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Deleting the golang subreddit

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Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#221

Post by ben_jones »

qz_ wrote: post #120
bradfitz wrote: post #87

I was the one who proposed deleting /r/golang. It is not some official Go or Google position. As much as I used to love Reddit and was addicted to it, my personal position is that Reddit is no longer a trustworthy platform (if it ever was). Editing user content is beyond offensive. I never even considered such a thing in my years of running LiveJournal. That is a major violation of user trust and trust in the platfor…

> Now I'm brainstorming how one might build a federated Reddit with public, signed mutation log, ala CT or other chains. And then multiple UIs could render the same public & federated data set. Reddit is 100% open source: https://github.com/reddit/reddit

Also the infrastructure which allows Reddit to exist is not. All those scaling issues they've "solved" over the past ten years? Have fun with those if you're trying to copy and paste the repo..

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#222

Post by freehunter »

forgottenpass wrote: post #208
Steeeve wrote: post #21

> That is so beyond unethical and immature, I no longer want anything to do with that site. I will be deleting my account on Reddit after backing up my content, and I will no longer be a moderator of /r/golang. Responding to immaturity with immaturity is a bad idea altogether. I have never understood Google's choice of "use google groups" for projects, then farming out community relations to third parties like StackO…

Responding to immaturity with immaturity is a bad idea altogether. Sticking to principles, even when it's uncomfortable and inconvenient to do so is "immature" now?

It's not the principles, it's the actions being discussed to follow through with those.

You know the phrase "I'm taking my ball and going home"? What he wants to do is take someone else's ball, go home, and make sure that no one else is playing with a ball again after he leaves.

He's wanting to destroy something the community finds useful, and not only that, wanting to prevent the community from building and using it on their own in the future if they wanted to continue without his involvement. That's the harmful action. It's fine if he says "I won't use reddit anymore". Perfectly fine. But shutting down the subreddit, deleting all of its content, and specifically reserving the name so the community can't continue in his absence is just... well, immature. There are better ways to handle it. This is a pure temper tantrum.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#224

Post by Buge »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #179
TeMPOraL wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the power is there and it's tempting to use. Restarting Buzz may not have economic sense for Google, but abusing admin-edit powers has obvious value for the abusers and may be hard to catch if the abuser is not an idiot. "Opportunity makes a thief", and all.

But, realistically, the power is there on any site featuring user contributions - Hacker News, Twitter, Slashdot, etc. etc. Humans are fallible; given infinite time, the same thing will happen on those sites too, and probably worse. If you push someone hard enough (I don't know the full story, but I believe the CEO was provoked) they will lash out and do something stupid unless they are incredibly serene or lack any…

When people get "pushed hard enough" the usual thing is deleting comments and banning users. That's a known and accepted moderation power. Sure it's abused sometimes, but at least it's not lying and wrongly attributing negative comments to people.

Invisibly editing comments is a very unexpected route to take. I doubt you could push most CEOs to that. They would just delete the comment.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#225

Post by freehunter »

justin_vanw wrote: post #156
TeMPOraL wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dramatic enough for frequent visitors. Forums are dime a dozen, but a community you get used to and grow to like is unique for you. If HN was to be suddenly shut down, I'd literally be heartbroken.

I mean, if everyone preferred to leave anyway, then it would be an empty gesture to shut it down.

If everyone preferred to leave, this would be a non-issue. The problem is, the only people who seem to be in favor of leaving are the people who aren't using it in the first place. On Google Groups, everyone is in favor of shutting it down. On Reddit, everyone is begging for it to be left up.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#226

Post by qb45 »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #204
kps wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely it's because the comment has nothing to do with editing users' content — unless it's meant to suggest that someone else faked Eric Schmidt's email (from the time 5+ years ago when he was CEO of Google) to incriminate him.

The comment has everything to do with editing content. Schmidt was effectively convicted on the content of his emails. I don't think Schmidt was able to edit an email used in that case. It is a positive example of what the poster I responded to was claiming. Additionally, this CEO (now of Alphabet) has continued to engage in seemingly illegal behavior over Google email. I'm not aware of Eric disputing any of these al…

Then you should have made it clear what you meant because your post looks like a completely offtopic rant.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#227

Post by nommm-nommm »

wtbob wrote: post #155
the_af wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is an industry in which a CTO would fire an employee for using proper English[0] I disagree with this being a fireable offense, but I read the post and this wasn't about using "proper" English, since both pronouns were correctly used. It was about using unnecessary gendered pronouns when a neutral one would be more inclusive (i.e. it's wrong to consider the user a "he"). Again, firing would be an overreaction…

> the neutral pronoun is equally correct from an English language perspective The neutral pronoun in English is 'it,' and using it to refer to a human being is always wrong. The use of singular they is in a few contexts correct, but in many more contexts incorrect. The use of 'he-or-she' is inelegant and incorrect, and the use of generic she is less incorrect than silly. Seriously, this is remarkably silly. 'Girl' in…

"There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me As if I were their well-acquainted friend" - Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors

If it's good enough for Shakespeare it's good enough for me.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neu... for some examples of times avoiding singular they makes the sentence sound silly or ungrammatical.

"The average American needs the small routines of getting ready for work. As he shaves or blow-dries his hair or pulls on his panty-hose, he is easing himself by small stages into the demands of the day."

"... everyone will be able to decide for himself whether or not to have an abortion."

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#228

Post by freehunter »

logmeout wrote: post #210
freehunter wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of safeguards could be put in place that couldn't be disabled or overridden by the admins?

Use a bot to monitor comments and an SCM like git to detect potentially suspicious differences. Like a comment change that is not marked as user edited. Or a comment change that seems to shift the original meaning significantly.

Would those be managed by the community, or by the admins? If it was official, it seems like the admins could still shut it down, or edit that database to ignore their changes.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#229

Post by freehunter »

qb45 wrote: post #215
freehunter wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of safeguards could be put in place that couldn't be disabled or overridden by the admins?

No UI for traceless edits and DB password split in three parts like nuclear launch codes. Then the CEO couldn't do it alone and he would have some time to think things through before others agree to participate in such fishy business, if they do at all.

The password one is good, but if three admins decided to conspire to change a comment, what then?

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#230

Post by chromakode »

tapirl wrote: post #167
qz_ wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now I'm brainstorming how one might build a federated Reddit with public, signed mutation log, ala CT or other chains. And then multiple UIs could render the same public & federated data set. Reddit is 100% open source: https://github.com/reddit/reddit

No, the voting algorithm is not open sourced.

https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/master/r2/r2/lib/db/_s...
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