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RIP Kuro5hin

kuro5hin.org

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Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#111

Post by soapdog »

vanderZwan wrote: post #96
Pxtl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Reddit is gradually turning into 4chan. Every time I see /r/all, it's a little more mean-spirited, a little younger, a little more toxic. Outsourcing moderation and libertarian ideals all sound nice, but when the rubber hits the road it gradually chases normal people away. Reddit just did it it slower because the strengths of their platform and content overwhelmed it... but it's getting there eventually.

First "the fappening" attracting juvenile sexist dudebros and alienating the rest, now /r/the_donald (and I'm skipping a lot of drama). It's not a coincidence that the best subs are the ones where the goals of the sub are clearly defined and the mods enforce the rules with an iron fist (/r/AskHistorians is the best example of this).

/r/AskHistorians is the reason I started using Reddit. Found some threads by accident, was then amazed with the quality answers and good community. I am but a lurker there but I extract an immense value from it in terms of "having fun online", it is one of my favorite places on the internet.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#112

Post by vanderZwan »

MustardTiger wrote: post #107
Pxtl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Reddit is gradually turning into 4chan. Every time I see /r/all, it's a little more mean-spirited, a little younger, a little more toxic. Outsourcing moderation and libertarian ideals all sound nice, but when the rubber hits the road it gradually chases normal people away. Reddit just did it it slower because the strengths of their platform and content overwhelmed it... but it's getting there eventually.

Reddit is overwhelmingly "normal people". Mean spirited and "toxic" is normal people. Go look at twitter, and tumblr and facebook. They all have the same thing. These sites didn't chase normal people away, they attracted them.

> Go look at twitter, and tumblr and facebook.

As much as I despise how close-minded and backwards society is on average, this particular argument doesn't hold. What you see on a social networks is not a likely to be valid data-point for what the average person is like; at the very least it will be heavily biased. SMBC has a very concise explanation:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939

Of course that's just nice a hypothesis/observational humour mix, but it fits with the well-known effect of people thinking the world is a lot worse because the news reports only the negative, or that everyone else in their (virtual) social circle is more happy and successful than them because Facebook shows the most liked posts first.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#113

Post by overcast »

Pxtl wrote: post #91
brianberns wrote: post #14

First there was Slashdot, but CmdrTaco insisted on picking the stories for us. He called it an "omelet". Kuro5hin came along to fix this, but discouraged posts that were just links to pages elsewhere on the web. IIRC, this was called "link farming". How many users had the talent and time to create original content, and then survive the ridiculous Kuro5shin editing process? Not many. Digg then encouraged links, but sh…

Except that Reddit is gradually turning into 4chan. Every time I see /r/all, it's a little more mean-spirited, a little younger, a little more toxic. Outsourcing moderation and libertarian ideals all sound nice, but when the rubber hits the road it gradually chases normal people away. Reddit just did it it slower because the strengths of their platform and content overwhelmed it... but it's getting there eventually.

I can't even go on Reddit anymore, in fact I just avoid it all together at this point. I'm sick of the memes, I'm sick of the left wing, hive mind, down vote brigades, and I'm especially sick of everyone just being an asshole to everyone else.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#114

Post by jgw »

atdt wrote: post #26

Google's cache has approximate 480 story pages still in its cache. The Wayback Machine won't show any results for the site because of its current robots.txt. It'd be great if someone could scrape these pages and provide them as an archive. I am not sure how to do that without running afoul of Google's terms-of-service. List of URLs: https://dpaste.de/YbEq/raw

I was hoping "What Art Is" would be salvageable, but sadly not.

  http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/6/19/143553/870
I don't even recall who wrote it now, but I've had it bookmarked for over 10 years.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#115

Post by cbd1984 »

draugadrotten wrote: post #16
brianberns wrote: post #14

First there was Slashdot, but CmdrTaco insisted on picking the stories for us. He called it an "omelet". Kuro5hin came along to fix this, but discouraged posts that were just links to pages elsewhere on the web. IIRC, this was called "link farming". How many users had the talent and time to create original content, and then survive the ridiculous Kuro5shin editing process? Not many. Digg then encouraged links, but sh…

> Nowadays, reddit is king because it avoided the obvious mistakes of its predecessors. reddit even seem to have found a way to deal with obnoxius moderators - allowing multiple subreddits

You mean the Usenet model, which worked for decades and is still working, does, in fact, work? Amazing.

Edited to add: OK, that comes off as a bit mean. I'm leaving it in case someone likes it, which really just goes to show my point: Beyond a certain size, it's impossible to please everyone. You can please a good standard deviation or so worth of people, but you do that by offering content which almost aggressively cuts off the long tails. Think prime time TV circa 1990. The smaller voices just get drowned out.

The solution is so rock-simple obvious to me that I'm surprised it isn't standard practice: Allow the users to create newsgroups (or subreddits, or fora...) and let them manage them mostly-autonomously. Allow the small voices a place to dominate. If they want echo chambers, fine: The mainstream is even more of an echo chamber for people who live almost exclusively in the mainstream.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#116

Post by drabiega »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #104
ecopoesis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Justice Warrior, an attempted dogwhistle[1] used by GamerGaters / men's rights activists / anyone of scared of a more equal society, in a derogatory way against people who promote equality and not being a dick on the Internet. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

> a derogatory way against people who promote equality and not being a dick on the Internet By being the biggest dicks on the Internet, not afraid of lying, blackmailing and destroying careers and lives by unleashing Internet lynch mobs. I'm sorry, but SJW movement is a cancer on the society, and it's way beyond issues of "equality" now. They're going out of their way in deploying underhanded tactics to destroy anyon…

This seems contrary to my experience, could you provide some examples?

Obviously each of us only sees a portion of the internet, but from what I've seen it seems like most of the stuff you are describing has been aimed at people described as SJWs, not perpetrated by them.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#117

Post by brianberns »

jldugger wrote: post #37
brianberns wrote: post #14

First there was Slashdot, but CmdrTaco insisted on picking the stories for us. He called it an "omelet". Kuro5hin came along to fix this, but discouraged posts that were just links to pages elsewhere on the web. IIRC, this was called "link farming". How many users had the talent and time to create original content, and then survive the ridiculous Kuro5shin editing process? Not many. Digg then encouraged links, but sh…

> IIRC, this was called "link farming". "Mindless Link Propagation" was the term of art at the time. Still true.

Ah, that was the name. Thank you.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#118

Post by emodendroket »

overcast wrote: post #113
Pxtl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Reddit is gradually turning into 4chan. Every time I see /r/all, it's a little more mean-spirited, a little younger, a little more toxic. Outsourcing moderation and libertarian ideals all sound nice, but when the rubber hits the road it gradually chases normal people away. Reddit just did it it slower because the strengths of their platform and content overwhelmed it... but it's getting there eventually.

I can't even go on Reddit anymore, in fact I just avoid it all together at this point. I'm sick of the memes, I'm sick of the left wing, hive mind, down vote brigades, and I'm especially sick of everyone just being an asshole to everyone else.

You can just go to some other subreddit with a right-wing hive mind instead. Problem solved.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#119

Post by overcast »

emodendroket wrote: post #118
overcast wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even go on Reddit anymore, in fact I just avoid it all together at this point. I'm sick of the memes, I'm sick of the left wing, hive mind, down vote brigades, and I'm especially sick of everyone just being an asshole to everyone else.

You can just go to some other subreddit with a right-wing hive mind instead. Problem solved.

No, I can't, because if I want information on a particular game/field/whatever, it's been overrun with trash by now. Sure, you can find your little niche subreddits that are civil, but how is that helping me? I don't want to use it, just to use it.

Re: RIP Kuro5hin

#120

Post by MustardTiger »

vanderZwan wrote: post #112
MustardTiger wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is overwhelmingly "normal people". Mean spirited and "toxic" is normal people. Go look at twitter, and tumblr and facebook. They all have the same thing. These sites didn't chase normal people away, they attracted them.

> Go look at twitter, and tumblr and facebook. As much as I despise how close-minded and backwards society is on average, this particular argument doesn't hold. What you see on a social networks is not a likely to be valid data-point for what the average person is like; at the very least it will be heavily biased. SMBC has a very concise explanation: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939 Of course that's just nice a hy…

No, that is purely humor, and isn't related to what I am talking about. There are no sides here. This isn't "people on side X of issue are bad, not like us wonderful side Y people". It is the simple fact that those sites demonstrate that reddit is not driving away normal people. Facebook is the definition of normal people, and they act the same way. And note, I am not saying ALL normal people are mean and "toxic". I am saying having a small vocal subset of the population be mean and "toxic" is normal. What was abnormal was having a higher standard than that, caused by having a small, fairly homogeneous community. Reddit went from abnormal to normal, not the other way around.
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