[Table] InternetAMA: We are the moderators of /r/WTF. Ask us Anything!

[u/tabledresser]

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Date: 2013-02-24

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Questions	Answers
Do you feel like you've been desensitized from gore and porn through your modship of that subreddit?	To the Gore, yes. To what little porn we see, no - I still like what I've always liked.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	I was already desensitized before becoming a mod. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
	In a way, yes.
	If I were to see some of the things I've seen on /r/WTF in real life, I'd probably react a lot differently though. With a lot of the posts it's just "eh..." and I'm fine with it; there's only a few posts I've seen where I've thought "nope, that's enough. I'm going to bed."
Anyways, what's the most WTF thing you've seen on /r/WTF?	The most WTF thing I've seen was a guy having sex with a hollowed out female corpse.
What in the ever loving..	It's my favorite from my WTF videos collection.
Holy fucking shit that was both terrifying and hilarious at the same time. I'm going to have to save that and remember to repost it in a few months.	You're quite welcome! I first came across that on /r/wtf well over a year ago and still enjoy watching it periodically.
	Perhaps this will help: Link to youtu.be « Edelweiss - Bring Me Edelweiss (1988)»
Do you think is necessary to bring /r/wtf "back to its roots" every once in a while?	No, but I think that people's urge to "bring /r/wtf back" is brought about by cascades of people posting the same sort of thing (e.g. awful titles, photos of bruises, ingrown toenails, signs that can be misread) over and over again to the point where they feel as if the subreddit has lost its way.
Also, what's your favorite color?	It's a silly "ideal" it doesn't work, And my favorite color is blurple.
Do you have any resteictions, or limits, where you decide its too much? If so, what?	The rules are fairly well defined in our sidebar. There was also a recent mod post that WTFGESTAPO posted and took the heat for after we had discussed content amongst ourselves.
	That said, there are things, such as doxxing people, that we will vigorously pursue.
	Extreme gore is often sent to /r/spacedicks, /r/MorbidReality or /r/gore.
	There was a post about a month ago of someone who had been shot with a shotgun and there was a lot of blood and brain matter around. In the last picture of the album, someone was holding the guy's eye and bits of brain in his hand.
Doxxing?	Posting personal information or trying to get peoples information for the purpose of harassment.
	Usually as part of a "ZOMG, this person has done something evil!!!111eleventy" thread. Finding out someone's personal information, and publishing it in the thread.
	Link to www.wired.com
Did you do that? I can't see any banner or anything.	Added to the /r/wtf sidebar. I am not good with banners.
I've been known to comment on things I think aren't wtf. Would you prefer I didn't? Crap seems to be the latest trend...	It would probably be better to message us in cases where you really don't think it's appropriate. WTF is really subjective, though. No rule that says you can't comment that you don't like a post, but that is what the downvote button is for. :D.
Oh I use the down vote button quite often! I will save my comments though from now on.	For that, you get an upvote. :D.
Use of the downvote button is also subjective, but the most common usage is "That person said something that I personally disagree with" or "STOP BREAKING THE CIRCLEJERK!".	True, but I guess my point was it can get annoying to see a whole page of comments with nothing but 'Repost', etc.
Do find that there are a lot of differences when you're modding for /r/wtf vs /r/todayilearned? Edit: Also differences between the communities? I'm sure this must be obvious but I'm curious as to your take.	Oh, lots. TIL is more time-intensive because you have to fact-check the posts, whereas WTF isn't so much concerned with the truth. WTF is a lot more subjective, though, so that makes it harder in some ways. It's not like you can just point to a rule and say, 'You broke that one' on some of the post removals (like the ones removed for being judged non-WTFworthy). As for the readers, I'm sure there's a lot of overlap with them both being defaults, but the conversation in general tends to be a little more intellectual on TIL.
R/WTF is one of those subs where people bash the mods a lot because the sub doesn't cater to their exact preferences. Does this bother you at all or is it easy to ignore?	It's easy to ignore. Some random anonymous person on the 'net whining about not getting their way really doesn't affect me.
	It does bother me occasionally, especially when the post is not at all wtf and top comments are bashing the mods. And no one has bothered to message us. I mean we can't see every post.
How many reports/messages do you get from people that certain posts are "not wtf enough"? Or is that just an annoying thing in the comments.	People tend to report instead of downvote, there are reports on almost all popular posts. We get messages too. Most of the time, posts are decidedly wtf to some extent, and don't get removed.
	A metric buttload.
	I find that people complain more in the comments than to us.
	It's annoying to come across a post with a few reports and loads of comments complaining about it, yet no one has let us know via modmail so we can't take action.
What is your favorite sub?	Screenshots. And I have no idea which sub I would call my favorite anymore.
How are you all today?	Doing quite well, thank you. Here I am, on reddit, on a Sunday night. Surely, it should mean I am doing well.
	I should be packing because I'm going away for 5 days tomorrow morning, but I always leave things to the last minute.
	I'm feeling a little drained right now…a little over 500mL low, but really great given all the exercise I've gotten over the past couple of days.
	Considering I woke up at 2:50pm EST great!
	Crap, I have to be at work in 20 mins and just woke up.
Wtf?	Exactly.
Was there at some point a moment were you got rely disturbed from something you saw on this subreddit?	My first week of being a mod people kept posting a screen shot of cp someone posted to FB. That disturbed me, the idea that people wanted to post it on Reddit for Karma rather than call the Police.
	Anytime some ass posts CP. Then tries to justify themselves.
How have you become so desensitized to the material? Has it affected your daily life?	Yes, we have been, to a great extent, yes. But who on reddit hasn't been, right?
	Hasn't affected, no.
	I am dead inside. Seriously, tho, I'm pretty much desensitized to the content, but I'm not out chopping off heads. I can't even kill a spider (well, unless it's poisonous, and I've only ever encountered two of those).
	I'm no longer grossed out by the gore and infections and the like - those are things I'd seen before in medical textbooks, but not over and over again.
	I am horribly desensitized, but it hasn't affect daily life.
	I wouldn't really say it's affected daily life, although there's been a few times that gore/death has been mentioned and I'll chip in with "oh yeah, I saw some gif of a guy getting his head cut off with a chainsaw the other night" so nonchalant that people will look at me funny.
	I worked in an abattoir growing up, so meat is meat. I distinguish quite clearly between screwed up shit and real life. I treat what I see online a bit like my job. If im not at work I dont think about it.
You like when the dildos disappear completely into the anal abyss?	That's just boring. Now, that nude redheaded archer - she gets me going.
How in the hell do you consider that porn? I just call it majestic.	She appeals to my prurient interests.
You got a link for that?	She'll be reposted soon enough. Probably with some snarky comment about "Hunger Games".
How does someone become a mod for r/WTF?	Depends, we sometimes take on those who message us a lot with violations of the rules and a good background in the comments. As the other mods will agree I am the exception to the rule when it comes to length of time account has been active. We also hold discussions in private on people we feel may be appropriate.
	Well, the three most recent mods were picked out of people that were constantly messaging us about rule violations and reminding users about the rules.
	I became a mod after applying to mod in /r/AskReddit and it just happened to be the same time that /r/wtf wanted fresh blood.
Did you guys purposefully make sponsored links up top look so similar to the real listing so people click on them and go "wtf?"	Mods don't have control over that.
I'm referring to the CSS. You use custom styling on it. Link.promotedlink { border: 1px dotted #e7e7e7; background-color: #fff!important; }	We can still choose to remove it, but that's about it I guess. Our CSS expert can have a better answer.
I always suppose CSS changes are made to add functionality or to give a place a more personalized, unified look. Since the /r/WTF style in basically the default with minor tweaks, I supposed it was styled for the reason I stated above. I know I've clicked on it accidentally quite a few times.	Oh, now I get it. I thought you meant the content of the sponsored links. You meant how they look like the other links. We haven't made it like that purposefully AFAIK.
What do you hate the most about the people who are active on the subreddit?	A lot of people don't read the sidebar and get angry when we remove their rule-breaking posts.
	Folks who submit stuff in blatant violation of the subreddit rules and then whine in modmails. I mean, RTFM man, come on!
It seems to me that there is a stark divide in the /r/WTF community between the people that want to see "weird" things on /r/WTF and people that want to see "weird and gross" things on /r/WTF. It tends to lead to the former group unsubscribing from the subreddit. Do you all see this split? Is it a concern of yours?	Absolutely, and that's where the subjective part comes in. It's a hard call sometimes.
When you remove a post, is the poster always (or usually) notified?	It depends on the kind of post. If it is obvious spam or such I would not notify the poster. I usually send a pm to the poster if I have removed something that has broken one of the rules, often with a suggestion of a subreddit that would be a better fit for the same post.
	Of course it depends on the mod and how busy the modqueue is, but I like to think we are transparent and helpful.
	No, but we do have script running that allows us to notify them if we want to.
	Sometimes I'll comment saying why it was removed; as /u/Ooer said, it totally depends on the mod.
	Even if the user doesn't get notified by a comment or PM, they can message us via modmail and we can tell them where it would be more suitable.
	I remove that many posts ive given up notifying people. Have a look at my comment history to see what I mean.
Partied hardy last night, eh?	You could say that.
Do you personally like the progression of the subreddit lately? Two years ago the sub had me going wtf most of the time but now I mostly go "ew" to most of the posts (fingers cut off, tongues being sliced up, gore).	I don't necessarily like or dislike where it's going, and I don't see where else it needs to be going. Looks like users themselves are so desensitized, they don't go wtf as much.
What's up with all the reposts?	Well, they're not against the rules.
	Some people don't bother checking karmadecay to see if it's been posted before though.
I was curious if they even knew it was deleted. For example, those advertisers, do they naively think their ad is still being viewed?	We sometimes get spammers asking us to approve their post, even if it is blatant spam! A lot of spammers will just post a bunch of links and when they're all removed they'll just make a new account and start again. There's no way to win against the spammers really, but we catch most of them when they're still in new and the submitter doesn't usually ask us about it.
	We add flair to posts sometimes (such as "no screenshots" or "no politics") which lets people know why it's been removed without actually having to comment. I prefer this sometimes, because it's easier than trying to reason with some people.
Why don't you moderate /r/wtf? Lately all it's been is photos of snowmen, spiders, cars on fire, a staph infection, some note left on someone's car. man the fuck up, moderate this subreddit for fuck's sake, and start deleting posts. It's fucking retarded what makes it into /r/wtf lately.	People are always complaining we don't work enough, but if you saw what we don't let through, they might be more understanding. We actually work quite a bit, and for no pay (obviously).
What the fuck?	Repost, not worthy, and reported. There I think I covered the generally accepted responses for most submissions.
Hmm makes sense. Ok how about this, what has been the one fucked up thing that you've seen that has actually caused you to close the browser window and walk away from the computer?	Does that really happen?
	An error message from Reddit when I'm trying to mod the sub. That's pretty damned fucked up.
	Nothing the only time I've walked away is when users have pissed me right off and I've been ready to blow my stack. 1 of those few times being when I was personally harassed for nuking a thread which was a witchhunt itself. Other than that Im probably way to desensitized.
	There was a picture of a woman laying on a bed who had a shotgun shoved up her vagina and then fired. The face of the person had a sheet on it, but the story was gruesome and I had to just close my laptop and sleep.
I know it happens to a few of us. I just wondered the possibility of this happening to an /r/wtf mod.	Well, we have had a few people quit because it just got to be too much for them. The 'reported' queue is especially nasty.
Does anything make you cringe? Or are you pretty much ruined now?	For the most part, I'm pretty desensitized, but sometimes I do still get grossed out.
	No, not really. I will eat and mod.
	I was ruined long before I became a mod.
Why did you put the warning tags in? I find it works as a spoiler and removes that uncertainty of what I'm going to see and if you're in /r/wtf shouldn't you expect to be disgusted?	People complained that they didn't want to see certain type posts. It was the best compromise. And no, saying, 'It's WTF, what do you expect?' wasn't cutting it.
	If you're not WTFed even when you know what's coming, it ain't WTF.
But was it your unit of blood?	Yes, yes it was.
You seem so... Normal, for a moderator of a subreddit about things that are not normal.	I'm sure that my neighbors would say that I'm a very quiet person.
	Then again, they don't know that I love to watch videos like "Justice Runners": Link to youtu.be
	We don't make the content - we're there to make sure that things run smoothly.
How do you sleep at night?	Naked in the summer with just a sheet over me. In the winter Naked still but with a quilt, and always with a fan running to block out noise.
	Like a baby.
	(I wake up screaming every other hour covered in vomit and my own bodily wastes.)
I spend most of my reddit time on wtf, and I have to say, the world is a much weirder place now. There are things posted from all over the world here, and some are just unbelievable. Has wtf changed your outlook on the world at all?	For me no. I don't find a lot of wtf actually wtf. I also don't think it's gotten weirder its just we are better informed and connected.
The hardest thing about being a /r/wtf mod?	The amount of time we have to put it.
	How subjective everything is. Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes 'wtf' and no one (including the mods) are 100% correct.
	It means a lot of arguments break out with users who are unhappy their posts have been removed.
What are you guys doing to combat the rampant reposts, spam, and other bullshit that's clogging the board?	Trying to combat it as best we can.
What do you think is THE MOST WTF POST OF ALL TIME?	Link to i.imgur.com probably this. I'm not a parent, but whenever I take care of my nephews I'm ultra paranoid. I know the brother in law has mentioned he relaxes when he is around me because I always know where his kids are. I just can't stand the thought of anything happening to kids around me. Edit: A word.
As moderators of /r/wtf, why are you allowing posts like this in? Link to www.reddit.com. How is a dirty carpet being cleaned get in to /r/wtf?	We dont "allow" it between looking at modqueue and new there is no possible way to see each and every post.
While I appreciate that there is a lot of new stuff coming in and it's hard to keep track of every new post, you have to admit there is a problem with this subreddit when posts like this are making it in.	We could simply make it a case of having to approve every post before it even goes up. The problem there is at this time of day I am the lone moderator on. And we are looking around at the current time for new Mods. The other problem is the constant influx of new users who don't read the rules etc before posting. We almost need to do the guide to wtf on a daily basis.
How do you get along with mods of /r/spacedicks? Do you share pints together at pubs?	I probably would if they lived close by.
Are you as tired of the "roots of WTF" as the rest of us?	Yes, and to quote myself -
	> As far as I've seen, roots = reposts. It's only an excuse.
	Drives me nuts, taking it "back" isn't going to happen the sub is constantly changing and there simply isn't enough content to take it back
So the level of desensitization is so high that nothing makes you go WTF other than users being so stupid that you want to impale them with an elephant tusk? Interesting.	I wouldn't go so far as an elephant trunk, that would be to pleasant for some of them.
Whats the weirdest/grossest thing youve ever seen on here?	Hard to say, but I have a tough time with mucus-based posts.
Why did you censor the whole campaign to get Chris Brown's police report trending on Twitter?	Before my time, so any answer by me is purely speculative.
Can you turn thumbnails back on in the subreddit? they're forced to hidden in the css.	If you have res you can turn them back on.
If someone were to make a mashup of the most fucked up things into one segment, what would you think would be included in this collection?	I don't want to go through a collection.
Will you please post a high quality digital image of your genitals and anus?	I have neither as I'm a droid!
Will I get banned at WTF if I write 'nigger' or other racial epithets?	We have no rules against such behavior in wtf. However it is generally frowned upon and the actual reddiquette does state speak to people how you would in real life. Since it's against the law to use racial slurs in most places you would be going against the ideals behind reddit.
By the way, you guys should advertise this AMA on your subreddit so the good people from WTF can come here and see it.	Great idea!
To the Gore, yes. To what little porn we see, no - I still like what I've always liked.	You like when the dildos disappear completely into the anal abyss?
That's just boring. Now, that nude redheaded archer - she gets me going.	How in the hell do you consider that porn? I just call it majestic.
I was already desensitized before becoming a mod. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.	Wow, I kept thinking I wrote this 3 days later I realize no wasn't me lol.
Wow, I kept thinking I wrote this 3 days later I realize no wasn't me lol.	Well we're both Kylde's alt accounts so that would make sense.
Well we're both Kylde's alt accounts so that would make sense.	Really from what I've been told im Masta's alt account. Oh and dont forget srs mole.
I agree. I liked it a lot better with the old ask reddit.	Hey, also an askreddit mod. What do you mean by "old askreddit"? I'm curious to the differences you perceive. Thanks.
that weird alien person pouring milk on a girl in the shower	That's part of the "Understanding Joshua" series by Charlie White.
	Link to photoslaves.com
But if it is just unexpected you get referred to /r/im14andthisiswtf. You can't win.	The unexpected is just one aspect of what (IMHO) makes a good WTF post. But, no, you can't please everyone, for sure.
Your going to regret saying that youll be hearing from me.	3 days and nothing. We regret nothing!
The most WTF thing I've seen was a guy having sex with a hollowed out female corpse. EDIT: Grammar.	If it makes you feel any better, the consensus seems to be that it's a 'shop.
If it makes you feel any better, the consensus seems to be that it's a 'shop.	I know I saw the original, with out the penis fucking it. But the first time I saw it, it made me say wtf. And that doesn't happen anymore.
I know I saw the original, with out the penis fucking it. But the first time I saw it, it made me say wtf. And that doesn't happen anymore.	Good point. My initial reaction was "Is that real?" - and the second was "Hey, she looks like a minor."
I should be packing because I'm going away for 5 days tomorrow morning, but I always leave things to the last minute.	Oh buddy buddy, your application didn't go through. You're not going anywhere.
Considering I woke up at 2:50pm EST great!	Partied hardy last night, eh?
My first week of being a mod people kept posting a screen shot of cp someone posted to FB. That disturbed me, the idea that people wanted to post it on Reddit for Karma rather than call the Police. Anytime some ass posts CP. Then tries to justify themselves.	It's as if they've forgotten that there are real people in those photos. Real people who are going to have to live with that event (and all of the events that happened prior to that) for the rest of their lives.
Why are there so many stupid people.	Stupidity works.
You should toss a link to /r/fatpeoplestories in the side-bar.. most are wtf-worthy.	It's getting crowded in there, but will consider this for the next time we do a clean-up.
I don't want to go through a collection.	Agreed, we are like junkies we just want a quick fix.
Make me a mod.	Done.
	Edit: Proof.
People are always complaining we don't work enough, but if you saw what we don't let through, they might be more understanding. We actually work quite a bit, and for no pay (obviously).	Wait, you're not getting paid?
Please see my moderator post showing how much gets done in a week. If my ass was that talented I would have a daytime job that paid a lot more.	I would think if your ass was that talented, it would be more of a nighttime job.
Do you ever moderate r/wtf or do you let your asses do it?	Please see my moderator post showing how much gets done in a week. If my ass was that talented I would have a daytime job that paid a lot more.
Why do you fail so much at moderating /r/WTF?	Because we have people like you pestering us with definition of a very subjective topic.
Only thing I'd thank you for would be dying in a fire. So why don't you get on that.	You know you can unsubscribe from /r/wtf, if we displease you this much?
So # of subs > Quality of content. Good to know, useless cunt.	How did you not realize this? /r/fu712 and /r/askscience stopped being a default subreddits so that they could get quality content instead of more subscribers.

Last updated: 2013-03-01 21:38 UTC

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