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A Growing Community: r/botany

Reddit is probably my favorite websites. You would be very hard pressed to find a website that compares to reddit in terms of diversity and number of users. The implementation of subsections within the reddit website, which are known as "subreddits," allows reddit community members with similar interests to flock together and bond over shared interests. A large part of reddit's success as a platform is the unique use of upvotes and downvotes to rank both posts and comments. Reddit's upvote system, and the way comments are typically ranked as "hot" or "top," greatly influences the dynamics of the community. Particularly funny or informative posts tend to be the most upvoted, so users tend to word their comments accordingly. Comments that reddit community members do not appreciate are down-voted, which creates a welcoming atmosphere that caters to the particular tastes of any given subreddit. One of my favorite subreddits is r/botany.

The subreddit r/botany is a place where botany enthusiasts from all walks of life can join each other and appreciate the beauty of plants. With over 75,000 community members, r/botany is a relatively large subreddit. The content on r/botany has a wide range of depth. The content generated on the subreddit can be as simple as basic questions about common plants, and as complex as in-depth discussions about graduate level plant physiology.

Vaguely worded questions and low effort posts that reddit users add to the subreddit tend to pass through with very few comments, and even fewer upvotes. The community consistently upvotes content that includes thought provoking questions, photos of exceptionally uncommon plants, or interesting botanical facts. Users that post simple botanical questions on r/botany are typically encouraged to head over to one of the many subreddits that focuses on basic plant related content, such as r/gardening, r/whatsthisplant, or r/trees.

Community members on r/botany rarely seem to disagree. The replies usually build off of each other when a botanical question is posted on the subreddit. Initially, there will be one or two responses that broadly answer a question that is posted. Other community members will then join in and add layers of complexity to the pool of responses. One poster may directly answer the question that started the thread, and another user that is more knowledgeable about the topic will come along and augment the information that has already been contributed.  

The subreddit r/botany is most definitely a haven for people that are genuinely interested in plant physiology, plant ecology, and botanical history. The “about community” section on r/botany’s homepage sidebar summarizes the subreddit’s purpose as concisely and accurately as possible:

A great way to gauge the posting style that is most successful on r/botany is to sort the content by top all-time:

 It is clear that r/botany holds botanical education in high regard. Two of the three most upvoted posts in the subreddit's history were made by college students who simply shared their passion for studying botany with the community. The fourth, fifth, and sixth top all-time posts on r/botany are fascinating images of plant morphology, images of specimens that even a seasoned botanist doesn't get the chance to see very often. One theme that the top three posts have in common is the amount of time, effort, and passion that the content creators put into the field of botany. Community members recognize and respect the level of interest they share with the top posters, so they reward their content with encouraging comments and many upvotes. Interestingly enough, the comments on the top posts are typically very simple. The comments on top all-time posts are often just expressions of appreciation, and are rarely more than a few encouraging words. The brief and shallow comment that dominates the top all-time posts goes against the grain of comments on most top-daily, top-weekly, and top-monthly posts.

When the time frame for most upvoted posts on r/botany is shortened, the initial posts and subsequent comments tend to become more complex. This phenomenon holds true across most subreddits, and it is especially common with subreddits that involve a deep well of knowledge or complex subject matter. When enough people who are browsing r/all upvote a post, then it is pushed up the "hot" queue, which then leads to more exposure on the reddit front-page. Posts that are heavily upvoted may also be cross-posted to other subreddits, and as the cycle continues, the range of redditors that are able to see and comment on the post continues to grow

 The botany subreddit is generally pretty laid back, but like all subreddits there is a list of community rules that can be found on the sidebar:

The rules for r/botany are simple and seem to be somewhat vaguely worded, which allows moderators to filter content in a subjective way. There is rarely any aggression or negativity in the comments on r/botany, although this may be due to heavy moderation. Generally, the upvote-downvote system that reddit utilizes discourages people from being aggressive. Negative or hurtful comments are quickly down-voted, which leads to the comments being buried at the bottom of the page when the default "best" comment sorting is enabled. It is hard to estimate how many posts are removed from the subreddit, but many posts that could be interpreted as violating the rules seem to stay up on the subreddit for at least twenty-four hours. 

While many questionable posts appear to stay up on the subreddit, I personally discovered that it is quite easy to have a post removed by moderators for violating the vaguely worded rules. My very first post to r/botany was removed for violating the plant id rule of the subreddit, despite the fact that I was not directly asking for the community to identify a plant. All I did was ask about good botanical guides for use in the Pacific Northwest:

 I then reposted the same question after rewording the title and omitting "ID," but my post didn't gain any traction. I was honestly surprised by the lack of response to my post. I thought that posing a serious question, and sharing some of my personal interest in botany, would be enough to engage community members in a fruitful conversation.

The majority of my posts did not gain any traction. My first post to r/botany wasn't the only content of mine that was removed by moderators for violating the rules. My second post to the subreddit was also removed for "a variety of reasons." Given the rules listed on the subreddit sidebar, I assume that the picture I posted was not particularly unique or interesting, or at least in the opinion of the moderator. I also made a couple of comments replying to topics that didn't gain much traction aside from a couple of upvotes. My comments didn't receive a ton of feedback, but the vast majority of comments on r/botany are not highly upvoted. The majority of comments on the subreddit do not gain much traction. While slightly disappointing, the lack of noteworthy feedback on my comments doesn't mean that I failed to contribute content to the subreddit. Many posts and replies to those posts have low upvote counts, which I attribute to the range of subject matter that is posted on r/botany. There is a good chance that a topic that catches my attention will appear disinteresting to the average r/botany user. The connection that each individual community member has to a niche area of botany will largely drive whether or not they find a post interesting, and botany is a very diverse scientific field with many areas of interest.

I attribute my initial lack of success with engaging with community members to the overall lack of effort that I was putting towards the content that I was sharing. I failed to include enough relatable detail in the content that I generated, which resulted in community members simply scanning over my comments or posts without feeling the urge to build on what I had to offer. Instead of continuing on my path of low effort content contributions, I decided to take a new approach: appealing to r/botany's respect of education. I found that stating the true purpose for my posting on the subreddit, which was to create content for a class assignment, resulted in a surprisingly high amount of feedback from community members. My post:

In addition to engaging the community through the lens of an academic, I also made an effort to stroke the egos of r/botany community members by asking them to talk about themselves. In 24 hours nearly 90 people upvoted my post, and over 70 people gave thoughtful replies in the comments section. As I'm writing this blog entry, the number of upvotes that my post received puts it in fourth place among the most upvoted posts in the past week, and the other top posts have been up for five or more days. At this rate my most recent post will likely receive over 100 comments and even more upvotes. It took several failed attempts, but it appears that I've finally found a way to connect with the r/botany community and contribute high quality content. 

Posting to r/botany with either negative or little to no feedback really helped me understand what makes the subreddit tick. The subreddit truly is a place for dedicated community members to share their common interest in botany. By rotating my community interactions between comments and posts, I was able to see more of the community and experience both sides of the creative process. I feel as though I wouldn't have had any successful interactions if I had simply kept trying to get upvotes by posting a pretty picture or intelligent sounding question (assuming success is measured by karma in the case of reddit).

Overall, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the time that I’ve spent scrolling through posts on r/botany. I have been able to have fruitful discussions, learn many interesting botanical facts, and I’ve also probably wasted a bunch of time, but that’s what reddit is for. The botany subreddit is a great example of what makes reddit great: passionate people joining each other on the internet to bond over shared interests. I look forward to continuing my visits to r/botany and doing my part to help contribute to this wonderful networked community.

Works Cited

“Reddit.” Reddit, 13 Jan. 2009, https://www.reddit.com/r/botany/.

Gordon, Deveron. “Reddit.” Reddit, 22 Jan. 2020, www.reddit.com/user/Wr4Wthrowaway/comments/esm1cn/pnw_flora_guides/.

Gordon, Deveron. “Reddit.” Reddit, 15 Feb. 2020, https://www.reddit.com/r/botany/comments/f4xy8h/when_did_your_interest_in_botany_start_growing/

#r/botany #reddit #writing #botany