[–]Glorious Smiter of Spam_depression
[M] [score hidden] 6 hours ago stickied comment
Honestly, it's awesome that they had the correct information and all, but you have to appreciate what it would mean to allow unverified rumors to run rampant. We do our best to keep rumors - especially unverifiable ones - out of the subreddit because they have the potential to overrun the place during busy periods.

You've all seen the subreddit around the trade deadline and during (actually active) offseasons, you know that news and rumors from sources like Rosenthal and others can already be overwhelming. Darvish looking at teams A, B, C. Darvish definitely out on X, Y, Z. Sources say the Yankees are in on Darvish. Sources say Darvish wants to go to a real contender. Sources say the Rangers are asking for Andrelton Simmons in exchange for Darvish. A deal is close with the Yankees, just ironing out details. Wait, that fell through, hearing that Darvish might be headed to Chicago. Darvish's camp tells me that no one has spoken to Darvish about a supposed deal with Chicago.

If we allowed every "my uncle knows a guy" type rumor, that would only get even worse, and potentially bury more legitimate news and rumors. We tend to see a lot of those types of posts - whether they're tweets or just pure impossible-to-verify rumors - and they either get removed or deleted (due to downvote bombing) quickly. The last thing we want to do is dilute and already diluted pool of information with even more "stuff" that people have to wade through to find any reasonable thread of sense.

[–]Chicago CubsGermanoMuricano117
32 points 6 hours ago
I have a serious question I hope I don't get down voted and yelled at for it..... Why does Reddit have to be so serious in general? Like why does a moderation team on Reddit that doesn't get paid at all and doesn't have any affiliation with major league baseball in anyway have to have rules like this in place? Wouldn't the natural upvote downvote mechanisms built-in to Reddit naturally take care of these types of posts by themselves, and then wouldn't that tell you what your community wants to see in general? I've never understood weird rules like this, earlier this week the NFL subreddit put in a no spoilers rules for the freaking Hall of Fame results and that really started to make me realize how many weird strange rules all the sports subreddits have. Sorry for the long post.

Obviously I'm a Chicagoan so deleting posts like this and NFL mods refusing to allow the Urlacher leaks to be posted last weekend have direct implications on me so I'm obviously very biased, I acknowledge this.

[–]Glorious Smiter of Spam_depression
[M] 38 points 6 hours ago
It's a totally legit question, and the answer is twofold:

First and foremost, this subreddit was built up by baseball fans to become one of the best hubs for baseball discussion on the internet. Every moderator on the team volunteered for the role to help keep the community as great as it's been, and hopefully improve it. A big part (if not the single biggest part) of that effort is reducing or removing spam and low-effort posts in order for quality content and just general discussion to thrive. Posts like the ones we've celebrated so far this year couldn't have existed if the subreddit was a free-for-all.

As for the upvote/downvote system, that's something that's been discussed over and over again here, on other big subreddits, and places like /r/TheoryOfReddit. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that while there are 600,000+ subscribers to r/baseball, the vast majority are passive users - they'll browse headlines, watch videos, skim posts, upvote occasionally, then move on. But the content they consume more easily (and actively) is what we refer to as "lower quality" content - jokes, memes, easily digestible content - and gets upvoted much more easily because of that. On the flipside, big discussion posts, theories, analysis, etc. (basically the big long text posts) are daunting to get through but generally can be fantastic quality - and they get a fraction of the votes on average because the average passive user won't sit through the whole post, or might just skim it and then move on.

That's not to say that there's something wrong with the passive voter by any means - instead, it's a flaw with the vote system. If basic content like jokes and pictures are easier to upvote, they will be. They'll overrun the front page because of that, and because they're the most visible, that's what people will come to expect from the subreddit's content. That's what will get posted most often, and the kind of user that prefers a healthy mix of content will be less and less interested in a subreddit that is essentially just pictures, videos, and memes. So in order to help promote that healthy mix of content, we have to at least set boundaries.

All that being said, if you (or anyone else reading this) ever thinks that we've overstepped when removing a post, don't hesitate to message the mods. We take all of these kind of reports seriously both for immediate and long-term discussion.

We'll also be releasing an update to our subreddit rules before the season starts, as well as opening up the floor for discussion on hot topics that we've seen from the past year. Keep an eye out for that!