Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deleting the golang subreddit

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 389 posts

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#201

Post by freehunter »

wildmusings wrote: post #114
MildlySerious wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly. I am more suprised and disappointed that subreddit survived long enough to let this "scandal" happen, than about the thing itself. A subreddit with a fraction of the userbase and activity than other subs would constantly have multiple posts on the frontpage at any given time, and noone cared to look into it or do something against it. I wouldn't be surprised if that sub beat out some default subs during…

There have been exactly ZERO r/The_Donald posts on the frontpage, ever. It is not and never was a default subreddit. You are talking about r/all, which almost no one browses according to the Reddit admins themselves. And as of a few months ago, at most 3-4 posts from any one subreddit are on each page of r/all. Why exactly should they be banned? I can't help but suspect that the real reason is that you want to silenc…

I browse /r/all almost every day. I don't subscribe to everything I'm interested in, so I check /r/all to see if I'm missing everything. Before they changed the algorithm, page one was nearly 100% /r/the_donald spam. I don't care about their politics, that's their own business, but it's pretty obvious they're gaming the system. Again, that's fine. That's their own business. So reddit changed the way the posts are displayed to make /r/all usable to a wider audience again, problem is now it's mostly porn after you get past page one.

To remove politics from the argument, I don't watch basketball. So if /r/nba decided they wanted to have all their posts on the front page and told their readers to up vote everything they see no matter what, I'd have the same reaction. It's not what the system was designed for. I want to see a healthy mix of what reddit users actually think are the most interesting posts of the day. One subreddit, especially one that's not even that popular, taking over /r/all is not what I want to see. Doesn't matter which subreddit. I want to see a good mix.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#202

Post by shanemhansen »

This guy should be applauded. Here's why: He made a mistake by making a childish response to a childish attack and then he admitted fault.

That's so rare. I wish more CEOs had his backbone.

I'm sorry to be inflammatory, but it seems like people take reddit a little too seriously and this is the real world not /r/relationships. It's probably not time to: "lawyer up, hit the gym, delete /r/golang".

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#203

Post by czinck »

Filligree wrote: post #98
bradfitz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was the one who proposed deleting /r/golang. Google Groups is not my preferred alternative by any means. Google Groups is a 1990's webmail interface to crappy but federated SMTP. There is very little to like about it, but at least the underlying protocol (SMTP) is federated. It is NOT an alternative to Reddit, which has a nice UI & voting system. It's unfortunate that Reddit is not a reliable platform which can be…

You're overreacting. The CEO of reddit edited a few posts, after having been sent masses of hate mail, then backed it out and apologized. You cannot seriously think there's any chance he'd do the same to /r/golang; there's little chance he'll do it again at all.

> You're overreacting.

While I agree deleting the subreddit is excessive, I think you're downplaying it. Reddit has increasingly censored more and more content that the admins disagreed with (rightly or wrongly). Now they've taken it a step further and started to modify content they disagree with. If this was early on in reddit's history and they made the modifications as a joke then it wouldn't be a big deal, but the CEO modifying posts seen by probably 10s of thousands of people (that subreddit has 300k very active subscribers) is a huge slip down the slippery slope. I mean, think what your reaction would be if I misquoted you at the top, and I'm just a random user quoting you, not an admin actually changing what you said.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#204

Post by jsprogrammer »

kps wrote: post #175
sachel1sta wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your text is nearly white within 19 minutes of being posted. It's obvious HackerNews is not safe--from certain people.

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 allegations, even though I have confronted him on them multiple times.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#205

Post by danbruc »

heroprotagonist wrote: post #18

So.. here's the thing. I think that spez did everyone a favor by editing those user comments. We know that politicians and corporations game the system already with fake accounts, presumably as a tool for manipulating public opinion. We know from the code that user comments aren't encrypted at all, or their voting tallies. It would require a very small tweak to manipulate things from the server side. Given that, user…

We know from the code that user comments aren't encrypted at all, or their voting tallies.

Of course not, how would you show the comments to visitors if they were encrypted?

This is very public proof that even the content of comments can be manipulated [...]

How would anyone be surprised by this, it's all just rows in a database. If you are in the right position with the right credentials, you can do whatever you want.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#206

Post by freehunter »

problems wrote: post #44
zapu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far from stating that t_d used bots to push submissions up, because there is no definite proof, but what I know for sure is that the US election ruined browsing /r/all for me. While it was mostly porn and memes before, every now and then I would bump into something interesting from a subreddit I didn't know. But during the election it was 90% of either t_d or sandersforpresident. EDIT: Apparently reddit has chang…

Reddit actually tweaked the /r/all algorithm to change this. Which basically looks like a political move and it is kind of sketchy in that regard, but for users like you it's probably beneficial.

It only looks like a political move because a political subreddit is the one that forced the change. If it was any other subreddit, no one would have cared. I'm sure if /r/hillaryclinton did the same thing, they would have reacted the same. It's not good user experience for one subreddit to take over the site like that.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#207

Post by nommm-nommm »

goblin89 wrote: post #183
nommm-nommm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's correct English and has a long history of use and appears in famous writings. >The singular they had emerged by the 14th century and is common in everyday spoken English, but its use has been the target of criticism since the late 19th century. Its use in formal English has increased with the trend toward gender-inclusive language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Thanks for linking. According to Wikipedia it does seem that in American English gender-neutral “they” is a bit of a touchy subject, in that some people and style guides find it unacceptable, so I took note of that. I’ll keep using “they” though, genderless speech is a neat language feature (and it just doesn’t sound wrong to me in English, like gendered pronouns do sometimes).

Here's a better link

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/13/462906419/everyone-uses-singul...

Basically singular they is used by everyone because it sounds and feels natural in many contexts. It's only a touchy subject when people assume you are using it to be "politically correct."

Style guides are changing, Washington Post just changed theirs to allow singular they.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#208

Post by forgottenpass »

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?

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#209

Post by the_af »

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…

Yes, I meant "indefinite", not neutral.

You're incorrect about the use of singular they, though: it's both correct in many contexts and widespread. See: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/they

"USAGE ALERT

Long before the use of generic 'he' was condemned as sexist, the pronouns 'they', 'their', and 'them' were used in educated speech and in all but the most formal writing to refer to singular indefinite pronouns or singular nouns of general personal reference (which are often not felt to be exclusively singular): If anyone calls, tell them I'll be back soon. A parent should read to their child.Such use is not a recent development, nor is it a mark of ignorance. Shakespeare, Swift, Shelley, Scott, and Dickens, as well as many other English and American writers, have used they and its related case forms to refer to singular antecedents. Already widespread in the language (though still rejected as ungrammatical by some), this use of they, their, and them is increasing in all but the most conservatively edited American English [...]"

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#210

Post by logmeout »

freehunter wrote: post #193
eterm wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and also yes he admitted it, but isn't that worse? There weren't any safeguards or anything to catch it on the reddit organisation side. It was only users noticing forcing an admission that means it's even a matter of record.

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.
Post reply on HN