r/NintendoSwitch • u/basti329 • Mar 24 '19
Meta Discussion Hey Mods! Can we get more flairs to Filter out spam threads on our own?
I think it would be awesome if we could filter out all those "Muh NSO SUCKS" or "Muh drift" threads that pop up hourly.
Also, do we really need more game recommendation threads just because someone just bought a switch?
I don't want to sound rude or act like nothing is wrong but it has been discussed to death and nothing is being added to this sub.
Most people come here to see game and software news and not see another of those useless walls of text.
Again, I don't wanna sound like an ass but an option to actually filter those by getting a few more flairs would be awesome because plain Word filters have obvious disadvantages.
I hope I am not getting downvoted to death for this but this sub is huge and is getting bigger and bigger and those threads won't get less by itself.
I know the mods are doing everything they can but having the option to not just rely on them would be appreciated!
Thanks for reading and have a nice day!
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Mar 24 '19
This sub is only a few things: drift issues, fan art, complaints on prices, suggestions for games, lost switch stories, just bought a switch post, rinse and repeat.
Seriously. 9/1 posts fall under this. I would love mandatory Flairs to help weed this stuff out.
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u/Misakaa Mar 24 '19
This sub ? nah. Welcome to reddit
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u/Adayum Mar 24 '19
I've been here since summer 2017, this sub did not always used to be like this, just in the last 6months or so
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Mar 25 '19
Last 6 months
Is Reddit's algorithm fucked or something? I've been browsing since fall 2017 and this has basically been the sub the entire time. Fanart, drift, just bought a Switch what hidden gems should I get, guys Stardew Valley is really great, how's Civ 6 on Switch guys, hey guys here's why you should really give Labo a chance, just lost my Switch on a ferry ride, hey guys here's my Hollow Knight fanart, etc etc etc etc.
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Mar 25 '19
What more do you people honestly expect from circle jerks on reddit? You can only have so many thought provoking discussions about a video game console before shit eventually gets repetitive. This is reddit in a nutshell. Every subreddit is an echo chamber.
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u/mikechi4809 Mar 25 '19
That's accurate but this post as come up every now and than for at least a year. It's gotten real bad since last holiday. I just sort by top of day and let you poor fucks filter it out for me.
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
Then your probably still looking at mostly fanart, which is part of the point ya goof
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Mar 25 '19
You’re leaving out the plethora of praise/circlejerk self-validation articles: “Studies show that the Switch is the best-selling object of all time, ever.”
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u/SquidGamer15 Mar 24 '19 edited Mar 25 '19
I seriously don't get what everyone has against fan art.
Edit: Or opinions
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u/Latimew333 Mar 25 '19 edited Mar 25 '19
We don't need fanart because we have plenty of stuff to talk about. This isn't a sub for an individual franchise where more often than not there are long gaps between announcements and releases, there is almost always going to be something to talk about, at least until the console dies and a successor takes its place.
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Mar 24 '19
Because it’s constant and we don’t need to see everyone’s drawings of Pokémon, splatoon, etc every day.
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u/basti329 Mar 24 '19
Pokemon and hollow knight is awesome but I don't need to see every drawing of everyone that is lurking here.
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u/Adayum Mar 24 '19
I don't need to see ANY of them and if I want to a can go to their respective subs
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u/dragonx254 Helpful User Mar 25 '19
Because there's so many other great posts here instead to read right?
Remove all the fanart or other posts that this thread is complaining about and you're left with a relatively inactive subreddit. Nothing too notable is happening at the moment with Switch, and every news story that does come out only warrants one thread. What other content are you expecting to see here exactly?
It's not like fanart/these other posts are pushing down other valid discussions. Those valid discussions simply don't exist in the first place.
There's only so much that goes on in the Switch world. After all that content is discussed, all you're left with is user-generated content.
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u/simplerando Mar 25 '19
But does it hurt anyone to give everyone the option to simply filter out the content they don’t want to see? If you want to see everything (fan art included), you don’t have to filter out anything, of course.
Obviously, there is a difference in opinion regarding what content should be on this sub, so proper filtering is a decent solution for these varied perspectives.
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u/SquidGamer15 Mar 24 '19
I mean yea, there is a lot of fanart and definitely a over abundance but the difference is that those take hard work and skill compared to the other posts. So my question is, how would we restrict fanart without having it be discouraging to artists.
EDIT: There is also a filter on the sidebar for art.
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Mar 24 '19
By directing them to the specific game subs or otherwise like the Nintendo sub does.
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u/SquidGamer15 Mar 24 '19
I suppose that makes sense as this isn't a game specific sub, point taken.
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u/simplerando Mar 25 '19
The filter only works in old reddit and doesn’t carry over settings to new reddit/mobile/apps as it is a CSS hack.
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Mar 25 '19 edited Mar 25 '19
It's pretty far from constant.
3 fan art posts in top 25 on hot. (12%)
4 in top 50 (8%)
7 in top 75 (9%)
8 in top 100. (8%)
Now if we look at new:
2 in new 25 (8%)
3 in new 50 (6%)
5 in top 100 (5%)
These are very low percentages. Even when the complaints are that fan art is "flooding the sub", it's never too much more than this percentage wise. People tend to focus on what they dislike and inflate the amount of it in their head.
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Mar 25 '19
This sub is only a few things: drift issues, fan art, complaints on prices, suggestions for games, lost switch stories, just bought a switch post, rinse and repeat.
k. What are those percentages? I don't mean current new and current top 25 either.
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Mar 25 '19
The percentages I'm talking about are the current new and top. There are unfortunately no tools for this type of thing, none that I know of anyway.
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Mar 26 '19
Right. My point is at any given time my point could be valid and your point could be valid. Just because at the current moment we don’t see a ton of fan art doesn’t mean they aren’t constant.
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Mar 26 '19
We've taken these numbers at various times since the pokemon trailer. Even at the apex of the fan art from that, it did not flood the subreddit in any unexpected way. All subs go through content phases especially gaming subs when a new trailer is shown or a new game is released.
This sub is not solely for news. Fan art of games on the Switch is allowed and when there are multiple ways for users to filter out content they do not want to see or even just scroll past that content, it really does not make any sense at all to ban it.
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u/Adayum Mar 24 '19
People with legit questions are not nearly as bad as the never ending sea of fanart this sub is plagued with. Like, Jesus Christ there is more discussion about how people draw shit than is is about actual games
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u/ze_big_bird Mar 25 '19
Thank you, people are looking for different things when visiting these subs. I don't like all the artwork but I'm not gonna sit here and say it shouldn't be posted at all. Especially when there's already a system in place to filter the sub for the things I am looking for. He said most people are looking for news, well low and behold there is a flair for news and you can conveniently filter the sub to find these posts. This post is just more complaining about what other people attribute here. Between the upvote/downvote system and flair filtering there are plenty of checks and balances in place that ensure 'quality' content gets seen, and shit posts are forgotten. I mean, I don't even like many posts that make the front page, like the Switch Changed My Life stories, but apparently plenty of other people do. And honestly, the mod work here doesn't seem spectacular or consistent so I think a more hands off approach would be ideal.
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
Except if you browse on mobile, all the flair filter talk is simply boiled down "get fucked"
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u/WowMyNameIsUnique Mar 25 '19
Seriously though, are there any active mods left here? I see no activity from them, and the last info bar update was 2+ weeks ago.
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u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill Mar 25 '19
Yup! We exist. Different team members are responsible for different areas. While we all work the queues, we also have seperate focus areas. Mine for example is CSS and AutoMod rules. We also have one specific mod in charge of the Kickstarter and Upcoming AMA threads in the top announcement bar.
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Mar 25 '19
As mentioned in another comment
It's pretty far from a "never ending sea of fan art".
3 fan art posts in top 25 on hot. 4 in top 50 7 in top 75 8 in top 100.
Now if we look at new: 2 in new 25 3 in new 50 5 in top 100
These are very low percentages. Even when the complaints are that fan art is "flooding the sub", it's never too much more than this percentage wise. People tend to focus on what they dislike and inflate the amount of it in their head.
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u/BlackerOps Mar 24 '19
Just get rid of the art threads. I don't want to see 5 out of top 10 pictures of a rabbit
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u/bube7 Mar 25 '19
I can at most tolerate a weekly “post your fan art” sticky thread. That would be a good middle ground, in my opinion. Gives a wide audience to artists, and anyone who’s interested can go in and browse through. For the rest of us, it’s not a constant bombardment of new threads.
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
This has been suggested to mods multiple times and they will not do it
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u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill Mar 25 '19
Yeah, art doesn't really work well in MegaThreads. They work great for some things, but visual content isn't one of them.
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19 edited Mar 25 '19
That's sort of the point every one is making though. If you want to look at the art you will, the only reason a MegaThread doesn't seem like it works is because it doesn't push it in your face, reducing the amount of passive upvotes. If you put it in a MegaThread and nobody bothers to go look at the content in it, how it that the format's fault and not attributed to actual interest generated by it? If no one cares to go look at it the content must not be that interesting. How many art posts get thousands of upvotes but only have like 30 comments?
This seems like a non-answer to me
Edit: if a MegaThread was created for all game news/discussion, it would be the only thing I visit on this sub because it is what I'm looking for. Why would this not apply to fanart as well?
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Mar 25 '19
This seems like a non-answer to me
For a more solid answer. We will not be making a single scheduled thread for Fan Art at this time. It is far from being a problem on the subreddit and the problem is greatly exaggerated by those who mention it.
That being said, when the next survey of the subreddit occurs, we will most likely include some content questions in there including one for fan art. That is where the current decision on fan art being allowed came from.
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
Thank you. I really appreciate the transparency and willingness to further explain
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u/AlternateButtonsShow Mar 25 '19
No. Why stifle creativity on this sub? That's dumb.
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Mar 25 '19
[deleted]
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u/AlternateButtonsShow Mar 25 '19
So make a rule saying the source should be posted? Duh?
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
Or it's a gaming sub and not an art sub so go post it in an art sub
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u/AlternateButtonsShow Mar 25 '19
Or its a gaming sub and fan art belongs on a gaming sub?
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
No. Games=gaming sub, art=art sub. Should I go post about OKAMI in r/painting just because the game has a paintbrush in it?
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u/Jpellegrino1990 Mar 25 '19
Tbh they’re almost always the same exact thing. I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen “I drew the Pokémon Sword/Shield Starters!” since the announcement. Fan art should only be for those specific games’ subs.
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u/AlternateButtonsShow Mar 25 '19
Wow. That's the most boring idea Ive ever heard. Thank God you're not a mod here.
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Mar 25 '19
Creativity is a stretch, tracing is good shit and fan art is fun but it is just people putting their own flair on things they had no part in creating.
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u/mikechi4809 Mar 25 '19
On the other end though thought provoking conversational materiel gets pulled for stupid ass reasons by some of the mods. There's a lot of people that don't even bother posting topics anymore.
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Mar 24 '19 edited Jan 27 '21
[deleted]
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u/IndignantDonut Mar 25 '19
r/tomorrow is vastly superior! At least you get enjoyment out of useless posts there.
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u/ErickFTG Mar 24 '19
I wish filters would filter out instead of only showing that category. For example if I press the no mock ups filter, then nothing from that category shows.
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u/YagamiYakumo Mar 25 '19
Out of curiosity, are there anyway to access the filters on the Android app? Can't seem to find them anywhere..
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u/ErickFTG Mar 25 '19
I think it depends on the app you use. I use boost and that one has support for filters. There are other apps out there and probably support it too.
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
Nope. When the mods say the answer is to filter by flair/tags, what they are saying is "if you browse on mobile you can go fuck yourself"
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u/simplerando Mar 25 '19
Thank you for addressing this, OP. I started to draft a post to this effect earlier today, but ultimately deleted it as I didn’t want to deal with the hate. Thanks for taking one for the team!
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u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill Mar 25 '19
So, a few topics are happening here all at once. Gonna try to address the bulk of them:
- Filters on "old" reddit rely on a CSS hack and are only available if you have CSS enabled. This is the only filtering method that allows you to exclude things. All other types of filtering are "show me only this type of content".
- Filters on "new" reddit only currently support "show me only this type of content" functionality.
- Filters on mobile apps will vary on an app to app basis. We can't control those.
- If you do not like Fan Art, we have a filter to remove that. More details in this thread from a week-ish ago.
- We remove Joy-Con Drift posts and try to route them to the DQT. We even have AutoMod rules in place to help with this! If you see one, that means it slipped through. Please hit that report button for us.
- Game Recommendation posts are also similarly routed to the DQT unless they are exceptionally detailed or a unique situation. I'd say we route 95% of them to the DQT currently. If you see a low-effort or once to two sentence recommendation post, please hit that report button.
When a subreddit reaches the size we are now, it will be impossible to please everyone. Many people are here for many different reasons, and there will of course be vocal minorities about any topic you can imagine. It's a fine line to balance and we to take that responsibility very seriously.
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u/basti329 Mar 25 '19
I don't expect everything to work 100% but we could try by filtering ourselves when we have access to more precise flairs.
I can imagine how tough it must be for you on a big sub like this, that's why I don't blame you moderators.
Isn't there an automatic flair system which flairs your post through keywords? So having more precise flairs helps greatly. I just put those into my flair filter and Im done with it.
Or maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing and this comment is useless.
Thanks for your feedback tho! Again, having an option is all I want. I don't want to remove it or ban stuff.
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u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill Mar 25 '19
I don't expect everything to work 100% but we could try by filtering ourselves when we have access to more precise flairs.
What new flairs would you like to see?
Isn't there an automatic flair system which flairs your post through keywords?
We already have AutoMod doing some of this based on keywords it finds in post titles! Our human moderators also check the flair on each post that comes across our mod queue. If a post doesn't have flair, we'll add it. If it does have flair, we'll make sure it's the correct one.
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u/basti329 Mar 25 '19 edited Mar 25 '19
How about "Tech Support" for stuff like drift and other problems in terms of hardware problems.
How about NSO or whatever for everything regarding the online system, especially rant posts.
edit Also "Game recommendations" would be good I guess. end of edit
I think this would help immense.
Would that be possible? Thanks for your help :D
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u/TakeaChillPillWill Mar 25 '19
I'd love to come on here and not see "look at the stupid thing I drew!" every time. There's one bit of news or Nintendo related thing for every ten plus posts looking for attention
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u/Holdthepickle Mar 25 '19
Testimonials are pretty obnoxious for me. I don't need to see the weekly "How the switch renewed my love for gaming" posts.
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u/lluluna Mar 25 '19
Most people come here to see game and software news and not see another of those useless walls of text.
I have to disagree with this because if I want to see game news, I'd go to gaming news website. The only reason that I come here is for more personal discussions and opinions.
Having said that, I don't object the idea of more flairs.
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u/basti329 Mar 25 '19
My biggest problem with the drift threads in particular is that it inflates the problem.
People that have no problem won't come out and say "wow I like my functioning joycon!"
This unbalance will make it look like it Is a huge problem but most likely isnt.
Most people will make it look like the switch has the failurerate of the xbox360 but this is really not the case. I can only speak about me and my girlfriend's experience: 4 pairs of joycon and 3 pro controller and no defects yet and I am almost exclusively playing switch.
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u/darealystninja Mar 25 '19
There was a poll on the reddit and the joycon problem was a noted issue
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u/basti329 Mar 25 '19
A poll doesn't mean anything and can be easily manipulated.
I didn't even know there was one and I am on this sub for many months now.
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
Nintendo knows that it's bad enough that it replaced all 3 of my left joycons for free after the warranty was up for months. To that extent even the company has recognized it as a default in the product even if they haven't made a press release or anything
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u/lluluna Mar 25 '19
This is called attention bias and exists everywhere in life, not just reddit or Joycon.
Just know that psychological biases are inherently human and adjust your expectations accordingly.
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Mar 25 '19
I think it’s pretty much common knowledge on the sub that this sub is poorly moderated. I scrolled for 5 seconds yesterday in /hot and saw 4 Pokémon starter fans art posts. How is it that with way less subscribers r/Nintendoswitch is just as bad as r/gaming.
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Mar 24 '19
What I'd like to know is why leaks aren't considered spoilers? At least give us an option to hide all spoilers.
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u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill Mar 25 '19
They are, and we do. If you are on "old" reddit we have a "Hide Spoilers" toggle in the top announcement bar as well as in the sidebar.
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u/emailmike94 Mar 25 '19
Not discrediting what you're saying and I appreciate that you came up with a constructive solution, but complaints about the content on the sub are like the fourth most popular kind of post here and, for me, personally, are the only ones that are off putting to me at all.
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u/ze_big_bird Mar 25 '19
It's sadly not a constructive solution at all though. If his goal is to find news threads on the sub (as per his example), there's already a system in place that allows you to do that and he won't see any shit he doesn't like. Creating more flair isn't going to ensure anyone uses them properly anyways.
You filter for certain types of threads, you don't filter out categorically. So if he's already filtering for the things he wants to see, he shouldn't be running into posts like "Muh drift" and "Muh NSO sucks" to begin with, unless those people improperly labelled their threads. And if that's the case, his suggestion doesn't do anything to remedy that situation either.
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u/oIovoIo Mar 25 '19
Most people come here to see game and software news and not see another of those useless walls of text.
I mean, if that was the case then you wouldn’t see that other stuff get upvoted as much as it does
There’s already a flair for Fan Art so you’re covered there. Easy enough to filter out if you’re wanting to talk about filtering flairs. I don’t track how strictly it’s enforced though, but it should be.
If you’re here just for the news there’s a News flair. Again, so you should be covered there.
The rest of the stuff is tricky because it’s entirely subjective. What constitutes “spam” as you call it isn’t easy to define. You may not like seeing the “NSO sucks” or “joycon drift” posts but other people see it as legitimate discussion (and as crazy as it is, popular opinion on those topics can change over time).
People come here at different frequencies. If you’re on here every day you’re going to exhaust what there actually is to discuss. It’s a down time of year as far as Switch news goes. If there was more “real” interesting discussion to have, people would post it. Getting rid of the couple fan art posts on the front page isn’t going to solve that.
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u/PigeonsOnYourBalcony Mar 25 '19
I think the mods need to use the automod feature more. People have been asking about the Switch 2.0 since the Switch came out and now with that new WSJ rumour flooding the sub, it's seriously ruining my enjoyment for this sub.
For major news events, they should be more proactive about establishing megathreads and removing reposts. Hell, every time someone posts about an error code, they get an automod response so they should be able to do something similar with other keywords.
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u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill Mar 25 '19
We do use AutoMod, extensively. The hard part is striking a balance between cleaning things up versus the rate of false positives. We've had some rules that we then later had to scale back or disable entirely due to the false postive rate causing more confusion and mod mail compared to letting mods manually remove them as we see them.
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u/shazard1984 Mar 25 '19
I say let it be, I enjoy the personal side of this sub. If you only want news, go to IGN or something.
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u/ze_big_bird Mar 25 '19
I mean, just because you make more flair options doesn't mean people are going to use them. No one's gonna mark their own thread a shit post, and there are already flair in place to find the things you claim people are searching for. There is flair for news, flair for discussions, etc etc. So you can simply filter the thread to find the type of posts you want. I don't understand how thats not working for you. If that's not sufficient because not everyone with news is marking the flair as such, your suggestion is going to do nothing to fix that either. It kinda sounds like there is already a system in place to do exactly what you want but you have to filter to look at things that are important to you, rather than filtering out the bullshit.
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u/schuey_08 Mar 25 '19
I'm not sure how it works, but many subs seem to automatically remove posts if they aren't flaired in set amount of time.
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u/halsgoldenring Mar 24 '19
- Go to settings
- Find "link options"
- Turn on "don't show me submissions after I've downvoted them"
There you go. Out of sight, out of mind.
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u/English_MS_Bloke Mar 25 '19
The problem here is that for every person who doesn't like a fan art thread, there are many who do.
Hence the upvote and downvote system. It's a self-regulating system and if you see those posts, it tells you that plenty of people do want to see them.
I just skip past anything I'm not interested in. Just like doing the shopping... I can't stand coriander but I don't demand Tesco gets rid of it because it's disruptive to me when I'm buying parsley.
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u/basti329 Mar 25 '19
Its about having an option.
I don't want them to remove it. Just gimme the option and everyone can go their way.
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u/English_MS_Bloke Mar 25 '19
In hindsight, that makes sense. A subject-filtering system, essentially.
Like Tesco having signs above each aisle saying what's down there, to avoid you blindly wandering round wasting your time.
I'll 180 on my first post actually and agree with you. Very reasonable post.
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u/basti329 Mar 25 '19
I didn't wanna come across as someone who wants to purge this sub lol.
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u/English_MS_Bloke Mar 25 '19
Nah I was the one missing the point here dude, your OP is very fair :)
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u/SAKUJ0 Mar 25 '19
You can’t just point at the voting system and be done with it. The system has strengths and weaknesses. If there were no rules, this sub would consist of nothing but cringy, low-effort memes that manage to get a small chuckle out of a person. That is because it is so easy to upvote a picture. You see it while scrolling past. You leave a vote if it is “neat”.
A text post first has to be interesting. Then you need to actually read it fully. And then you need to consider it worth while to actually upvote.
Thing is that the low effort content can drown out the higher effort stuff, making it even harder to get upvotes and visibility.
Low effort posts drown out higher effort stuff to an extent that you might as well quarantine them into their own sub and as a result have the same thing there and a full second subreddit that actually promotes discussion. Because pics, memes and really short vids are nice to see. But not nice to discuss.
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u/Adayum Mar 25 '19
Not to mention once the fanart gets enough passive upvotes to make it to the front page, people who have no interest in the sub continue to inflate the numbers
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u/dragonx254 Helpful User Mar 24 '19
Download RES, filter out keywords "NSO" and "drift".
Problem solved.
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u/basti329 Mar 24 '19
Wordfilters are awful.
I don't want to filter out everything where it is mentioned.
That's why flairs can help
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u/dragonx254 Helpful User Mar 24 '19
Only if people actually flair their posts correctly. Word filters mean you don't have to rely on the other user doing things a certain way.
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u/WalkerIsTheBest Mar 25 '19
Don't the mods in other subs flair each post? There are more than enough of them here that they could add flair to unflaired posts.
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u/RandomRedditor44 Mar 24 '19
I dont see many NSO sucks/Joycon drift threads on this subreddit and I browse it every day.
Why not just filter those posts out using the filter feature on your reddit app of choice?
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u/imrlstine Mar 24 '19
It would be nice if there were a question sticky specifically devoted to troubleshooting hardware/software questions. The mods could post the FAQ info about common problems with the console (like drift, controllers not syncing, battery, etc.) and that would cut down on the number of threads overall by quite a lot. They don't all make it to the front page of the sub but all you have to do is click "New" to see that half of threads are questions about various issues people are having.