r/Haskell is going dark

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#42

I’m begging people to have some perspective on this. This is not an injustice. They’re reddit posts.

It’s bewildering to me the amount of people who are upset about this and who clearly don’t understand the reality of direct action. If the workers at a coffee shop go on strike to protest their working conditions and form a picket line which dissuades people from entering the store, those people are not suffering an injustice by not being able to buy coffee that day. They’re suffering an inconvenience, which is inconsequential compared to what is being protested. The picket line does not create an injustice, and thinking so is a consequence of having a perverted sense of what justice is. It comes down entirely to what is at stake and the gravity of the consequences.

Reddit makes its money off of the work that its power users and moderators do, and the changes they’re proposing are not fair to those people. You are not suffering an injustice by the collective action of moderators choosing to block out the subs you’ve contributed to. They’re text posts on a social media site.

All of this is so unbelievably inconsequential that it’s blowing my mind we’re even arguing about it. Even if they were gone forever, which they aren’t because they’re going to be brought back in read-only, it’s ludicrous to act like a bunch of text posts disappearing forever is an ‘injustice’.

8 Likes
#43

On voting, I lean towards seeing it, and more generally the system of competing posts and subthreads, as something that adds more noise than signal to a forum like this one (or even to r/haskell itself).

I think there is a stronger case for threading, though my impression is that both here and at r/haskell it’s rare for threads to reach several hundreds of comments, so the need for it is perhaps not too acute. The summary feature, which does look helpful, is available out-of-the-box for threads with at least 50 posts.

#44

That’s good. Let’s hope other communities will be as reasonable.

#45

That r/haskell will be coming back online is a good thing. What you are confused about, I think, is the fact that the contents that people have contributed on Reddit were contributed under the acceptance of binding norms between users and Reddit-the-legal entity. These norms are the bedrock of the trust people have towards the platform. Trust is an important thing; it is not meant to be diverted, or hijacked, no matter how honorable the motive is, by a middleman using their position to take advantage of it for their own goals. Whether their goals align with the Good is irrelevant to the fact that they’re instrumenting something users did in good faith.

Again, the situation would be completely different if users had been asked beforehand whether they agreed to participate to an indefinitely long / forever readonly bargain with Reddit. Also, it’s not that I value my contributions very highly; what I value highly is not being subjected to some power bargain against my will.

#46

I’m a subscriber to /r/haskell and can’t see this thread.

My (very vague) recollection of the thread is that it was mostly or entirely discussing a 48-hour blackout, not an indefinite one (or even making the sub read-only). I tentatively supported the former, I oppose the latter.

(Of course if Taylor doesn’t want to keep moderating, that’s up to him; he can resign, and if no one else volunteers to take over then we won’t get to have nice things. I thank him for the work he’s done, regardless of what happens going forwards.)

If there is community consensus that the sub should go read-only indefinitely, then fair enough. I just made an account here, and if the reddit doesn’t come back I might continue reading and writing here, though I expect to enjoy it less.

But what I don’t want to happen is for the parts of the community on discourse to imagine that there was consensus from the parts of the community on reddit, if there was no such thing.

5 Likes
#47

Taylor has been doing a great job as a moderator and hopefully will not listen to calls for him to resign. Moderators have been given the power to moderate subreddits including the power to shut things down. He also announced things several days earlier at met with 100% support.

Whether to participate in this protest or not is a hard decision to make and it’s impossible to satisfy everyone, but it seems the majority support it.

On a different note and in all seriousness, if you care about your content (and you should), stop putting it in other platforms and start owning it. Start a blog or a wiki. Buy a domain. Setup RSS, and link to the relevant pieces. Maybe even connect to the fediverse.

We’ve seen it time and time again. All platforms do as they please with our content. They gatekeep it and make it harder for us to get to it. We can see it happening with pretty much every major platform, including reddit. Stop letting them disappoint you and start owning your content.

14 Likes
#48

And in another different note, /r/haskell does not feel like a community to me at all. Reddit is a link aggregator where semi-anonymous people sometimes discuss stuff. Reddit (I guess intentionally) places very little focus on the actual people involved and a lot more focus about “the content”. This makes it easier for people to stay hooked to the site without forming real connections and thus not risking a large exodus when people you care about leave - as long as there are new semi-anonymous people that can post links in their stead.

It also incredibly easy for anyone on reddit to come and throw a wrench in the discussion, post some irrelevant content, or generally making the place worse, and then disappear.

I honestly think reddit is not a place to grow a community, and it is working against Haskellers. I would appreciate a different solution that places more focus on the people involved, and makes it slightly harder for passerby wrench throwers to participate.

11 Likes
#49

That is true of any platform, not just of platforms run by money-hungry techs like Reddit. Moderators on my Fediverse instance could also choose to leverage my contents in a power bargain or any other form of campaigning against X and Y. The logical consequence of your argument is that people should keep a backup of their contributions, as well as the contributions of others they value the most, on fear of losing them one day. I agree and my bad for not doing that earlier. I got my wake up call.

#50

My proposed solution was self hosting the important stuff. Mastodon instance owners can also decide to stop doing the sometimes thankless and expensive work and close shop. Though migration is possible, self hosting is a more robust solution.

4 Likes
#51

Reddit is now threatening to remove all mods who are protesting:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14aeq5j/new_admin_post_if_a_moderator_team_unanimously/

2 Likes
#52

FFS… “take a break from moderating”, my ass :woman_facepalming:

They did go full Prince Lee, didn’t them?

#53

OT: I have witnessed a migration of a Mastodon account from one instance to another. It was extremely simple and graceful (automatic redirect, automatic follower moving without losing a single subscription).

A really pleasant experience which makes me very confident about Mastodon.

#54

I’m not sure if you’re talking about me, but to be clear: I am not calling for him to resign, and I don’t remember seeing anyone else in this thread do so either.

It may be that a majority of people in this thread support it, I’m not sure. But I presume that people who oppose it are more likely to have reddit accounts and less likely to have discourse accounts, so are less likely to be here to voice their opinions.

So how it seems to me is that no one really knows what the majority supports, unless the linked thread is different than I’m remembering. But my prediction is that if a poll was taken on /r/haskell, a majority would oppose a continued blackout.

3 Likes
#55

considering that we only have the “promise” of mods to return the data that the community has built together, there would a non-neglible portion of the community that would support forcing the subreddit open.

What the mods are doing is nothing short of taking the users hostage and trying to push them toward alternative platforms, including this discourse forum.

1 Like
#56

There was a thread on reddit, and there’s a thread here, both were/are overwhelmingly supporting the protest. Taylor explicitly asked for the subreddit users’ feedback, received it, and acted accordingly.

6 Likes
#57

I do not think people who prefer not to engage with the day to day virtue signalling or politics should be held hostage over the vocal portion of the community.

If a sizeable portion of the community wants reddit to notice their lack of engagement, why not just leave reddit? Why make the rest of us who want to stay and use reddit suffer for those those who dont? This is just holding the people who vote no hostage.

It is inconsiderate, rude and incredibly biased towards promote alternative communities.

4 Likes
#58

As I’ve said, I believe the thread on reddit supported a 48-hour blackout, not an indefinite one. Do you disagree?

We’ll see when the sub goes back to read-only, and if I’m wrong about this then fair enough. But I think it’s important to make this distinction.

1 Like
#59

(To be clear: if a majority of the reddit community does support the sub going read-only indefinitely, then I support doing so even though it’s not what I personally want, and no hard feelings on my part. Those of us who want to stay on reddit can try to create /r/haskell2 if we feel like it. But if that’s going to happen, I don’t want it to happen on the basis of a consensus that was not actually there.)

2 Likes
#60

(I’m not a mod)

Dear “no” voters, please give the situation some time to resolve.

I know that the promised 48h have passed, but Reddit owner decided to escalate (in a move that shouldn’t be surprising, really) so the strike should be extended.

Either way, you’d get your /r/Haskell back. Giving in right now would be a bad move long term.

7 Likes
#61

And it was made not by a mod, but by an active redditor. It was pretty much overwhelming pro blackout. (IIRC it was also pro-indefinite-blackout, based on grounds that 48 hours would def not be enough)

2 Likes