Reddit remnants [initialisms explained]

This community is clearly a continuation of r/AmItheAsshole subreddit. People seem to take it for granted that people know this and understand the basic concepts. However, new people will come, some of whom have not seen the original subreddit. For those people there’s no explanation as to what’s going on here.

Here I explain the basic concepts and initialisms for the new users (basically what’s missing from the sidebar). Below I encourage a discussion on whether this should continue.

  • AITA – Am I The Asshole…?
  • WIBTA – Would I Be The Asshole…?
  • YTA – You’re The Asshole
  • NTA – [You’re] Not The Asshole
  • NAH – No Assholes Here
  • ESH – Everyone Sucks Here

On the original subreddit there was a bot which, after certain time, would highlight the most upvoted response and there was a subreddit-exclusive karma system.

But, should this community really follow the old subreddit’s ways? Since this is a fresh start, perhaps it’s the right time to discuss and rethink whether the system is right. I give you no right answer, it’s an open question.

Edit Aug 2023: As I recently became a moderator of this community, this post is now partly outdated. I’m leaving it here for archival purposes and for future reference regarding users’ feelings about a potential vote tally system.

circuitfarmer,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Thanks for doing the lord’s work, my brother in christ

XanXic,

I like the vote tally with a flair being applied after a decent amount of time. Makes it easier to go back and find like cathartic posts on either end of the specturm. Of course flairs have to come to lemmy.

Also if you can apply multiple flairs in the future I’d love if OP’s had to pick a flair at the start like “I might be an A” “Can’t Possibly Be an A” “Pretty sure I am an A” or something like that so people can tell with the headline and the flair where OP’s coming from. But that combined with the vote would make for interesting filters later on like posts where OP tagged it as ‘can’t possibly be’ but was voted YTA and flaired. Or the Pretty Sure posts with NTA for good stories.

I’ll say the only difference I would like for sure is like the automated top comment for votes also grabs a copy of OP’s replies and links to it. A big issue with AITA is like 2 hours go by of everyone being like “NTA” for example. Then OP answers a question randomly in the comments that is like ‘woah wtf’ levels and everyone is like “Okay you’re so clearly a piece of shit” and then vote YTA but then discussions break down because when you come in a few hours later or the next day there’s people who did look at OP’s post history for comments and people who didn’t. (Because it’s rare OP answer’s questions, so I can’t blame them for not fact checking every post). And then the comments are a warzone of trying to communicate supplemental information lol.

I’d also even suggest like a tally of comments for like total and one after OP’s last replies. Sometimes their extra comments really can shed light on stuff. But that might be getting too specific.

Tagger,

Yeah, I think we should keep the acronyms and someone should work on the bot. It would be cool as we're a fresh community to have some kind of 'hall of fame' of the highest ratio of YTA to NTA and visa versa.

CoderKat,
CoderKat avatar

To be honest, I rarely noticed the votes tally. I think the bot just applied a flair to the post eventually? It wasn't that relevant to me. I could see from the comments what the top posts were saying. For most posts, it's usually obviously leaning in one direction, anyway. I always went to the comments for the discussion and drama, anyway.

I do think the existing voting options are good. And think that all top level comments should contain either a clear vote or INFO, because I think the sub doesn't really work if people aren't voting in some way.

One rule of perhaps interest is the not accepting your judgement rule. I'm not sure if I care for that rule in the late subreddit. On the surface, it makes sense, since why post here if you're not going to accept the judgement? But I think we have to be honest here. The sub exists because it's amusing. The cases where OP doesn't accept their verdict can be quite dramatic and fun in a certain sense. That seems like it's conductive to the true goal of the sub. Also, I'd rather have an OP that argues against everyone than one who never replies (especially when there's so many requests for info).

Mistymtn421,

I always check for OP replies because that’s the fun part! If no OP engagement I usually move on. Also, great comment.

Buddahriffic,

I agree with all of this. The judgement bot was dumb and every thread would be full of people giving inaccurate advice about how it works as if it mattered at all. It was especially bad near the end as the community seemed to go off the rails and would often have a top post voting one way (that the judgement bot went with) but with many also highly upvoted dissenting comments replying followed by other highly upvoted comments judging the opposite. It was dumb for any judgement to be made “official”, as if that even meant anything in the first place. And don’t get me started on that dumb rule about replying to the judgement bot. I’m all for the community using the up/down vote system and the passing of time to determine which posts get interacted with rather than making posters jump through hoops so that they don’t get banned.

I also agree with your take on the not accepting judgement rule. OP is the only one who knows the full context of, plus is the one looking to be convinced. If commenters are making dumb assumptions (which was another thing that got worse and worse over time on the other site), then OP should correct them. If OP isn’t convinced by their reasoning, IMO it’s more intellectually honest to argue than accept. People commenting on posts don’t have special judgement powers, based on that other site, a good portion of them don’t even have basic literacy powers.

I also didn’t like how sensitive they got with the “be civil” rule. Some people should be called idiots or childish, especially in posts like these. I think some leeway should be given for uncivil comments about the assholes in the story.

And the aversion to any mention of violence whatsoever was also annoying. I understand banning calls for violence. I can kinda understand it if a violent act itself is being judged. But for stories that just happen to include some violence but it isn’t the focus of the question, it just felt very pearl clutchy to ban those.

I think the AITA mods from that other site might have been the worst mods you could have that still acted in good faith. It was a very over moderated community.

Ragnell,
Ragnell avatar

I think the votes give people an opportunity to express their opinion whether it's counted or not. And it gives the poster a quick way to see whether the community is with them or not. I say keep the acronyms, stop the vote-tally.

SomeoneElse, (edited )

Another thing non-redditors might be confused by is the age and gender thing. You might see posts like “I (30F) broke my partners (35M) prized teapot”. It means that I’m a 30 year old woman and my partner is a 35 year old man.

Edit to add: you might see 30NB - a non binary 30 year old.

nogooduser,

Some people also used YWBTA for you would be the asshole but I don’t think that would be needed.

snailwizard,

I like the idea of keeping the vote tally, but would it be possible to show the total number of votes after a certain period? Ie: *YTA 567 *NTA 2184 *ESH 35 *NAH 9 *TOTAL 2795 votes

SomeoneElse,

There was a sub on Reddit called AITA Filtered (I think) it was just reposts of r/aita but there was a bot that calculated the number of votes for each category at the bottom. I have no idea how you make a bot, but it was helpful.

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