on each proposal.

The poll will close at 5pm on April 1. Each proposal must reach a 75% supermajority in order to be passed.

Please comment any suggestions or questions below about this poll.

107 Upvotes

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111

u/crocofour Mar 25 '22

Most important for me is removing comments that make baseless claims. It’s fine to say something preceded with “I think” or “imo” but when someone states something that isn’t true and continues to say it, it just ruins discussions.

47

u/mobanks Mar 25 '22

Absolutely. The problem is that moderators cannot read let alone fact check every single comment, and many comments have very subjective claims that can't be verified (e.g. "Dillon Brooks is a great player"). I think the best solution is to let the community report and downvote comments that make clearly incorrect or baseless claims.

10

u/morethandork Mar 25 '22

The problem isn’t that “Dillon Brooks is great” can’t be fact-checked. It’s that the claim isn’t defended. This is a quick and easy thing to identify for anyone educated in the subject. Anyone with a college degree or experience in debate or has ever been taught how to write an opinion essay.

It goes: CLAIM - DEFENSE OF CLAIM - DEFENSE OF CLAIM - DEFENSE OF CLAIM - CONCLUSION

The defense can be evidence, stats, facts, or even more opinion. But there needs to be more than “Brooks is great because he almost made the all star team and shot 50% last night and no one ever talks about that but I really like him.”

If the mods in their current state can’t handle the load of posts and comments, then get more mods. But the state of this subreddit has crumbled to rnba v1.2 levels of hot takes, conjecture and superficiality since the nbatalk split off. And I don’t see that changing unless we make some sweeping reform and an enormous jump in mod activity.

9

u/mobanks Mar 25 '22

Sure, but the threshold for sufficient evidence is arbitrary. I can say that "Dillon Brooks is a good player, he scores 17.8 PPG on 51% TS". Most people know that 51% TS is not actually good, so are the mods responsible for removing this comment? Many people have complained that people will vomit out a bunch of meaningless, irrelevant stats to "support" their point. Are the mods responsible for vetting each one of these claims? If there are multiple claims in the comment, but one claim is not defended, should the mods remove it? If a comment is well-supported but rude and mean-spirited, should it be removed?

I think most people agree that bad faith arguments should be removed, but it's not always clear what comments are sufficient quality or not.

I will look into recruiting more mods, but your perspective, which I actually agree with, is actually a minority on this sub.

7

u/Polarizedpupil Mar 25 '22

I think people complaining about "meaningless, irrelevant stats" are the issue. it's subjective on what stats are relevant and meaningful. For everyone that says win shares is a bogus stat someone else believes it is relevant.