document updated 9 years ago, on Aug 18, 2014
Overarching goal — Provide statistics on the spread of white-supremacist influence on Reddit. Hopefully this would attract reporter attention, which would in turn put pressure on Reddit to tamp down on racists' influence on Reddit.
Specific statistics that might be generated:
- growth in subscribers to overtly racist subreddits
hand-picked list, based on 1) moderators who are explicitly racist, and the 2) subreddits that they moderate that are explicitly racist
- growth in subscribers to covertly racist subreddits
This includes subreddits where subscribers probably aren't aware that it's controlled by racist moderators, so they probably aren't pro-racist themselves. However, this is a measure of how big of a captive audience there is to the racists' message. (eg. subreddits like what /r/xkcd used to be)
- growth in number of subreddits
The number of subreddits controlled by racists, and the growth in that number over time. (it would be best if there was some minimum number of subscribers required before a subreddit is counted, perhaps 200 or 1000, to make sure this number is meaningful)
Ideally, we would be able to generate retrospective data, so we could publish immediately. If that isn't possible, then we would begin the data-collection ASAP, and then publish ~6 months later.
A nice-to-have would be to present the data in a way that makes it easy to audit, and maybe even easy to browse. This way, a reporter can quickly scan the data, and get a good idea of the quality of the statistics presented.
(however, do NOT BE PERFECTIONIST about this -- the goal is to get the project DONE, and have some kind of actual impact, not to make it perfect)