Topicle ^Beta

I didn't want to make rules a-la-carte settable by moderators

That's unfortunate. Without community-specific rules (among other things, but the ability to set and enforce specific standards is a big one), you're really missing out on distinct communities. r/science, r/askhistorians, r/legaladvice, r/hobbydrama, r/writingprompts, r/SteamDeals... so many thriving communities on Reddit rely on custom community rules to create useful, high-quality, and purpose-driven communities. I would not create a community here (or on any platform) without the ability to set community-specific rules.

one of the major complains about Reddit is how hostile it is to new users, where there are so many rules set by well-meaning moderators that users become discouraged from participating at all.

Let's be realistic, if reddit were so hostile to new users, it would not have become one of the largest, most used internet platforms in the world. Reddit obviously has problems, but if you're trying to build an alternative, you really need to consider what type of user certain complaints are coming from and why. A ton of the "Reddit censors free speech" complainers are actually just bigots whining that they can't get away with being racist / hateful / harassing there. "There's too many rules on reddit" is not a complaint the majority of users have. It's a complaint primarily from people who can't be bothered to read the rules in a community and then get pissy when their unwanted post is removed. It's a bad idea to limit the entire site based on what's desirable to the lowest common denominator.

This all ties in to some concerns I had from the vibe of the site's Moderator Guidelines as well; it seems like you're building this with an assumption that "moderators (*unpaid volunteers) exist to enforce the site's standards" instead of "the site exists to enable community builders." Fundamentally that's a recipe for failure if you're trying to build a communities-driven platform. The solution to abusive moderators isn't disempowering all moderators and limiting how communities are run into a one-size-fits-all box. It's:
a) empowering users to identify potentially abusive behavior (which your mod log hopefully does)
b) reducing switching costs between communities so that users who don't like the way a community is run (or just want to create a space more receptive to a common but minority interest) have easier ways to visibly fork it and lead other users to alternatives instead of them being locked in.

[Some kind of community forking feature -- where if a percentage of active users of an existing community support a proposal for a new, related community, the system creates that and makes the new community visible in the original community sidebar or another special section (increasingly so if the new community becomes more and more active, decreasingly so if not) -- would actually be a great way in general to support the creation of new, more specific communities out of admin-created broad-topic communities without it happening so early that none of them have any user density and all just end up being ghost towns. e.g. instead of a brand new user getting here and deciding to create a t/MathRock community with only them as the starting user and slowly trying to grow it from scratch, demonstrate that if they post in the t/Music community for a while, they can propose a t/MathRock community from there, have 7 days (or something) of visibility for the proposal and people to sign on to it, and then fork it into its own community with all the users who signed on and the option to import copies of relevant posts from the original community.]

--

I also wanted to give feedback about one other rule:

#12 is weird; this encourages basically theft from paywalled sites instead of either just prohibiting paywalled links outright, or letting those submissions get naturally downvoted / limited to the audience that subscribes or makes their own decision to pirate the content.

I also hate finding that content's locked behind a paywall, but I'm not entitled to someone else's work for free just because I want it. People should make their own choices about which media is worth paying for, which they'd rather find a free source for, and which they feel ethically justified in finding ways to view without paying.

Having a platform-level endorsement of bypassing paywalls feels like an ethically bad choice, given that platforms like yours depend on external content. Publications can't pay their authors and authors can't feed themselves on "credit".

--

Hope all of that's helpful feedback. You've done a good job of creating a lot of the necessary functionality, but I feel like it's lacking an understanding of the community-building incentives that makes a site like reddit work, and a user growth plan that's going to create the density needed to drive engagement loops that keep people coming back. I also really do appreciate that you've been so responsive and quick to fix the small UI stuff I've pointed out. I'll check back in a few months and see if things are evolving in a direction I'd want to support; best of luck with your own goals either way! Cheers.

lol, you're really emphasizing the lengths you go to to make sure no creators receive any money from you enjoying their work.

Serialized dramas rarely hit for me unless it's something where the premise already matches that format, like detectives investigating crimes, or doctors dealing with patient / hospital issues.

Hope one of the next shows works out for you! I've heard good things about Pluribus but don't have Apple TV.

I'm looking through site rules and have some concerns about #6 - "Do not editorialise titles"

This is a really good rule for news-oriented communities, where the reason people are subscribing to it is to get a feed of current articles worth paying attention to, without submitter hyperbole hyping it up or distorting it.

But it kind of sucks for education- and discussion-oriented communities around more niche topics, where what makes the article relevant or interesting to the community isn't always clear from a headline often written for a much broader audience. Not being able to add any context to any titles anywhere on the site feels extremely limiting for what kind of content and communities will be able to flourish here. Is there any reason this needs to be a site-wide rule, rather than something community moderators can decide on a community-by-community basis?

I would increase the default size of the textarea for creating a new text post. I know it can be resized but it's a confusing and cramped default. The larger, lighter-background bottom area (with the save draft / submit post buttons) draws the eye first and looks more editable than the textarea does. Screenshot attached (Chrome, Windows 11, 1920x1080 screen).

Is there any way to control the list of communities in the top? There's lots of stuff in there that I'm not subscribed to and don't want to see. I'd rather have just my subscribed subs there, or a list of "pinned" subs I can order myself, so I can have easy access to the specific communities I want to browse.

Thank you!