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Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

lethain.com

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Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#261

Post by glonq »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #51
deergomoo wrote: post #18

Good read. Interesting that the author’s takeaway is that folks consider Digg v4 to be a catastrophic launch because of the myriad technical issues. I don’t even remember there being technical issues, I just remember logging in one day to find a website I enjoyed replaced with a bunch of crap I wasn’t interested in.

This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight.…

I almost agree. Some subreddits are echo chambers of woke nonsense. Others are echo chambers of different nonsense. Others seem mostly fine.

It's less about the wokeness and more about the ability for a handful of mods to hijack popular topics and create an unecessarily unpleasant/unproductive experience for their communities.

I'll leave ineffective admins, lack of original content, spam, karma, bots, misinformation, automod, and monetization as separate points of discussion :P

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#262

Post by mynameisvlad »

geerlingguy wrote: post #248
mynameisvlad wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree, in general. But to be completely fair to him, it's Jeff Geerling. Being hyperbolic here, but practically all the content in the Pi (and Homelab, and several other subreddits) is either directly his or in some way derivative of his work. He has just put in that much time and effort into this space. So the same post that got deleted would have likely been reposted, with less context, minutes later. Likely…

This comes more from a background of "link-sharing sites work by people posting links with original and interesting content that a community would like." And Reddit (and HN, and Digg, etc.) started out as link-sharing sites. If not for "self-promotion", new blogs would never have been noticed once the era of blog rings died off and Google tried (and partially succeeded) killing RSS. I think blatant self-promotion for…

Just get your good friend "Geff Jeerling" to post them instead. ;)

I think it boils down to the sad fact that "writing a blog post with information relevant to a community and sharing that" has become somewhat of a minority case for blogs nowadays. They are generally either "self-promotion for selling things" (blatant or not) which you mentioned, or just straight up blogspam (almost always blatant). And when your job is to moderate a large community, you don't really have time to go in and evaluate whether each and every single post is the latter two or an earnest attempt at getting information across.

> If the community thinks it's spammy, then the community can flag it or downvote it.

In theory, yes. If everyone used the voting and reporting system appropriately, and people whose posts were reported took the judgement tactfully and with grace. But I've seen people constantly argue that "what they said wasn't against the rules" just because it wasn't explicitly listed as a rule.

When a moderator's job is already so loaded, they're going to push for making their lives easier. Blanket banning "self-promotion" means it's a simple decision when it does get reported and makes it harder to argue against a removal.

FWIW, I think the model you mentioned works a lot better here, where there's a bit more of a professional bias, and especially when people have linked their real-world professional identities with their accounts. It adds a level of courtesy and assumption of best intent that isn't as prevalent on Reddit.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#263

Post by unsupp0rted »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #232
mistermann wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Just asking questions" is the biggest red flag of ill intent I consider the playing of the accusation of the JAQ wildcard (an immediate victory in the minds of some subsets of observers) to be a much more dangerous (often literally unrealizeable) cultural norm, it is a go to staple technique in any delusional internet rhetorician's toolkit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning It is a well known tactic for ill intent. For a reason. People do it all the time and should be called out for doing so.

I wasn't asking questions. I was making a categorical statement of objective reality: at the time it was physically impossible to know how many doses of the vaccine, on what schedule, would achieve the best balance of effectiveness vs. safety.

This was the content of my comment, which got me banned from /r/CanadaCoronavirus.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#264

Post by CodeArtisan »

cainxinth wrote: post #184
IanKerr wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if it's too much to ask, but would you mind posting a list of your common sources? I'm familiar with everything you've posted, I'm always looking for new sites.

http://boingboing.net http://digg.com http://news.ycombinator.com http://slashdot.org http://www.drudgereport.com http://www.engadget.com http://www.nytimes.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://engineeringblogs.xyz https://gizmodo.com/latest https://kk.org/cooltools https://kottke.org https://lobste.rs https://nowiknow.com/archives https://old.reddit.com https://pluralistic.net https://www.…

I would add https://devurls.com/

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#265

Post by [deleted] »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #240
alienthrowaway wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: this comment is descriptive, not prescriptive If you have ever moderated a subreddit you'd understand why mods wind up with heavy handed approaches. Even moderately sized subreddits are a lot of work, especially of a post gets to the front page. You can't have gourmet experiences at fast-food scale. When you have a long list of reports to go through, and you have been moderating long-enough, your decisions are…

False positives are always preferable to the person who gets to make them. They're somewhat less so to those who end up being the false positives. If your hobby's main forum on the internet dried up and withered away 12 years ago because the only place to discuss it is reddit, then it's not as if such a person can just go elsewhere. You have a monopoly on the conversation and you're clearly not interested in justice…

[deleted]

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#266

Post by mynameisvlad »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #249
mynameisvlad wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning It is a well known tactic for ill intent. For a reason. People do it all the time and should be called out for doing so.

asking questions is also a well-known tactic for getting information. how do you figure out there's ill intent?

Like everything else in life, by using contextual clues and judging the content of the questions.

It's quite obvious when someone asks you questions with ill intent.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#268

Post by ncallaway »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #200
jnwatson wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Musk learned the hard way how hard it is to strike the right balance. Anybody that thinks Reddit is fascist should spend 60 days moderating a popular sub. Your attitude might change. This isn’t to say that there aren’t mods with power trips. Reddit has essentially outsourced their trust and safety department. It isn’t going to be perfect.

> Anybody that thinks Reddit is fascist should spend 60 days moderating a popular sub. I have little in the way of opinions about Reddit, but this strikes me as the wrong approach on general grounds. It might be true that anyone who spends time running a subreddit will change their mind about moderation. However, the only point of a subreddit is for people to talk to each other and to read what others are talking abo…

> This is of course the standard argument against every instance of “the users just don’t understand how complex the backoffice is” ever

Except in this case the ones in the “back office” are volunteers and not staff.

I’m amenable to your argument in most other contexts. But it strikes me as an awful argument to apply to volunteers.

In that context, if you don’t like it then you have to step up and do it yourself. If someone is doing work for free, you don’t get to complain about the quality. Instead, you pick up a broom and do the sweeping yourself.

Which isn’t to say that Reddit mods are beyond question or reproach, but if there’s a concern shared by all moderators, it strikes me as wrong to say “that’s a backoffice issue”. If you don’t like it, go back into the office.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#269

Post by biorach »

btreecat wrote: post #238
torstenvl wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP expressed an opinion about abusive moderators. Your response is to disagree with him, identify yourself as a moderator, and then... be abusive? How exactly did you think that profanity and personal attacks were going to help make your point?

[flagged]

> IDK how you think this is abusive

I'm not the person you're replying to

I don't think "abusive" is quite the right word for your tone.

> you're clearly one of the folks who was a problem if that's your opening position ... You comment is v clearly just ignorant.

"Rude", "abrasive" and "confrontational" are probably better fits. And I think you have a God given right to be as obnoxious as you feel is fitting in response to someone you disagree with with. But maybe that's not conducive to a healthy Reddit

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#270

Post by mort96 »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #51
deergomoo wrote: post #18

Good read. Interesting that the author’s takeaway is that folks consider Digg v4 to be a catastrophic launch because of the myriad technical issues. I don’t even remember there being technical issues, I just remember logging in one day to find a website I enjoyed replaced with a bunch of crap I wasn’t interested in.

This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight.…

I mean the racist transphobe nazi homophobes is probably the group I'm the most happy are getting banned... There are so many examples of mods power tripping, and you chose to use the banning of nazis as your example?
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