Suggestion

Add a regex that checks for a Wowhead article URL (e.g. https://www.wowhead.com/news/foo-numbers) and warns the user if the URL is linking to the comments section (#comments at the end) or to a specific comment (a #p followed by numbers, e.g. #p981371839413), telling the user to fix the URL by erasing its tail-end.

It should be around here, assuming you're on PC and using New Reddit

Quick example RegEx I've cooked quickly on Regexr.com:

wowhead.com/news/.*(#comments|#p\d*)

I am not sure if that covers all the edge-cases for Wowhead articles, though.

Reasoning

First: It is terrible to open a Wowhead artcile and having to scroll up to actually read the article. I have yet to see a where the comment's content is the actual post's subject rather than the article's content.

Second: It can mislead people into thinking the comment is the actual article.

Without wanting to call one person out in particular, this is a comment I just got on a post discussing non M+ dungeons.

The comment itself isn't the problem. The issue is that this attitude seems to be dominant among people who browse /new. I've made comments stating similar positions in established threads - and those did just fine. But an actual post has to make it past the filter of the relatively small number of people who browse /new in order to be seen by the wider community.

If the community as a whole doesn't like my idea - I'm okay with that. I'm not special, my thoughts shouldn't be given special consideration. The problem is that a very small number of people are deciding what the wider community sees. Casual ideas aren't being rejected by , they're being rejected by ~20-50 individuals who browse by new.

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing moderators can do directly to resolve this issue. The only thing that could be done is to change the culture. Encourage more people to browse by new. Bring more casual players to the subreddit. Add casual players as moderators.

This post is similar to another one I made a while back, I apologize for the repetition - but the problem remains unresolved.

The subreddit has the same problem a lot of subs have. There is particular set of views, perspectives, or preferences that tend to dominate the narrative. In some cases, alternative subreddits (like ) have been set up to keep hostile factions way from each other. In other cases, they try to coexist.

The root of the issue is that people in use the downvote button to indicate disagreement. In particular - the minority of users who spend time browsing 'new' do not hesitate to downvote things they disagree with. This means a small fraction of users are selecting what the majority ends up seeing on their homepage.

Interestingly, the same opinions that get downvoted as posts in 'new' can often see high upvote ratios when posted as comments to existing posts. There might be more than one explanation for this, but my takeaway is that the minority in 'new' have, on average, a different set of preferences to the average user who just comes across posts on their homepage, or when sorting by 'hot'.

There's only so much that moderators can do about this, but I'd like to offer some suggestions.

1. Add a rule that prohibits using the downvote button to indicate disagreement. This is hard to enforce, but is in line with . Add this as a rule, and make a post about it.

Please don't, in regard to voting: Downvote an otherwise acceptable post because you don't personally like it. Think before you downvote and take a moment to ensure you're downvoting someone because they are not contributing to the community dialogue or discussion. If you simply take a moment to stop, think and examine your reasons for downvoting, rather than doing so out of an emotional reaction, you will ensure that your downvotes are given for good reasons.

2. Change the point at which comments with negative votes are automatically hidden.

3. Encourage more users to sort by new. This could be accomplished in a few different ways. Making a post asking users to do it would be a start. You could also look at adding tools to reduce the amount of low effort / low quality stuff that ends up in 'new', which discourages people from looking at it.

4. Encourage users with different perspectives to participate in . Create weekly threads for housing, or questing, or other activities that are generally shunned by the current core active userbase.

5. Be more aggressive about banning hostile / argumentative users. You can't ban people for downvoting, but I imagine a lot of the people downvoting inappropriately are also leaving hostile comments.

With things like delves, player housing, the Prey system, etc. Blizzard is trying to court a more diverse playerbase. should be a great place for all of those players. The alternative is that the community splinters into additional, more specialized subreddits where the majority isn't hostile towards their preferences. I'd rather see be welcoming to all, but if the new players coming for things like housing are turned off by it, alternative subreddits will become the only option.