r/science
r/science is an Internet forum on Reddit where the community of participants discuss science topics.[1] A popular feature of the forum is "Ask me Anything" (AMA) public discussions.[1] As of 2014, /r/science attracted 30,000-100,000 visitors per day, making it the largest community-managed science forum and an attractive place to host discussions.[1]
Contents
History
Nathan Allen
Nathan Allen is an American chemist. While working as a chemist at Dow Chemical Company, Allen began to imagine that scientists could use Reddit's "ask me anything" (AMA) interview format to create discussions between scientists and the public.[1] Allen became a forum moderator there and has since been prominent in guiding the culture of the community there and as a spokesperson for the forum.[1]
Establishment of AMA series
As of 2014, r/science attracted 30,000–100,000 visitors per day, making it the largest community-managed science forum and an attractive place to host discussions.[1] In January 2014 Allen began the /r/science AMA series with the goal of raising the visibility of scientists who are producing groundbreaking work in their fields but who are not well known outside of their fields.[1][2] Outgoing links posted in the forum must go to peer-reviewed science articles published within the last six months.[3]
The discussion series was instantly a success, and established the world's largest two-way discussion between scientists and the public.[1] Allen does most of the organization for the talks, including soliciting scientists to participate and training them to communicate in reddit's discussion format.[1]
Featured content
r/science has an ongoing content partnership with PLOS.[4] As an academic journal, PLOS invites authors who are publishing scientific papers to publicly present their work in r/science and to participate in community "ask me anything" discussions in the forum at scheduled times.[4]
Editorial decisions
Editorial decisions in r/science are made by the moderators who themselves follow rules that they present for the forum.[3] If new rules are introduced then those are discussed with the community of readers.[3] Rules for r/science include guidance that contributors keep discussion on-topic and thoughtful.[3]
Allen led the decision to ban discussion in /r/science which gives credibility to climate change denial as a scientific concept.[5] Commentators from National Geographic,[6] The New American,[7] ThinkProgress,[8] and other media outlets discussed this editorial decision.
References
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- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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