A TOTAL of more than 1.4 million subscribers. Almost 1.3m unique visitors last month, and 5.4m page views. During the on-season, that latter figure rises to a comfortable 60-70m.
You’ll be surprised, readers, to know that these aren’t the statistics for The National’s website. They’re a taste of the traffic stats for the Game of Thrones community on Reddit – the biggest gathering of Thrones fans anywhere on the internet. And that site, for the past year-and-a-half, has been run from a small flat in Glasgow, Scotland, by this very National journalist.
Now, it’s a little sickening for me to admit I’m a “moderator”. There’s a reasonable stereotype of them responding angrily to any criticism, flaunting very limited internet power and loving the smallest level of fame you can get.
It’s a bit outdated though. We’re a group aged from 18-46, spread out from Brazil to Switzerland, to Pakistan and Australia. We’ve got a team of roughly 16 active members, with an equal number of males and females.
Our jobs range from health workers to a trainee pilot. And, because we’re joined by our love of the show rather than the website, we tend to isolate ourselves from the rest of Reddit’s communities.
For my own part, I’m 23-years-old, I was born in Paisley and grew up in rural Scotland – Newton Stewart, specifically. I applied to the team just over three years ago, thinking it would be great fun to help out with the show I loved. My rise to power doesn’t quite have as much action as Daenerys Targaryen’s, I must confess. The founder had been very, very busy with real life (two children), meaning the role of co-ordinating everyone and making decisions fell to me. For those unfamiliar, Reddit is made up of thousands of communities, with one for every minor subject you can imagine. You subscribe to those you’re interested in. While anyone can visit the community’s page, if you’re a subscriber, it will also appear on your own customised “front-page”.
Running the site, I get the usual serving of internet abuse (the compliments are less interesting): being called a fascist and likened to some of the less savoury characters (only this week we were all Tywin Lannister).
We get more out-there complaints too. After being given a time-out for using some especially non-newspaper-friendly terms to describe the writers, one user sent us a daily Huey Lewis song in hopes of winning back his place quicker. Another threatened to tell author George R R Martin “what total snobs” we were when he next had lunch with him.
More close-to-home, the other day a user reported a comment for using the word “aye”. In the anonymous box explaining why they thought we should delete that message, they wrote: “Who says ‘aye’ in regular conversation? No one.” That right, aye?
Another common question is what links we have to HBO and its actors. HBO are notoriously hands-off with the Thrones community. Every year they issue us a few free blu-rays to give-away. We could easily keep them for ourselves, such are the lax T&Cs. We don’t though! As for actors, we can only really speak to those who have been killed off – Sam Coleman, who plays Young Hodor, has been the pick of the bunch.
The buzz of episode nights is the best bit. We have to approve or remove thousands of posts in a matter of hours, and monitor tens of thousands of comments. With the surveys, I get to ask an average of 65,000 hardcore fans for their opinions on anything to do with the episode they’ve just watched.
It’s work, but helping people enjoy the show you love just a little bit more feels so worth it. It’s educational too. In this Seven Days, I corrected a writer’s description of Robb Stark as “King of the North” to “King in the North”!
And if the traffic numbers I began with were at all impressive, we actually unlist from the home page of Reddit, so it doesn’t appear for those not subscribed. That’s to help us make it easier to manage. For the final season, we won’t be doing that – we’re aiming high.
PS. Sansa Stark should rule an independent North.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here