So I will start off by saying that I am extraordinarily biased in this discussion, since I was just on the receiving end of the broken Reddit format.

I really noticed it first in /r/Games, which was the more serious of the gaming subreddit without being a pretentious shithole like /r/truegaming, and a nice cut above /r/gaming. I was actually pretty proud of the subreddit; along with the GW2 sub, it felt like the mods sort of knew what they were doing and the community was generally behind the sub's idea. Even now, 24 out of 25 of the links on the front page are within the intent of the sub.

Except for the one at the top, a link to Zero Punctuation's review of Black Ops 2.

The intent, as defined in the sidebar, is "to provide a place for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions." Zero Punctuation is neither informative nor terribly interesting. Even if you enjoy it, its not because its the best review in the world. Its actually usually a terrible review, but its entertaining.

So I checked the comment section, and to my unfortunate lack of surprise, most of the comments were jokes. No discussion was taking place.

Now to understand a bit of my bias here, I believe pretty heavily in separate behavior for separate occasions, and not mixing how you behave in different groups. I don't swear in front of my family, but I do so prolifically in front of my friends. I don't type the same between Hubski and Reddit, since they're both two different groups and require two different behavior sets.

So I expected a level of seriousness to be there, and while I know that not everything has to be serious, there's a difference between light-hearted comedy and a pointless link. There is nothing to be gained by posting a link to a popular review of a video game if no discussions are going to take place; the people who watch Zero Punctuation would already have seen it, and the people who haven't are probably not going to understand or care. Or have been purposefully avoiding Yahtzee for a year and a half because the reviews get grating.

The flaw showed itself when I asked people to look at the review and how well it lined up with what the sub was about. My comment became a pretty quick upvote-downvote war, with three children. One person who hated Yahtzee, one who thought they were in /r/gaming at first (ouch) and another saying that Yahtzee was a good reviewer. Which he isn't, but that's a separate debate.

That was the extent of discussion occurring in the thread that actually related within a reasonable degree to the topic at hand. I expected my criticisms not to be taken well, because I've long ago accepted that people dislike being told how much the person they like isn't a great contribution to discussions, and that people have a hard time accepting that they can be wrong. What I didn't expect was that it would be buried with few responses.

I don't actually care if people agree with me, or if I'm downvoted. I stand by a lot of what I say, even if its controversial, and recognize that unpopular opinions are neither wrong nor right, just unpopular. But I expected more people to come to the defense of the sub, to contribute to the discussion. I'm sure, given more time, people would have, but by the time they'd be on the computer, my comment was already at the bottom.

I've noticed this with other comments before; unpopular opinions that are still contributing to the discussion get buried because of communal disagreements, and those comments which are upvoted the most hit the top by default. I think this is ultimately contributing to the general dissatisfaction with reddit, at least with some of the smarter members.

I originally joined hubski because the community was just so much better, but I've noticed that the wheel and badge system is a bit more accepting of controversy. Its hard to view the wheel and badge as an "I agree button" and I've always seen it as an "this is important" button. But because it has no negatives, no way to move the comment or post down, there's no way to really bury something.

Maybe its late, or maybe I'm on to something. I don't know, but I think there's a discussion to be had.