Comment · Tue, March 22, 2016 · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
The dark side of internet forums
Original post in this thread
rrtrda · 161 points
While these and other health forums contain a wealth of incredibly helpful information and inspiration, I believe their darker sides are often ignored. As people here generally tend to be keen to debate, I think certain issues should be addressed. Let’s see which ones you’ve encountered yourself:
Prejudice: Many people just don’t come here to find neutral information about a certain nootropic/drug. They want to get their preset opinion confirmed. And if nobody tells them what they want to hear, they google further, or dispute what others are saying. The longer you google, the more likely you will stumble across the correlation you were looking for. But how relevant is it?
Misinformation: Yes, there are some people out here that deserve respect. With their profound knowledge they enrich discussions and create value for the community. But they not only check sample size and Pearson’s r. Those people spot methodological flaws and inaccuracies in studies. And can assess their meaningfulness. But let’s be honest about it: those people are rare and most people don’t have the skill nor the time to do that. I myself would love to be one of those able to truly judge. Unfortunatel…
What they were answering
Throwawayonsteroids · 4 points
Over at /r/steroids we had the same thing happen. Essentially it started of as a small community of 4000-5000 guys who were well read seeking to share and progress the state of knowledge. Once the sub hit 10 000-15 000 people most of the serious guys gave up, we were just getting flooded by posts from noobs regarding where to start and the place became a beginners guide instead of a forum where real questions were asked, answered, and discussed. I used to frequent, switched accts a couple years ago, kept fucking with it but I don't bother anymore.
Anyway you probably know all this but the mods worked on the system and formulated some changes that really helped IMO. For starters they built a beast of a wiki, adding everything from scientific articles to helpful posts. Second they initiated a mandatory grooming period for new subs, all newcomers have to wait a few months before being allowed to post. During this time they are encouraged to ask in the weekly discussion threads and explore the wiki in hopes of people getting all the info they need before being able to contribute to the subreddit.
If you want to take it even further, I cant remember where, maybe it was Dat's forum, but they had a mandatory entrance questionnaire.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Yeah, that is just the nature of growing larger I suppose. I think our Wiki is pretty in-depth; at least for newcomers. We already have a ton of moderation filters for new accounts and potential shills/spammers. I suppose we could make it more strict for new posters, though. Perhaps I could come up with a page that links posts that have good scientific discussions in an aggregate fashion. It would still take people clicking on the sidebar, though. That seems to be a challenge. We can certainly try and limit the posts that many of the more knowledgeable users find annoying. However, we still have to rely on them to want to post good discussions/comments. We've already pushed a lot of personal recommendations to /r/StackAdvice, Modafinil posts to /r/afinil, depression posts to /r/depressionregimens, and phenibut posts to /r/phenibut. I suppose the argument could be made that we need to enforce that a bit more strictly.