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Reposted by Galen Weld @ CSCW

Prosocial Design Network @prosocialdesign.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Does it matter HOW you write community rules? Research across thousands of subreddits suggests yes. "Be nice" beats "don't be mean" for community sentiment. But there's no one-size-fits-all approach. New Pro-Social recap with @galenweld.bsky.social: www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/the-rig...

prosocialdesign.org

The Right Community Rules? Lessons from Reddit: A Pro-Social Recap

Does it matter what rules communities set if they want prosocial outcomes?

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

That should be 4:30 pm 🤦🤦

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

I'd love to chat with you about it! Download data here behavioral-data.github.io/moderator_pe...

behavioral-data.github.io

Overview

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

In the paper, we assess rule enforcement👮‍♀️, moderator workload😵,and moderator engagement🤝.

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

We developed the first automatic method to measure governance outcomes, by looking at how community members talk about their moderators.🗣️We collect all discussion for the top 10k subreddits over 5+ years💾 which we make public!

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Moderators face lots of decisions about how to moderate.🤷‍♀️How can we empirically determine the best moderation practices?🤔Surveys don't scale! 📋

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

If you're at @acm-cscw.bsky.social #cscw in Bergen, come check out our 🏆honorable mention paper today on Reddit community governance (w/ @axz.bsky.social @timalthoff.bsky.social ). 4pm in Dovregubben-2! More in thread... 🧵

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Some nice coverage of our paper (and award) from ICWSM back in June. Big congrats to @lleibm.bsky.social on his successful first author paper, and big things to @timalthoff.bsky.social and @axz.bsky.social for their support as always!

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Also, I know it’s the end of the day, but I am chairing the last 2 #ICWSM sessions on Virality, Political Coordination, & Reddit. These are going to be great sessions with work from @zsavvas90.bsky.social @imadityav.bsky.social @tanumitra.bsky.social @munmun10.bsky.social +more! Don’t miss it :)

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Super surprised and honored to receive the single Best Paper award at #ICWSM this year (out of 138 papers) for my work with @lleibm.bsky.social, @axz.bsky.social, @timalthoff.bsky.social on Reddit Rules! bsky.app/profile/gale...

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Amongst other things, we find that rules phrased prescriptively (“do this”) are received more positively than those phrased restrictively (“don’t do that”), and that the effect of adding new rules is initially positive, but wears off after ~ 6 months.

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

We associate these rules with key community outcomes: how do community members talk about their moderators? We classify comments discussing moderators according to their sentiment, and we make these datasets public.

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

We classify rules from 5.2k subreddits, capturing more than 2/3s of all activity on reddit, according to their tone (does the rule say what or what not do do), target (does the rule address content, formatting, or users) and topic (twelve specific topics).

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

If you're at #ICWSM, be sure to swing by the spotlight session after lunch to check our our work on Reddit rules with @axz.bsky.social , @timalthoff.bsky.social and Leon Leibmann! Leon is presenting an analysis of 68k rules across 5 yrs, connecting them to important community outcomes.

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Galen Weld @ CSCW @galenweld.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

If you're at #CSCW2024 and interested in social platform data access, you should come to our SIG on Community-Driven Models for Supporting Research on Social Platforms! We'll be talking about data access for academics on platforms such as Reddit. Happening in 1 hour in room Cartago!

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