Reddit takes a new direction
People tend to think of online communities as democracies where the freedoms they're accustomed to from their normal lives apply.<p>So when a post gets deleted by a moderator, people tend to think of it as a freedom of speech issue.  There's a whole constitution out there specifically defending anybody's right to create a pro-Nazi subreddit, and to otherwise post anything they please on the site so long as it's not illegal, right?<p>Not really.<p>Not at all, in fact.  Reddit is not the United States.  It's Reddit.  Online communities are not democracies any more than your back garden is a democracy.  You pull weeds, plant seeds, and otherwise encourage the plants in your garden to comport themselves in a manner that ends up with a pleasing result.  It's your garden, so you have the absolute right to pull weeds.  The weeds get no say.<p>Reddit seems to have forgotten this for a while, and as a result they started sliding until they became, well, Reddit.  The community we're currently discussing this in, on the other hand, has been a lot more conscientious in cultivating the type of garden it would like to see.  And I think we can all say the result is a lot more pleasant than a less tended place such as Reddit or 4chan.