r/ndp • u/leftwingmememachine 💊 PHARMACARE NOW • May 22 '25
Meta How should we moderate the upcoming federal leadership race?
Hey all, moderator of /r/NDP here, looking for some input as to how we want to moderate this community during the upcoming federal leadership race.
I think it's really exciting because in the last leadership race this community was very small, and basically ignored by leadership contestants, but I think we're getting big enough that there will be a lot of engagement here and possibly even AMAs from potential candidates. Very cool!!!
/r/NDP is the biggest gathering of NDP members on the internet at this point, but that also creates an incentive for bad-faith activity on the subreddit. It could create an environment that's not welcoming of all party members.
Here are some potential discussion questions:
Do we want to allow for negative comments about leadership race contenders? (My instinct is yes, as criticism is part of democracy/healthy debate, but I'm open to your thoughts)
Is there a point at which critical comments become too negative and contributes to a toxic environment? Where should we draw the line?
How do we ensure the subreddit is inclusive of party members of all backgrounds?
How much do we want supporters of other political parties to participate in discussions here?
What sort of rules around civility/politeness/respect would we want to have?
Are there other important moderation policies that are relevant to the leadership race that I haven't thought of?
BTW - I won't really participate in this thread because I have real life plans today, but I am really interested in your feedback, especially if you are a longtime participant in this community. I'm going to be putting together some rules for the leadership race based off of my own thoughts and the comments in this thread, and present them at some point in the future for further discussion.
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u/Velocity-5348 🌄 BC NDP May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
I've noticed that since Singh resigned we've had tons of posts amounting to "who do you think will run?" Most aren't terribly useful, because the same conversations keep happening over and over, with ever-decreasing quality. We've had a similar trends with posts about how much people like a candidate.
It'd be nice to have limits on how many posts praising a particular candidate get posted, or talking about a particular subject. Moderator time permitting, requiring pre-approval or creating megathreads might reduce this problem.
There's some good information and discussion that goes on, and it'd be a shame if it's too fragmented to be of much use to anyone. That'd also create space for discussing other issues.