The Formation of Norms in Reddit

A Qualitative Research Study

Prepared by Ace Howard

April 2012

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3. Introduction

4. Methods

5. Findings

…

9. Discussion

10. Conclusions

11. Works Cited

12. Appendix A

…

16. Appendix B

17. Appendix C

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As the world ventures further into the digital age, we begin to notice a shift in the ways

we interact with each other. Gone are the days when meetings actually meant getting

together to “meet up.” Today we have to option to meet in an online chat room,

conduct a group webcam chat, comment back and forth in an online forum; the list

goes on and on. With each different environment, different norms exist that users

must adhere to.

Reddit is a dynamic forum that thrives on sharing and discussion. Users submit

content while others comment on them. Although typical comments may appear to be

simple, short, and choppy, every one of them goes through a writing process.

There has not been any previous research specifically done on the writing norms of

Reddit, however researcher Carolyn Wei has studied writing norms in a digital

community. In her article, Wei discusses data she had gathered in studying the implicit

and explicit norms of a knitting blog community. She found that while “explicit rules

may help to shape a fledging blog community, the behaviors of individual bloggers

may also help to create norms” (Wei, 2004).

This study demonstrates how the formation of norms in Reddit is similar to that of a

blog community. My data collection begins with an analysis of Reddit’s explicit norms,

followed by an analysis of several textual artifacts, and finally wraps up with a

discussion of interviews I conducted with actual Reddit users. Reddit’s implicit norms

are drawn from the findings of the interviews and textual artifacts; implications of

Reddit’s implicit and explicit norms are discussed in the Discussion section.

community background

Blanchard defines a virtual community as a “virtual settlement” with a “sense of

community” (2004). Reddit easily qualifies as a virtual community due to a high

amount of social interaction that takes place within the site.

As defined by Wikipedia, Reddit is a “social news website where the registered users

submit content, in the form of either a link or a text ‘self’ post.” Users, or Redditors,

vote on which posts they like and dislike. Redditors commonly to voting as upvoting

and downvoting. The higher a post is voted, the higher it will be ranked on the website.

The highest ranked content will appear on the front page of the website; the rest of the

content is arranged in descending order.

Reddit is arranged into different categories or subreddits. Each subreddit contains its

own set of rules that affects the nature of the content that is submitted. For example,

the top three largest subreddits are called “pics,” “gaming,” and “worldnews.” Content

is always in relation to the title of the subreddits.

Redditors also have the ability to comment on every submission. Comments can be

voted up or down and it allows users to give their input on the subject. The

commenting feature creates a forum that conveys a different tone depending on the

subject of the original submission. The tone of these threads varies with each different

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subreddit. For example, in the “funny” subreddit, threads often have a lighthearted and

joking tone. In “worldnews,” comments take a more formal tone.

Reddit encourages an anonymous environment. While it is not against the rules to

reveal your identity, users typically interact with each other under seemingly random

user-names. The anonymous nature of Reddit has a profound effect on conversation

via comments that is unlike other forums such as Facebook in which users interact

with each other under their true identities.

This study begins with an analysis of the explicit norms posted on Reddit. These

explicit norms are rules that Redditors must abide by when posting comments and can

be found on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section (see Appendix A) of Reddit.

I collected and analyzed a random thread of comments to see how much the explicit

rules affect how comments are written and voted on.

For this portion of my research, I chose to study the perspective of two different types

of Redditors: a casual Redditor who does not have any responsibilities outside of

following the rules, and a moderator who polices and cleans up Subreddits. The main

focus of the interviews was based on textual artifacts chosen from my subjects’

comment histories.

My first interviewee is a Redditor named * that I’ve known offline for

several years. The other is a moderator named who was randomly chosen

based on a preliminary survey response. is in charge of several subreddits

such as r/politics, r/redditoroftheday, r/women, and others.

After I had selected my subjects, I collected textual artifacts consisting of their highest

and lowest rated comments on their respective comment histories. I interviewed both

of my subjects separately to discuss the Reddit community and their comments that I

had selected.

interviews

My interview with was semi-structured based on a set of research

questions (see Appendix B) that I prepared beforehand. This user does not carry any

responsibility for the website. However, she does participate in the community by

regularly submitting content and commenting in various threads. The interview lasted

about twenty minutes.

My second interview was with a moderator, or “mod,” on Reddit. Mods are users who

volunteer to police the subreddits that they are in charge of. Mods are the primary

respondents to users who flag content or comments that break the rules.

To recruit this subject, I messaged a random selection of mods about the study.

was randomly chosen from the mods that volunteered to be a subject.

* User names have been altered to preserve my subjects’ anonymity

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interview was conducted differently from the first one; I had created a

questionnaire (See Appendix C) based on the research questions that I had used for my

previous interview. After the mod responded to my questionnaire, I messaged her with

follow-up questions.

data analysis

After I had recorded my interview with , I transcribed it and highlighted

key points in her answers. I coded each key point into the following categories:

Explicit norms

Implicit norms

Comment feature

Anonymity

survey response was also coded into the above categories.

The data I gathered from the analysis of Reddit’s explicit norms, the gathered textual

artifacts, and the interviews were triangulated into my findings.

Based on the textual artifacts and the results of my interviews, I had learned several

things about the importance of commenting on Reddit, the implicit rules of

commenting and voting, and how anonymity factors into the community.

explicit norms

According to the “Commenting” section of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list

(See Appendix B) on Reddit, there is no explicit set of rules that users must adhere to

when making comments on material. This section of the FAQ merely discusses how

Redditors can format their comments, how to identify edited comments, and how

comments are scored.

Under the “Basics” section of the FAQ, however, there are explicit rules about what is

and what is not acceptable when posting on the website. For example, there is a

question that asks, “Will [Reddit] remove something defamatory about me or ‘my

friend’ from Reddit?” Reddit’s answers that they “rarely remove such material, but

[they] reserve the right to do so for legal or other reasons.” Reddit goes on to say that

they do not remove posts for “insults or negative commentary, but leaves such

decisions to the moderators of particular communities.”

When asked if “posting personal information [is] okay,” Reddit explicitly states that it is

not okay because it can hurt innocent people. Reddit accepts professional links (e.g. a

congressmen’s contact information) as long as it is not to invite the Reddit community

to collectively harass somebody. It is also not okay to post spam; there is a list of

bullet points that define what may constitute spam. Reddit tells users that reporting

spam is “the single most important thing a user can do to help keep Reddit clean.”

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The above rules demonstrate how Reddit functions as a community in favor of free

speech. In order for such an environment to exist, there must be tolerance of content

that the majority of users may not agree with along with a zero tolerance policy for

content that is aimed at harming another person. The former can be observed in the

following screenshots of a comment and a less than favorable reply:

EditingAndLayout 25 points 5 hours ago

Thank you to all those who rick their life in service of their country. I will never understand the sacrifices that you make, but I am grateful.

EDIT: Unless you are a terrorist. Then no thanks to you (thanks

andrewsmith1986).

[Original comment]

andrewsmith1986 -16 points 5 hours ago

Especially the terrorists, amirite?

[Original Reply]

In this case, the Redditor said something that several Redditors did

not agree with or saw offensive. The default number of points a comment receives is 1;

this comment resulted in -16 points. However, he followed up with another reply that

resulted in positive points:

andrewsmith1986 24 points 3 hours ago

Blind support for your country isn’t always good.

Look at egypt and syria.

I wasn’t trolling.

Reductio ad absurdum isn’t trolling.

[Follow-up Reply]

When explained his original reply, Redditors agreed with his

statement, resulting in his post being voted up. This is a small example of how

Redditors are typically inclined to vote down posts that they find offensive or posts

that they do not agree with.

implicit norms

When comments are voted on, their ratings are based on a community’s implicit

norms. For example, a pro-religion comment typically would not be rated very highly in

the subreddit r/atheism. explained:

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If you’re religious, you cannot expect to defend your religion without a backlash

of opposition. Some will be polite and respectful and some won’t and you can’t

expect to speak on a topic without being held responsible for what you’re

saying. And that goes for any topic whatsoever.

In most cases, an unpopular opinion will be downvoted; the only exception is if the

unpopular opinion was well written and is not attacking another person’s comment.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. lowest rated comment had

to do with defending an unpopular company’s business model:

kim_possible -16 points 7 months ago

I chuckle every time I see someone whine about Vector Marketing on Facebook.

Honestly? It is a job. You can quit. Vector is pretty forthright in the interview

about what is expected and they are actively trying to improve their system

by leasing kits for demos rather than asking you to buy a kit. Also, they are

beginning to open stores. I worked there for a summer, made some money,

then left. I have great friends from that summer and I keep in touch with my boss.

See LostOne87's downvoted but incredibly reasonable comment if you are

open-minded.

When I asked her why she thought her comment was downvoted, she said it was

because “people don’t like Vector.” She goes on to say that she personally downvotes a

post if it “annoys [her] slightly, anything that’s vulgar or crude, … people that are

commenting for the sake of commenting.”

rationale for downvoting aligns with assumption as to why

the following post was so poorly rated:

av_geek -5 points 2 years ago

thank you for the GRAPHIC warning. i didn't look.

When I asked why thought her post was downvoted, she replied that people

likely thought that she was “being a baby.” However, during the interview, when I asked

why she upvotes or downvotes a comment, she said that she would “upvote if [she]

thinks [the comment] adds to the discussion and downvote if it doesn’t. [sic]”

To tie their perspectives together, if came across post and

thought it was annoying, and/or it did not add to the discussion (based on the

comment, it was likely that it did not add to discussion) then she would have most

likely downvoted it.

On the other side of the spectrum, highest rated comment is as

follows:

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kim_possible 42 points 8 months ago

Yes, there was recently a trend on TwoXChromosomes of trying out no-heat

curls. We posted lots of pictures of the results – good and bad. This should help you understand. :)

In this example, actually commented on a thread that she started with

her own post. When I asked why she thought this comment was so highly rated, she

replied:

Just by the nature of Reddit, usually the person who does the original post—if

they have a clarifying post somewhere in the comments to help a user

understand the original post—just by the nature of it, people will upvote it

because it helps people understand the original post. This one was probably

upvoted because of the positive language in general and the smiley face—the

smiley face never hurts. [sic]

highest rated comment was much more concise. It contained, as

described what she thought went into a highly rated comment, positive

language and the use of an emoticon:

av_geek 376 points 1 year ago

i <3 reddit and all of the admins.

When was asked why she thought her comment was so highly rated, she said

it was because she was one of the first to comment in that particular thread.

A powerful implicit basis by which comments judged by is spelling and grammar.

will spend up to an hour proofreading and spell-checking a post because

she’s afraid that people will “make fun of [her] relentlessly.” When I asked her why she

is so concerned about proofreading her comments, she said it was because of the

environment she is writing in:

I read through [a comment] several times because Reddit one of those places

where a lot of the people are educated and a lot of people really want it, not

necessarily an intellectual environment, but at least an environment of well -

versed people. [sic]

The subject of spelling and grammar did not get brought up in my interview with

. As a moderator, she believes that most upvoting/downvoting is based on

whether or not people agree with a post.

comment feature

The comment feature of Reddit is what drives the website to be as popular as it is

today. Redditors use comments not only to discuss a topic relevant to the original

post; they use it as their main medium to communicate with one another. Although the

majority of comments will be about the original post, there is no way to predict the

extent to which the topic will digress. When I asked my subjects how they feel about

Reddit’s comment section, both of them alluded to social interaction.

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According to , there wouldn’t even be a Reddit community if it were not

for the comment feature. She says that “Reddit better than StumbleUpon and other

similar websites. I think Reddit is a community and it isn’t just a place to go visit and

see memes. [sic]”

It should be noted, however, that I did not mention the word “community” prior to this

question. The sense of community (as referenced under the “community background

section”) that a user feels on Reddit is so profound that individual users like

consider themselves as part of a great Reddit community.

considers the comment section valuable because it allows her to “see what's

been going on” with her friends if she hasn’t talked to them in a while. Although

did not explicitly say it, she demonstrated her sense of community by

referring to the comment section as a place for socializing with her friends.

anonymity

Perhaps one of the most influential factors that affects both implicit and explicit norms

is anonymity. Both of my subjects share similar sentiments about the subject.

compared the anonymous experience on Reddit to an anonymous

experience in a car:

I think anonymity on Reddit fuels fiery emotions like anonymity in a car. When

you’re in a car, you feel like no one knows who you are. You much more easily

flip someone off, so when you create an account that leads back to you in

absolutely no way, you don’t even have put your email address associated with

it, you flip people off, except a little more intensely and it’s on the Internet, so

you even have a more emphasized feeling of anonymity. [sic]

When asked if there was no anonymity, she replied:

I feel like it would not breed the same intellectual challenging debates that it

does because I think while it does breed all of those very savage things; I think it

also is an environment where people feel safe to post things. [sic]

sentiments align pretty closely with in that anonymity

“allows people to speak their minds, to unload deep secrets and regrets but it also

allows people to troll and be assholes.”

Today, being “social” does not necessarily mean to go out and interact with others; it

could mean chatting with somebody on Facebook or tweeting at someone on Twitter.

Socializing on digital media has become so commonplace that we do not realize it

when we code-switch as interact with different media. It’s important to understand that

different norms apply to different environments online and offline.

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On Reddit alone, there are over 67,000 different subreddits to choose from. Each one

of those subreddits potentially contains their own set of implicit rules that users

should adhere to if they wanted to be successful in that community. If a user posted in

a subreddit that he or she is unfamiliar with, that person could face getting downvoted

for the violation of an unfamiliar norm. Of course, this negative response would help

teach that user the norms of that subreddit.

Just like in Wei’s study, Reddit’s explicit rules profoundly shape the norms of its

community. This website is a supporter of fair, free speech, as demonstrated when

Reddit led the SOPA blackout on January 18, 2012. While there is an emphasis on free

speech on Reddit, there is a heavier emphasis of anonymity. Reddit will tolerate trolling

and other derogatory comments, but if there is personal information posted in a

thread, it could potentially lead to witch-hunts and innocent people could get hurt.

Such comments become candidates for removal under discretion of the mods.

It should also be noted that due to the anonymous nature of Reddit, it was difficult to

find a mod that would conduct a face-to-face interview with. A future study could

benefit from having such an interview.

Overall, this study is just the tip of the iceberg. Although there has been a valuable

amount of data gathered in this study, Reddit is too diverse to draw solid conclusions

based on a qualitative study of only two users. There are thousands of Subreddits and

millions of users; there must be a more quantitative study to understand.

In conclusion, Reddit is a website that is powered by social anonymity. One of the main

explicit norms that affect the content of a comment states, “Posting personal

information is not okay.” This norm is designed to protect people and to keep the

nature of the site as anonymous as possible.

The implicit norms on Reddit are a product of its explicit norms; mods do not filter

comments that are vulgar and/or written in poor taste. It is up to the community to

vote on which posts are acceptable or not. Often, the community upvotes comments

that are easy to agree with because it represents a popular opinion in a thread. At the

same time, disrespectful comments typically get downvoted in a thread. A unique

implicit norm that applies to Reddit is spelling and grammar; if a well -thought out

comment contained a single typo, it is likely that the subsequent comments will merely

point out the typo rather than respond to the content of the post.

Overall, the explicit and implicit norms of Reddit keep the website consistent and

successful. Redditors frequent the site not just for the links that are shared, but also

for the comment feature of the website. Many Redditors may not realize that by

commenting and voting on posts, they are taking part in the writing process in a digital

forum environment.

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Blanchard, A. (2004). Blogs as virtual communities: identifying a sense of community

[blog]. Retrieved from

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogs_as_virtual.html

Wei, C. (2004). Formation of norms in a blog community [blog]. Retrieved

from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/formation_of_norms.html

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Yes -- the commenting help page explains all the details, pitfalls, and workarounds.

This just means that the commenter has edited it. (On reddit, you can go back and edit

your comments in order to fix mistakes, add new information, or be annoying.)

According to the same principles as a submission's score.

A comment's score is simply the number of upvotes minus the number of downvotes.

If five users like the comment and three users don't it will have a score of 2. Please

note that the vote numbers are not "real" numbers, they have been "fuzzed" to prevent

spam bots etc. So taking the above example, if five users upvoted the comment, and

three users downvote it, the upvote/downvote numbers may say 23 upvotes and 21

downvotes, or 12 upvotes, and 10 downvotes. The points score is correct, but the vote

totals are "fuzzed".

In light of the protections afforded to online hosts of third party content, such as

reddit, we rarely remove such material, but we reserve the right to do so for legal or

other reasons.

Please note that reddit does not remove posts for containing insults or negative

commentary, but leaves such decisions to the moderators of particular communities.

Those moderators are not employees of or retained by reddit‚ they are the persons

who initiated the particular community and their appointees. While posts that contain

such content can be distasteful, reddit is not in a position to arbitrate disputes. Posts

should be consistent with the rules of the community to which they are posted.

The reddit community is usually very supportive of

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such a response, and will likely vote to give the correction greater prominence than the

original post. Redditors love a good counterpoint.

NO. Reddit is a pretty open and free speech place, but it is not ok to post someone's

personal information, or post links to personal information. This includes links to

public Facebook pages and screenshots of Facebook pages with the names still legible.

We all get outraged by the ignorant things people say and do online, but witch hunts

and vigilantism hurt innocent people and certain individual information, including

personal info found online is often false. Such posts or comments may be removed by

moderators or admins. Repeated offenders may be banned. Posting professional links

to contact a congressman or the CEO of some company is probably fine, but don't post

anything inviting harassment, don't harass, and don't cheer on or vote up obvious

vigilantism.

Yes. Reddit does not discriminate among candidates or differing political viewpoints in

any way, nor does it discriminate between political and non-political topics. Reddit's

terms of service require all users not to violate any law, statute or regulation in the

course of their use. Reddit provides its basic service to all users without charge and its

provision of basic services for free is not a contribution to any candidate, political

committee, or political party committee. Reddit does not control links to political sites,

does not endorse them, and is not responsible for any aspects of those sites.

Yes, you can create multiple/throwaway accounts as long as you do not do so to ghost

vote your own submissions.

Submissions can take a few minutes to appear on the New queue. But it's also possible

that a moderator deemed your post to be spam -- or the automatic filtering program

did. If you feel this was a mistake, try sending a message to a moderator of the reddit

in question. If they do not respond after a day or so, post a question in /r/help.

The report button, shown on all links and comments, is a way for the reddit community

to send feedback to the moderators that something is spam or otherwise violates the

rules -- for example, pornographic content submitted to a non-adult reddit, or a .PDF

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posted to /r/videos. If your reason for reporting is non-obvious, please leave a reply or

send a message to a moderator explaining your reasoning.

You can also report spam by submitting the offending user's overview page to the

/r/reportthespammers subreddit, upvoting if an entry already exists.

It will be reviewed, either by a person or a program. The more people who report it, the

more likely some action will be taken. Reporting spam is the single most important

thing a user can do to help keep reddit clean.

Besides spam, the other big no-no is to try to manipulate voting by any means: manual,

mechanical, or otherwise. We're not going to post an exhaustive list of forbidden

tactics (lest we give people ideas), but the two major ones are:

Don't use shill or multiple accounts, voting services, or any other software to

increase votes for submissions

Don't be part of a "voting clique"

A voting clique is a group of people who send links to their submissions around via

message, IM, or any other means, with the expectation of "you guys vote for my stuff

and I'll vote for yours."

Cheating will result in your account being banned. Don't do it.

It's a gray area, but some rules of thumb:

It's not strictly forbidden to submit a link to a site that you own or otherwise

benefit from in some way, but you should sort of consider yourself on thin ice.

So please pay careful attention to the rest of these bullet points.

If you spend more time submitting to reddit than reading it, you're almost

certainly a spammer.

If your contribution to Reddit consists mostly of submitting links to a site(s) that

you own or otherwise benefit from in some way, and additionally if you do not

participate in discussion, or reply to peoples questions, regardless of how many

upvotes your submissions get, you are a spammer.

If people historically downvote your links or ones similar to yours, and you feel

the need to keep submitting them anyway, they're probably spam.

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If people historically upvote your links or ones like them -- and we're talking

about real people here, not sockpuppets or people you asked to go vote for you

-- congratulations! It's almost certainly not spam. But we're serious about the

"not people you asked to go vote for you" part.

If nobody's submitted a link like yours before, give it a shot. But don't flood the

new queue; submit one or two times and see what happens.

To play it safe, write to the moderators of the community you'd like to submit to.

They'll probably appreciate the advance notice. They might also set community-specific

rules that supersede the ones above. And that's okay -- that's the whole point of letting

people create their own reddit communities and define what's on topic and what's

spam.

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1. What is your Reddit username?

2. What is one of your highest rated comments?

Which subreddit did you post this in?

Why do you think your comment was voted so highly?

o Is there a specific aspect of your comment that caused it to earn a high

rating?

Does this comment affect the way you comment on threads? In other words, do

you model your comments after your highly voted comment?

3. What is one of your lowest rated comments?

Which subreddit did you post this in?

Why do you think your comment was voted so highly?

o Is there a specific aspect of your comment that caused it to earn a high

rating?

Does this comment affect the way you comment on threads? In other words, do

you model your comments after your highly voted comment?

4. Why do you upvote/downvote a comment?

5. Why do you think the average Redditor upvotes/downvotes a comment?

6. How do you feel about the commenting feature of Reddit?

7. How do you feel about mods "policing" threads?

8. Have you ever reported a comment?

If so, why? Which subreddit was it posted in?

9. How do you feel about anonymity on Reddit?

How do you think anonymity affects comments, if they do at all?

If there was no anonymity on Reddit, how would it affect the way you comment,

if at all?

10. What subreddits do you frequently comment in?

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Community norms of Reddit Questionnaire

Hello, my name is Ace Howard and I am a college student at Ball State University. I'm currently working on a qualitative research project about the writing process in the Reddit community. Specifically, I am analyzing Reddit comments to find any implicit norms in the writing process. I'm trying to find out why comments get upvoted, downvoted, edited, reported, etc. In this questionnaire, I would like a Reddit moderator to answer the following questions. It should take no more than 15-20 minutes of your time. Although I will be asking for your Reddit name, your identity will be kept anonymous in my report. Thank you for your time. * Required 1. What is your Reddit username? *

av_geek 2. Which Subreddit are you a moderator for? r/politics, r/redditoroftheday, r/women, r/modtalk...a bunch of others. 3. How do you feel about Reddit's commenting feature? 4. Why do you upvote or downvote a comment?

Usually I upvote if I think it adds to the discussion and downvote it if it doesn't. 5. Why do you think the average Redditor upvotes/downvotes a comment?

I think it's valuable. Sometimes when I don't know what my friends have been up

to I'll look at their comments to see what's been going on.

6. How do you feel about moderators "policing" threads?

As a moderator I don't "police" threads but I do look at the reported comments

and act accordingly. Additionally I do look at comments to the posts I'm

interested in in other reddits and do my best to adhere to reddiquette.

7. Have you ever removed a comment from a thread? If so, why?

Yes, I've removed personally identifying information as well as hateful comments,

suicide encouragement and death threats.

8. How do you feel about anonymity on this website?

I think anonymity allows people to speak their minds, to unload deep secrets and

regrets but it also allows people to troll and be assholes.