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Imgur's community was in revolt

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Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#121

Post by bityard »

Aurornis wrote: post #43
Workaccount2 wrote: post #5

What's interesting about imgur, and telling of how times changed, was that it was created mostly to fill the gap in unreliable uploading of images to reddit. Which begs the question: What the hell was reddit doing that they didn't immediately implement an image hosting feature to keep users on the platform? Imgur rose to fame because it was the darling image host of reddit users, and it wasn't long before imgur neede…

I was an early Reddit user. Very early Reddit was a popular spot for programming discussion because it was mostly tech people using it. That quickly flipped, as /r/NSFW became the most popular subreddit. You could avoid it by browsing as a guest or by curating your feed, but porn was everywhere. Early Reddit also had a strong attitude about minimal moderation. The early days were characterized by a feeling that anyth…

I didn't have an account at the time, but I tried to like Reddit when it was one of the new link aggregators on the block. The minimalist functionality appealed to me and there were no subreddits at the time. Unfortunately I give up on it after a few weeks because most of the links/discussions were usually about evenly split between Emacs, Ruby and magic mushrooms. None of which I ever got around to trying.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#123

Post by znpy »

Aurornis wrote: post #43
Workaccount2 wrote: post #5

What's interesting about imgur, and telling of how times changed, was that it was created mostly to fill the gap in unreliable uploading of images to reddit. Which begs the question: What the hell was reddit doing that they didn't immediately implement an image hosting feature to keep users on the platform? Imgur rose to fame because it was the darling image host of reddit users, and it wasn't long before imgur neede…

I was an early Reddit user. Very early Reddit was a popular spot for programming discussion because it was mostly tech people using it. That quickly flipped, as /r/NSFW became the most popular subreddit. You could avoid it by browsing as a guest or by curating your feed, but porn was everywhere. Early Reddit also had a strong attitude about minimal moderation. The early days were characterized by a feeling that anyth…

/r/programming circa 2008 was full of interesting links and discussions, i can testify that

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#124

Post by dabluecaboose »

x187463 wrote: post #56
internet2000 wrote: post #20

Imgur having a "community" is still the strangest part of this story.

Discovering Imgur has its own community and culture is like finding out a group of people live in your closet. You can almost imagine opening the door to grab a coat only to find a dozen people who swear this is the place they bring various outerwear and talk about such things. When you tell them they're in a coat closet, they may get upset and assure you it's more than that, now.

I've always compared it to that tiny alien city in a train station locker from Men In Black II

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9sd10CHAP8

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#125

Post by bakugo »

Figs wrote: post #97

A good alternative is catbox.moe It fills the niche imgur originally did (i.e. no bullshit image host) but uses a community funding model instead. I'm pitching in $20 every month to keep it from turning into imgur. If you were thinking of putting something on imgur, please just put it on catbox instead and toss a couple bucks their way once in a while so we can continue to have nice things.

> but uses a community funding model instead

Sadly, that model is often not sustainable for various reasons. The site recently lost a significant income stream when Patreon rugpulled their account.

It was originally started to fill a pretty specific niche for a specific type of community, but has since grown way past that, to the point that it's quite a lot slower than it used to be due to the increased bandwidth usage. If you want it to survive, I would honestly advise against advertising it.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#126

Post by MisterTea »

bityard wrote: post #121
Aurornis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an early Reddit user. Very early Reddit was a popular spot for programming discussion because it was mostly tech people using it. That quickly flipped, as /r/NSFW became the most popular subreddit. You could avoid it by browsing as a guest or by curating your feed, but porn was everywhere. Early Reddit also had a strong attitude about minimal moderation. The early days were characterized by a feeling that anyth…

I didn't have an account at the time, but I tried to like Reddit when it was one of the new link aggregators on the block. The minimalist functionality appealed to me and there were no subreddits at the time. Unfortunately I give up on it after a few weeks because most of the links/discussions were usually about evenly split between Emacs, Ruby and magic mushrooms. None of which I ever got around to trying.

Perhaps its too late but mushrooms are totally worth it. The other two will destroy your brain and leave you a raving lunatic.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#127

Post by mrweasel »

Havoc wrote: post #90

Can’t say I’ve ever seen it as a stand alone platform with a “community”. To me it was always a utility that goes with Reddit or whatever as image host. And when they opted to actively break large parts of Reddit by deleting nsfw images I kinda new the party is over even in its very tangential utility role

It's actually an incredibly interesting but hostile community, though I'm sure they think otherwise. You either fit into that community, or you're going to be meet with an anger I have yet to see in many other places.

They community is also extremely naive about everything. I tried to follow their little revolt, and they are absolutely oblivious to the fact that running Imgur is probably crazy expensive and that they, as a community, is pretty much impossible to monetize. Almost regardless of how MediaLab was going to attempt to turn a profit, the community would act out in anger. I'm not suggesting that MediaLab handled everything correct, but I also believe that they are running out of options, you can't monetize Imgur without destroying the community.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#128

Post by Figs »

bakugo wrote: post #125
Figs wrote: post #97

A good alternative is catbox.moe It fills the niche imgur originally did (i.e. no bullshit image host) but uses a community funding model instead. I'm pitching in $20 every month to keep it from turning into imgur. If you were thinking of putting something on imgur, please just put it on catbox instead and toss a couple bucks their way once in a while so we can continue to have nice things.

> but uses a community funding model instead Sadly, that model is often not sustainable for various reasons. The site recently lost a significant income stream when Patreon rugpulled their account. It was originally started to fill a pretty specific niche for a specific type of community, but has since grown way past that, to the point that it's quite a lot slower than it used to be due to the increased bandwidth usa…

> The site recently lost a significant income stream when Patreon rugpulled their account.

The community rallied in response to that and support poured in. Their funding needs are currently met by the community. What matters is that people actually give enough of a shit about it to pitch in. We can have nice things!

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#129

Post by hbn »

kstrauser wrote: post #111
hbn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy how night and day the quality tank was after they essentially killed their API. The good contributors were all pushed away or became less active. And with the official app constantly trying to push posts from random subreddits into people's feeds, you constantly get comments from people who have no idea of the concept of a subreddit, and leave stupid comments cause they don't know the context the post was…

It really was. Apollo was the reddit UI for me. The old reddit web page looks awful on a phone. The new page is a mess of algorithmic disaster on any device. I cannot stand their 1st-party app. When they killed the API, I no longer enjoyed using reddit on my phone, which is where I accessed it 95% of the time. They made it pretty easy for me to stop using the site at all. OTOH, I had previously posted often enough to…

I'm surprised they still support the old web UI which is the only way to make reddit usable these days.

Once they pull the plug on that I'll be finally done (though I'm already so inactive it won't make a difference really)

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#130

Post by ForOldHack »

bityard wrote: post #121
Aurornis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an early Reddit user. Very early Reddit was a popular spot for programming discussion because it was mostly tech people using it. That quickly flipped, as /r/NSFW became the most popular subreddit. You could avoid it by browsing as a guest or by curating your feed, but porn was everywhere. Early Reddit also had a strong attitude about minimal moderation. The early days were characterized by a feeling that anyth…

I didn't have an account at the time, but I tried to like Reddit when it was one of the new link aggregators on the block. The minimalist functionality appealed to me and there were no subreddits at the time. Unfortunately I give up on it after a few weeks because most of the links/discussions were usually about evenly split between Emacs, Ruby and magic mushrooms. None of which I ever got around to trying.

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