I deleted my lobste.rs account a bit over a year ago because of extreme unaddressed tolerance of Nazis, so I'm glad to see my decision continues to have been correct. Oh, wait, no I'm not, it...
I deleted my lobste.rs account a bit over a year ago because of extreme unaddressed tolerance of Nazis, so I'm glad to see my decision continues to have been correct.
Oh, wait, no I'm not, it fucking sucks. The only similarly active reasonably professional tech forums I've found are on Reddit (!) and Hacker News (which has its own crippling, though largely orthogonal, cultural issues). But lobste.rs's nazi apologist problem makes every comment that's not either 100% subjective or trivially mechanically verifiable (e.g. quoting a manpage) impossible to take at face value, because you know the site happily tolerates people with disgusting views who will try to subtly inject those views into any comment they can. (Quick example: a certain right-wing neofeudalist cryptocurrency platform I'm not going to name or link, notable primarily for being made by a certain white supremacist I'm also not going to name or link, gets more traction on lobste.rs than anywhere else I've been on the Internet, and when the author is inevitably called out, an argument about whether or not it's okay to call out white supremacists inevitably ensues, much like the dumpster fire in the linked topic.)
To lend some credence to @albino's point about the presence of Nazis driving away other insightful users, I had over 5,000 karma, putting me in the top 1% of users and top 5% of active users, so clearly my contributions were considered valuable before I was driven off by their Nazi problem. I was partially inspired to leave by Steve Klabnik, legendary Rust contributor, publicly ceasing his involvement on the site for essentially similar reasons.
And also has a bunch of far right apologists, too. It's unbelievable reading some of the threads this week where they equate protests to get the police to stop murdering people of color with a...
Hacker News (which has its own crippling, though largely orthogonal, cultural issues)
And also has a bunch of far right apologists, too. It's unbelievable reading some of the threads this week where they equate protests to get the police to stop murdering people of color with a bunch of people trying to overthrow the government because they don't like the outcome of the free and fair elections.
Wow, I'd been keeping an eye on Lobsters as a community I was interested in and would periodically check the front page for cool links (though didn't venture into the comments much). Realizing now...
Wow, I'd been keeping an eye on Lobsters as a community I was interested in and would periodically check the front page for cool links (though didn't venture into the comments much). Realizing now that it seems to be just as toxic as the worst parts of reddit.
It's really a shame that there's no great option for general discussion of technical topics that's not full of obnoxious snark or overrun by beginners re-asking the same questions (beginners are already well served by a variety of newbie-friendly sites and forums).
I'd happily pay ten bucks a month for access to a community of developers exchanging ideas and talking shop.
I could be wrong, but I'm 95% sure that Tildes also uses the "user tree" concept, or at least it use to, for the exact reason that your link describes. It made it trivial for Deimos to follow...
I could be wrong, but I'm 95% sure that Tildes also uses the "user tree" concept, or at least it use to, for the exact reason that your link describes. It made it trivial for Deimos to follow spam-bots and bad-faith actors and cut all their linked accounts while the site was in closed alpha/beta.
It's nothing fancy, there's just an (internal-only) record of who invited each user. So that kind of creates a user tree, but I've never had to use it for anything significant.
It's nothing fancy, there's just an (internal-only) record of who invited each user. So that kind of creates a user tree, but I've never had to use it for anything significant.
Short of diving into the source code, no :/ I just have memories of @Deimos explaining invite trees to simplify banning spambots by pruning the whole user tree off at the problem user that started...
Short of diving into the source code, no :/ I just have memories of @Deimos explaining invite trees to simplify banning spambots by pruning the whole user tree off at the problem user that started generating spam accounts and view who they invited, etc. maybe he or someone else who spends more time developing Tildes will have a better answer or a doc page on it
After we discussed this the other day, I've now changed it so that you can no longer see who a user was invited by. While some people did like it being public, I think the benefits of keeping it public were pretty minor, and there were legitimate concerns about privacy on the opposite side.
So now it's still stored internally and I'll be able to use it to see if someone is repeatedly inviting users that cause problems, but it won't be shown on the site any more. This means that invites are now effectively anonymous—neither the inviter or the invitee will know the other's username if they don't want to reveal it themselves, and other users won't be able to see any relationship between them either.
Hopefully this will help make some people feel less hesitant about inviting others, and as I mentioned earlier in the daily discussion post, you've all been topped back up to 5 invite codes again.
I deleted my lobste.rs account a bit over a year ago because of extreme unaddressed tolerance of Nazis, so I'm glad to see my decision continues to have been correct.
Oh, wait, no I'm not, it fucking sucks. The only similarly active reasonably professional tech forums I've found are on Reddit (!) and Hacker News (which has its own crippling, though largely orthogonal, cultural issues). But lobste.rs's nazi apologist problem makes every comment that's not either 100% subjective or trivially mechanically verifiable (e.g. quoting a manpage) impossible to take at face value, because you know the site happily tolerates people with disgusting views who will try to subtly inject those views into any comment they can. (Quick example: a certain right-wing neofeudalist cryptocurrency platform I'm not going to name or link, notable primarily for being made by a certain white supremacist I'm also not going to name or link, gets more traction on lobste.rs than anywhere else I've been on the Internet, and when the author is inevitably called out, an argument about whether or not it's okay to call out white supremacists inevitably ensues, much like the dumpster fire in the linked topic.)
To lend some credence to @albino's point about the presence of Nazis driving away other insightful users, I had over 5,000 karma, putting me in the top 1% of users and top 5% of active users, so clearly my contributions were considered valuable before I was driven off by their Nazi problem. I was partially inspired to leave by Steve Klabnik, legendary Rust contributor, publicly ceasing his involvement on the site for essentially similar reasons.
And also has a bunch of far right apologists, too. It's unbelievable reading some of the threads this week where they equate protests to get the police to stop murdering people of color with a bunch of people trying to overthrow the government because they don't like the outcome of the free and fair elections.
WTF? I thought lobste.rs is basically hackernews but 42% nerdier. How do they even fit political content into that blueprint?
I thought I couldn't get into lobste.rs because of the acronym jungle but maybe it was this all along. How weird.
There is.... a lot of Nazi apologia in that thread. Holy cow. I was looking at Lobsters for a bit before coming to Tildes. Glad I didn't stay now.
Wow, I'd been keeping an eye on Lobsters as a community I was interested in and would periodically check the front page for cool links (though didn't venture into the comments much). Realizing now that it seems to be just as toxic as the worst parts of reddit.
It's really a shame that there's no great option for general discussion of technical topics that's not full of obnoxious snark or overrun by beginners re-asking the same questions (beginners are already well served by a variety of newbie-friendly sites and forums).
I'd happily pay ten bucks a month for access to a community of developers exchanging ideas and talking shop.
What exactly is Lobsters? I've never heard of it before.
They have an about section for that.
Oh. TY, I last looked at the site on mobile before coming to my PC to comment, and I missed that page somehow.
Even further off-topic, but the "user tree" concept is interesting.
I could be wrong, but I'm 95% sure that Tildes also uses the "user tree" concept, or at least it use to, for the exact reason that your link describes. It made it trivial for Deimos to follow spam-bots and bad-faith actors and cut all their linked accounts while the site was in closed alpha/beta.
Didn't know that, interesting! Any links?
It's nothing fancy, there's just an (internal-only) record of who invited each user. So that kind of creates a user tree, but I've never had to use it for anything significant.
Short of diving into the source code, no :/ I just have memories of @Deimos explaining invite trees to simplify banning spambots by pruning the whole user tree off at the problem user that started generating spam accounts and view who they invited, etc. maybe he or someone else who spends more time developing Tildes will have a better answer or a doc page on it
"Invited by" information for users is no longer displayed
cc: @nothis
Ahhh! Ok so I am not totally misremembering :) Thank you!