This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/singularity by /u/MidSolo on 2024-10-01 23:41:02+00:00.

Have you noticed that the average quality of comments on this subreddit has gone downhill recently? Have you noticed that inane anti-tech comments have begun to pop up on every post? Have you noticed that actual quality discussion is almost gone?

That’s what happens when you auto-sort comments by New.

I have absolutely no idea why the subreddit’s mods decided to do this, but it has had a terrible effect. The quality comments that would usually rise to prominence are being drowned out by a sea of inane bullshit and bot spam. No quality comments at the top of the comments section means no quality dialogue. No dialogue means no point in the comments section.

I’ve seen this happen in various other subreddits across the years, mods experimenting with auto-ordering comments by new, or even worse by controversial, and it always leads to the same thing.

There’s been a stickied comment in the monthly discussion thread, saying that they aren’t doing this automatically, and that you have to reset it manually, but that’s straight up false. It always resets to sorting by new. You can test it out yourself.

Go to the subreddit, click on any top thread, change the comment sorting from new to best. Then navigate back to the subreddit, and click on that same thread. It will be sorted by new again. If you just refresh, it won’t reset; you have to manually return to the subreddit and re-enter the thread.