This is the front page of r/UCSantaBarbara. Below the banner is the feed of posts, sorted by “New.” To the right side is a list of information about the subreddit, including rules and a basic description. The subreddit celebrates its 14th birthday today. (Reddit Screenshot)

For over 10 years, the subreddit r/UCSantaBarbara has established itself as a resource for students, professors and community members to share and exchange information about campus and surrounding life. With the increased prevalence of digital forums and online activity, Reddit has developed into a place where polarizing opinions and online discourse can thrive for its users.

Every day, Reddit has approximately 97 million daily active users who generate 1.2 million posts daily, according to Reddit’s filings to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission last year. In the subreddit r/UCSantaBarbara, alums, students and members of the extended UCSB community share posts, ask questions and engage in discussions about the school. However, due to the anonymity and public nature of the forum, anyone — regardless of their credibility or knowledge level — can share information that potentially thousands of people can see. Misinformation and harmful statements can be difficult to avoid or even identify.

The subreddit was originally created in 2011 by Bryce Boe, a UCSB computer science alum.

Boe introduced the subreddit as a replacement for an older subreddit called r/UCSB, whose moderators had become inactive. Despite the subreddit’s eventual growth, Boe didn’t see an immediate cultural impact.

“It felt like the subreddit was rather niche for a long while. I’d maybe even say it still is,” Boe said. 

However, Boe said that his goal was clear from the beginning: to cultivate an inclusive space for students. 

“I wanted [a subreddit] where all UCSB community members felt welcome and could share ideas, ask questions and generally discuss the various happenings around campus. To that end, I specifically recall wanting to minimize toxic masculinity and various forms of gatekeeping which were fairly prominent in other areas of Reddit at the time,” Boe said.

Many post on Reddit advertising events, asking questions and more. Users can reply to the post, forming comment threads acting like conversations. (Reddit Screenshot)

According to Boe, in the early days, moderation was relatively simple. 

“Aside from a desire to grow the community, the only task in the early days was to approve submissions and comments that got stuck in the spam queue, which were maybe a few a week,” Boe said.

The word cloud, made from posts scraped from the subreddit between Sept. 7, 2020 and Feb. 17, 2025, shows the most frequently appearing words in the titles of posts on the forum after removing common stopwords such as “the,” “this” and “a.” The largest words depicted in the word cloud represent the most frequent words. Academic-related words such as “Econ,” “Math,” “Major,” “Chem” and “PSTAT” are noticeably frequent based on the word cloud. Other words such as “housing,” “looking,” “campus” and “lost” are frequently used in titles and represent the general question-based motive for many users who post.

This word cloud shows commonly used words in the titles of posts in the r/UCSantaBarbara subreddit. Stopwords are filtered out. The size of the words corresponds to how frequently those words are used. (Calais Waring / Daily Nexus)

Moreover, through a sentiment analysis, we combed through the comments, post text and post titles to find the average tone of each post. Graphing the distribution of the tones for each post, we found that the majority of posts made were relatively neutral in tone.

The chart displays the distribution of average sentiment polarity based on titles, post texts and comments from r/UCSantaBarbara within a five-year range (5/10/2020-5/10/2025). Using the TextBlob Python library, the sentiment polarity of the title, post content and comments text for each post within the range is averaged, and the distribution of the average sentiment polarity is displayed. (Calais Waring / Daily Nexus)

Each user in r/UCSantaBarbara has their own preferences and hopes for how they can benefit from the page, ranging from academic to personal concerns. 

“I think a lot of ‘living around [Isla Vista]’ topics are interesting — I like slices-of-life perspectives more than conversations around coursework or admission … I generally use the subreddit for news and updates. I find that there is some information shared here that you can’t find anywhere else,” Bedlam Oak, a second-year communication doctoral student who goes by u/EggyEngineer on the subreddit, explained.

Other users employ r/UCSantaBarbara to answer their academic and other school-related questions. 

“If I was a first year there is a lot of info that can be useful like [electronic benefit transfer] EBT, [the Associated Students] food bank, good/bad professors,” user u/Tenet_Bull wrote.  

A similar sentiment is shared by user u/Unusual-Low-2774, who also visits r/UCSantaBarbara for academic questions.

“I prefer to use the subreddit to learn about classes that I’m considering taking,” they said.

The chart displays the top 15 most frequent two-to-three-word phrases from the last 5,000 comments within a five-year range (5/10/2020-5/10/2025) with common stopwords filtered out. When searching these phrases on Reddit, not all comments with the phrase will appear due to the nature of Reddit’s search function, according to a Reddit Help article. (Calais Waring / Daily Nexus)

Faculty and staff members at UCSB also participate in the subreddit. Pre-health advisor David Lawrence said that participating in the subreddit has helped him better understand the challenges that students face in choosing courses and planning for future careers. 

“When I can better understand where students are having trouble or difficulty connecting, it enables me to hone in more quickly on how I can be of assistance to them,” Lawrence explained.

Similarly, mathematics professor and former Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Stopple expressed that the plethora of uncertainty amongst newer students motivated him to participate in the subreddit.

“UCSB is a very complicated institution. We have a lot of first-generation students who, you know, don’t have the same background that I had when I went to college in terms of understanding the system. So, for me, it’s rewarding to be able to help answer their questions, direct them and give them advice,” Stopple said.

Along with a community of largely anonymous users, it is imperative to manage misinformation. Computer science senior lecturer Phillip Conrad said that he is particularly focused on the management of questions regarding transferring into the computer science department on the subreddit. 

“Over the years … a lot of questions get asked about [a] change of major into computer science, and there is a lot of misinformation out there, so I’ve found it helpful to be part of the conversation and try to correct some of the things, when I see people saying things that are just not correct, to be able to try to offer some information that’s more correct.” 

Both Lawrence and Stopple expressed their intent to mitigate the consequences of misinformation as reasons they chose to participate in the subreddit.

In regards to the r/premed subreddit and social media in general, Lawrence echoed the risks of misinformation on students’ mental health regarding the medical school application process.

“These anonymous kids post, a lot of times, bad information or information that … spikes [other people’s] anxiety or their apprehension about the process … I’d like to use [social media] as a force for good,” Lawrence stated.

“I really don’t want to use [the subreddit] as my main source of knowledge just because I feel like some people’s opinions can be very skewed, and I just want to see if I can find something online first from the UCSB official site, and then if not, then I’ll go onto [Reddit] and then get a second idea,” Alex Esparza, a third-year economics major and student user of r/UCSantaBarbara, said.

Lawrence notes, however, that certain resources on the subreddit can in fact be beneficial to students. For example, “The Ultimate UCSB Pre-Med Masterdoc,” a key resource detailing best practices for succeeding on the pre-med track while at UCSB, originated from an interaction between Lawrence and an anonymous student on the website. 

“I was just gobsmacked at the quality, the depth, the length to which the student went talking about their own experiences, and to such an extent that I include at every [new] student orientation … a QR code that links to that Google Doc,” Lawrence said. “A lot of students — new students — have talked about how helpful that is in getting them kind of oriented.”

The current moderator of the subreddit, Britta Gustafson, also known by the username u/Beetling, is a College of Creative Studies alum who has been with the page for over a decade. 

“[Our] rule number one is don’t be a jerk … I want [the subreddit to be] a place where you can ask a sensitive question and you will get a respectful answer,” Gustafson said.

The subreddit maintains 10 rules that users must abide by, including the intolerance of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and insulting people. These guidelines help ensure that the community remains a safe and welcoming space for discussion, support and information sharing among students and alums alike, according to Gustafson.

Beyond moderation, Gustafson’s role in the subreddit is also deeply personal. 

“I had a really good experience … I really appreciate the time that I had [at UCSB], and I want students who are there now to have a good experience and to get what they need … I care about the subreddit because it’s what I would have benefited from when I was in school,” Gustafson said.

However, as the subreddit expanded, so did the responsibilities. Boe said that he and his team gradually implemented automation tools and additional moderators to handle the increased engagement . One of the biggest challenges came in 2014, following the I.V. shootings.

“While the volume of [ill-intentioned] content [following the I.V. shootings] wasn’t high, we wanted to ensure said content was swiftly dealt with, which meant more actively monitoring content for a period of time,” Boe said.

Through Boe’s early efforts, r/UCSantaBarbara gained momentum, eventually becoming the primary online community for UCSB students. His work laid the foundation for what Gustafson and the current moderators continue to build upon today — a space where students can seek advice, share experiences and find a sense of community.

A version of this article appeared on p. 14 and p.15 of the May 15, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.