help me understand meta, I have read the wiki twice
help me understand meta, I have read the wiki twice, and I want the answer with the reasoning attached rather than just the conclusion.
How a rule actually changes here, since people assume it is arbitrary.
Somebody posts a proposal with replacement wording — not a complaint, actual text. It gets argued about, usually for a week or two. If it survives, it goes in with whatever amendments came out of the argument, and the change is announced with the reasoning attached.
The reason wording is required is that it is the only thing that can be evaluated. "The vendor evidence rules are too strict" cannot be adopted, rejected or amended. A proposed sentence can. Several rules on this site started as a comment in a thread like this one, which is the strongest argument for the process.
Edited a wiki page for the first time and nothing bad happened, which is apparently the point.
Complained about a rule without proposing anything and was politely pointed at this page. Fair.
Please do not ask me what dose you should be on. I genuinely do not know and neither does anyone else here.
best — the order this archive was captured in
What the ranking does, in case you assume it is hiding something.
The hot ordering combines the magnitude of a submission’s score with its age, so that a new post with moderate support can outrank an older one with more. The controversial ordering weights total vote volume by how evenly it splits, so a heavily contested thread rises above a small evenly-split one.
Both are published, and both are reproducible from the score and timestamp shown on every submission — one member here rebuilt the ordering in a spreadsheet to check. The consequence worth knowing is structural: feed position rewards early agreement, so the top comment is frequently not the best answer. Sorting by controversial occasionally is genuinely worth doing.
Had a post removed, went to modmail, got a specific explanation and disagreed with it politely. It stayed removed and I understood why.
Is this about a policy or about an individual removal?
Moderation of individual cases happens in modmail rather than in threads, because a public discussion of one person’s removal is worse for that person than a private one.
Moved to modmail. Individual removals get a specific answer there rather than a public thread.
Agreed that the top comment is not the best answer. The ranking optimises for early agreement.
Submissions older than a year are archived: readable, linkable, and closed to new comments. That keeps a three-year-old thread from being reopened with a reply nobody will see in context.
Small fix — archiving happens at a year, not at six months. It is in the published policy.
sponsor disclosure is on the about page in full
the ranking formula is published, go and read it
Proposed a rule change here with actual wording and it was adopted. That is the process working and it is not fast.
Have you taken this to modmail first?
sort by controversial occasionally, it is worth it
That is a complaint rather than a proposal. Bring wording and it can actually be discussed.
A rule-change proposal needs replacement wording because that is what can be evaluated. Without it there is nothing to compare against the current text.
the disclosure is boring because it has to be
removals get explained publicly where the rule allows it
- 1What the ranking does, in case you assume it is hiding something. The hot…6 comments in this branch · started by u/blunt_coldbox