Reddit-page ?

Hi Games4theworld !

First off, thanks for providing us with all those good torrents and the nice support, over so many years now ! I wanted to know if you were planning on creating a presence on Reddit too, in the form of a subreddit ?

Thanks a lot again for what you do ! 

Hello and welcome to the forum @Rudi50,


That is an interesting topic for sure. Thanks for your nice words and also bringing up this issue ! Now let's see...

The first thing to note is that G4TW have established a couple of social media presences over the years, most notably the Twitter-page and the Facebook-page. The Twitter-one is currently inactive, but Facebook is very active. Beyond giving general support to users on these platforms and announcing G4TW-related news, these venues were also used for content that is entertaining/not directly related to the daily work on the forum, but also informative (e.g. explaining how certain things are moderated on the forum). As far as Reddit now goes, this here is interesting:

Reddit wrote:Content is prohibited if it is illegal.

If you click on the "illegal", you get redirected to this here.

Reddit wrote:Content is prohibited if it is illegal.
Content may violate the law if it includes, but is not limited to:

• copyright or trademark infringement 
  (...)
  

Now I don't know how these Reddit-Admins operate in practice and/or how common it actually is to ban or delete so-called "subreddits". But I have the feeling it's better to not rely and speculate on the goodwill of the Reddit-Admins. Needless to say, ultimately the Reddit-Admins are also pawns, namely of the company that operates Reddit and which is driven by commercial interests. Nonetheless, for the purposes of G4TW, something more stable may be better, for a lack of a better word. Now I'm aware that there are subreddits with dubious content such as hate speech of all sorts. But usually that doesn't bother "the powers that be". Who cares about stuff such as racism, child abuse and the incitement of violence ? But god forbid you dare to bring up something that is perceived "to take money away from the good corporations". In case of Games4theworld, I imagine that the fact that torrents and free service are provided will cause trouble over time.

Another major turn-off for me would be this entire system of "upvotes" and "downvotes", which determines what posts are shown on top/bottom on Reddit. In my eyes, these votes are very often used abusively. Potentially good contributions should not be placed into oblivion just because the hateful mob hivemind doesn't like them. Which leads me to the next point.

The people who maintain subreddits (Subreddit-Moderators) seem to be comparable in their capabilities with the Moderators on the forum here, but when it comes to more advanced moderating tools, higher powers need to be called in. For example, IP-viewing and IP-banning capabilities on Reddit are an exclusive domain of the Reddit-Admins. At least to my current knowledge. In combination with the ease of creating new Reddit accounts, it could be troublesome to deal with certain problem users. To counter-balance this a bit, I have heard though that regular Moderators have the capability to disallow newly-created accounts to post, for a certain amount of time at least.

Finally, someone would need to reply to the messages on such a subreddit too, which could be a bit difficult due to the fact that we tend to be a rather small team, and maintaining a subreddit would basically be in addition to all our other venues and activities (Forum, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Piratebay, TeamViewer, the Minecraft server, and all other websites related to us).

Social media platforms and these so-called content aggregators (like Reddit/Voat) largely owe their popularity to their simplicity in usage, friendliness for mobile devices, the ease with which you can visit and contribute to various different sub-communities with just one single site account, and finally the fact that users can essentially say/do almost anything they like without any real moderator-intervention. So yes, I am aware of the current trends. I concede though, that some of my prejudices in particular toward Reddit are likely based on misinformation/outdated information and the fact that I have not yet fully grasped how this entire site is being used (properly). The idea is interesting in theory, but personally, for Games4theworld I would stick with the Facebook-page and maybe re-surrect Twitter too.

Hi there,

It'd be very interesting indeed.
I personally don't know Reddit too well to give a "good" answer, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a very bad idea for general Support. (Because I think it's too messy for that)
But for the usual discussions it'd probably be fine, especially for Redditers that do know us, but are not registered on our Forum.

As for their rules, I don't think they'll be too strict on that. No harm is done when you talk/discuss pirating.
Besides, I stumbled upon these for example: /r/ThePirateBay, /r/CrackStatus and yes, even /r/PiratedGames.

And as Mr Gh0stm4n stated, we'd still need someone to take care/look after that page. I know that most of us are probably too busy for another page to look after. Unless it's someone from the Community itself, of course. That would also be an idea. Especially if it's someone with some Reddit experience.

At that point, I would really focus more on a consolidation, of the forum as well as Twitter & Facebook, before even thinking about "expanding" more.

fsociety wrote:As for their rules, I don't think they'll be too strict on that. No harm is done when you talk/discuss pirating.
Besides, I stumbled upon these for example: /r/ThePirateBay, /r/CrackStatus and yes, even /r/PiratedGames.

The subreddit for TPB has this here in their rules:



I noticed also in a few other subreddits that I occasionally read, various linking restrictions, so we'd also have to see to what extent that is even compatible with the work of G4TW, since we link to lots of things. And finally there is also this here:
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion

Which doesn't look very "G4TW-friendly" to me. So any presence of G4TW on Reddit would have to be in a different form, and not so much for actual support. Not sure whether it's even worth thinking about Reddit, when both Facebook is not only better for giving support but also for "self-promotion". Twitter is good for very short messages/news announcements.

Sorry for the late reply, but I understand.   You already have the forum & Facebook & Twitter, but thanks for the replies team, and have a great day ! 

Rudi50 wrote:Sorry for the late reply, but I understand.   You already have the forum & Facebook & Twitter, but thanks for the replies team, and have a great day ! 

Sure, no problem. I was thinking about the issue a bit, and a Reddit-presence could make sense if the subject matter wasn't directly related to support, but rather on general discussion about G4TW. Stuff like discussions about "running" a support-forum and related areas, moderation policies, general torrenting discussion, etc. Something like a "Meta Games4theworld". That is pretty much the closest of what I consider to be theoretically doable.

The problem is: support is still the most important aspect in the work of G4TW, and people (on Reddit) would still ask about any issues. Besides, is there really a need for a "Meta Games4theworld", and wouldn't that kind of make the forum redundant, at least a bit ?

My opinion is that people should still use the forum for their support requests. Alternatively they can also use the Facebook-page, if they don't want to make a forum account. I don't think there is a special need for a Reddit-presence, as of now.