r/Haskell is going dark

Announcements
#1

As one of its moderators, I am making the Haskell sub-Reddit private to protest Reddit’s planned changes to API pricing. This is part of a coordinated effort that you can read more about here:

I am posting this announcement here because if I posted it to Reddit, nobody would be able to see it. Also I’m recommending that Reddit users use this Discourse as an alternative.

The sub-Reddit will stay private until further notice. At some point, it may re-open in read-only mode so that historical posts made to Reddit aren’t lost.

47 Likes
Vote on the future of r/haskell
#2

Isn’t this an extreme way of going about your protest? Right now if somebody makes a Haskell-related google search and ends up with a link to a comment on Reddit they won’t be able to get to their answer. As time goes by, search engines will probably start to remove the index entries to those Reddit discussions as well. Over the years while I’ve been interacting with the Haskell Reddit community, trying to answer questions and generally trying to be helpful, I hadn’t realized that all of my efforts could be discarded at a whim like this.

7 Likes
#3

The article mentions a 48 hour blackout?

#4

I would oppose it staying indefinitely dark. Either they relent on the API change or not. If they don’t, then a good resource just remains gone, even if its quality is otherwise diminished by the lack of app support.

9 Likes
#5

This might be a good time to turn your answers, comments, and other useful content into blog posts or perhaps automate mirroring them on a decentralized alternative.

Or this discourse even.

Reddit for information preservation is not many steps above discord.

Also see Don't Contribute Anything Relevant in Web Forums Like Reddit

17 Likes
#6

Full support to the strike!

13 Likes
#7

Would it be a good idea to archive the posts before making it private?

1 Like
#9

From the link in OP, the protest has a goal which would, when achieved, bring back the subreddit. From OP, even if Reddit management won’t budge, there is a plan to preseve valuable historical content.

There are many bridges to be crossed before that, I have faith in r/haskell mods knowing what they are doing.

9 Likes
#10

Yes please. I find reddit excruciating to navigate. I only go there when somebody posts a link but doesn’t otherwise summarize the reason I might want to read it. Almost always when I get there, there’s so much noise and bro’ wisecracking I wish I hadn’t bothered.

By all means permanently abandon reddit. Providing the noise stays away from Discourse.

12 Likes
#11

Yes, it is about time to think about being “digital green”. Having self-hosted discourse may well be enough to serve the community.

6 Likes
#12

Hey, closing the largest and most active Haskell community to protest Reddit is a bit extreme, but Haskell community values.

“Avoid success at all costs” is not enough. :slight_smile:

Edit:

Looking at the post, it seems more like Reddit is making it impossible for moderators to do their work. So, it’s less an own-goal than a forced sacrifice. Tsk.

3 Likes
#13

I say this is a good move strategically. I shall now enumerate why I think so.

  • Reddit is a taxing medium, both because of its shape (everything is linked, popular posts most visible) and because of the behaviour of its community (not as toxic as some online games but still somewhat toxic). This forum is way better by these measures.

  • A ready-made service, such as Reddit or other social networks, is needed for communities who would not otherwise be able to maintain a representation online. Such web sites, however, do not work for the good of their communities — they work for the good of their owners. (This explains the previous point.) Surely we the Haskell community are well able to maintain our own web sites.

    Observe, for example, that the Mathematics community have their own question and answer site Math Overflow that runs on the engine of Stack Exchange but is moderated independently — it seems to work well, isolating them from one or another drama that occurs on the Stack Exchange sites (not unlike the Reddit drama currently unfolding).

  • The moderators of a community on Reddit can do, or not do, what they please. A few of my writings to the Haskell subreddit were delayed by moderation for a week or longer, with no fault of my own (first the moderation bot deletes it, then you wait for a week for Taylor or another moderator to manually approve it). At the same time, some of my writings were later copied by some kind of a bot — perhaps some of them still persist. I am hoping that order will be maintained at a lesser cost, to a higher standard and with more transparency on this forum.

The Haskell subreddit was overall a good thing, but we can do better.

11 Likes
#14

Nice analysis, thanks!

#15

With shit like this I’d say the /r/Haskell is done for.

#16

If you want to sunset r/haskell as a medium of information exchange starting now, that’s absolutely fine. But saying

The sub-Reddit will stay private until further notice

is disrespectful to all the people who’ve put in time to write meaningful comments (in particular answers to tons of questions) there. Please bring it back in read only mode with a redirect to here so that people who enter through Reddit will know what’s up and where to go.

Don’t just leave it private, this serves no-one.

13 Likes
#17

Don’t worry. Anybody can take over an “inactive” subreddit and re-open it with a new staff.
(cue freenode helicopter flashbacks)

#18

Is there a way to make it public again, but where you can’t post anything new, and with a link in the community description saying “hey, we moved to discourse”.

If you’re able to do this, it might be a better option for:
A) the people who’ve given valuable information over the years on that platform
B) the people who’re searching for that valuable information
C) the people in this discourse community was well (:

4 Likes
#19

Let me amend my statement from my original announcement: The sub-Reddit will continue to be private until further notice. However at some point in the not too distant future, it will re-open in read-only mode.

18 Likes
#20

Are there any tools out there that let you archive a copy of an entire subreddit (all posts, comments)? Doing this may be time sensitive before the new API limits set in.

It would be nice to preserve the posts/comments and make them searchable if SHTF and the content becomes unavailable.

3 Likes
#21

I will echo some views… let’s stay off Reddit forever now and never go back.

I appreciate you maintaining this discourse. What’s missing here are upvotes, etc.

Any chance we could migrate to Lemmy? It has a lot more Reddit-like functionality (upvotes, etc).