To save anyone else the 12 minutes of video runtime: he mostly talks about overzealous StackOverflow users and moderators by giving plenty of examples of misbehavior, but, despite his claim at the...
To save anyone else the 12 minutes of video runtime: he mostly talks about overzealous StackOverflow users and moderators by giving plenty of examples of misbehavior, but, despite his claim at the start of the video, offers nothing beyond that, other than his opinion that SO will slowly decline and fade into obsolescence if they don't fix this.
Sponsorblock's pretty neat for 'in-content' ads/interaction reminders common on YT. It autoskips as marked by the community (you can also set it to mute, etc), and it's pretty easy both to add new...
Sponsorblock's pretty neat for 'in-content' ads/interaction reminders common on YT. It autoskips as marked by the community (you can also set it to mute, etc), and it's pretty easy both to add new entries and whitelist channels you like.
Stack Overflow suffers from the same problem as Reddit: Voluntary internet janitors going on a power trip and acting like total arses. I obviously don't use Stack Overflow because I don't have a...
Stack Overflow suffers from the same problem as Reddit: Voluntary internet janitors going on a power trip and acting like total arses.
I obviously don't use Stack Overflow because I don't have a programming background (I did use a similar StackExchange site called EpicAdvice back in the day for WoW-related questions but I'm pretty sure that site's been long-dead for years.) But I can see why Reddit is uninviting for a new user.
Try to post a comment as a new user on Reddit? "Sorry, your account is too new and you need at least a few hundred karma to post here." In almost every single subreddit this is a thing. I get that it's a spam-prevention tool but still.
Try to post a submission? Downvoted by spammers and competing power users trying to astroturf the front page for their meaningless internet points or to get a link they've been paid to promote on the front page. (Yes, companies paying power users to get their links on Reddit is absolutely a thing, which is ironically something that slowly killed Digg, a previous competitor.)
Ask for upvotes? (because you see no other way to actually get the karma needed to post on most other subs and because asking for likes, votes, etc is a very common thing to do on any social media platform, just look at Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.) Banned from the website, because the site's owners care more about petty acts of vote manipulation than actually removing hateful and offensive content from their own site.
Spout a dissenting opinion? In a lot of cases that'll get you an immediate subreddit ban. Most political or fandom subs are like this.
Appeal the ban? Modmail muted for 28 days either with no reply or a snarky "fuck you" response.
I find it quite ironic that Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky have probably done a lot more to chase people away from programming than provide a useful tool to ask and answer programming questions, much in the same way that Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian have probably done a lot more to stifle open discussion with some of their decisions when running Reddit.
As someone who for some reason still mods a lot of large subs, I wanted to address one point you bring up because it's commonly misunderstood. In many cases it's actually to keep altright trolls...
As someone who for some reason still mods a lot of large subs, I wanted to address one point you bring up because it's commonly misunderstood.
I get that it's a spam-prevention tool but still.
In many cases it's actually to keep altright trolls from milling through accounts and simply posting racist and bigoted stuff. Spam filter does a decent job at removing stuff that is obviously spam. If the Admins actually provided tools or cared about altright trolls just creating new accounts and repeatedly posting the same bigoted diatribe everywhere this probably wouldn't be necessary. As it is, they have no desire to remove them from the platform permanently - they would rather ban the account but not prevent the person from creating another. I suspect this is because new accounts = growth = makes the VC happy.
My brother became a mod of a 5M+ sports subreddit a little while ago. He's outright shocked by how little the admins care about curbing ban evasion. It's one thing to expect community mods to...
My brother became a mod of a 5M+ sports subreddit a little while ago. He's outright shocked by how little the admins care about curbing ban evasion. It's one thing to expect community mods to police it lest they get their subreddit shut down, but when you don't provide them with the tools to do so...
Even then, I'm not that sure what you can do about people creating new accounts without outright demanding ID verification to create an account, which brings about its own set of data protection and privacy issues...
IP bans are easily bypassed via proxy, VPN or just having a non-static IP address. MAC address bans aren't possible unless you're on the same local area network (which isn't relevant here.) Hardware ID bans are probably difficult to enforce on a website and can easily be spoofed on Linux. Issuing an abuse complaint to the IP address's network operator probably won't get you very far.
If there's ways of stopping altright trolls from milling through throwaway or illicitly acquired accounts that I haven't listed, then please say.
To save anyone else the 12 minutes of video runtime: he mostly talks about overzealous StackOverflow users and moderators by giving plenty of examples of misbehavior, but, despite his claim at the start of the video, offers nothing beyond that, other than his opinion that SO will slowly decline and fade into obsolescence if they don't fix this.
Thank you for the run down. I lost interest after the third advertisement in between sentences.
Sponsorblock's pretty neat for 'in-content' ads/interaction reminders common on YT. It autoskips as marked by the community (you can also set it to mute, etc), and it's pretty easy both to add new entries and whitelist channels you like.
Stack Overflow suffers from the same problem as Reddit: Voluntary internet janitors going on a power trip and acting like total arses.
I obviously don't use Stack Overflow because I don't have a programming background (I did use a similar StackExchange site called EpicAdvice back in the day for WoW-related questions but I'm pretty sure that site's been long-dead for years.) But I can see why Reddit is uninviting for a new user.
I find it quite ironic that Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky have probably done a lot more to chase people away from programming than provide a useful tool to ask and answer programming questions, much in the same way that Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian have probably done a lot more to stifle open discussion with some of their decisions when running Reddit.
As someone who for some reason still mods a lot of large subs, I wanted to address one point you bring up because it's commonly misunderstood.
In many cases it's actually to keep altright trolls from milling through accounts and simply posting racist and bigoted stuff. Spam filter does a decent job at removing stuff that is obviously spam. If the Admins actually provided tools or cared about altright trolls just creating new accounts and repeatedly posting the same bigoted diatribe everywhere this probably wouldn't be necessary. As it is, they have no desire to remove them from the platform permanently - they would rather ban the account but not prevent the person from creating another. I suspect this is because new accounts = growth = makes the VC happy.
My brother became a mod of a 5M+ sports subreddit a little while ago. He's outright shocked by how little the admins care about curbing ban evasion. It's one thing to expect community mods to police it lest they get their subreddit shut down, but when you don't provide them with the tools to do so...
Even then, I'm not that sure what you can do about people creating new accounts without outright demanding ID verification to create an account, which brings about its own set of data protection and privacy issues...
IP bans are easily bypassed via proxy, VPN or just having a non-static IP address. MAC address bans aren't possible unless you're on the same local area network (which isn't relevant here.) Hardware ID bans are probably difficult to enforce on a website and can easily be spoofed on Linux. Issuing an abuse complaint to the IP address's network operator probably won't get you very far.
If there's ways of stopping altright trolls from milling through throwaway or illicitly acquired accounts that I haven't listed, then please say.