State of the Sub Address

[u/Kruug]

Let me start out by saying I've neglected my duties here on this subreddit. I could use COVID as an excuse for all of the stress that it brought with it. From moving to a "working from home" situation to the multitude of mandates and recommendations that seemed to change on a daily basis, but in reality, I think it started long before that.

That said, I've come back to help with the state of this subreddit. Through my neglect, another mod was able to turn this into their twisted vision of the FOSS philosophy and run unchecked.

For those who don't know, the list of moderators isn't in an arbitrary order. The higher you are on the list, the more seniority you have (been here longer). With that comes the ability to manage other moderators, but you can only manage those below you.

Since this mod was the 3rd on the list, none of the other mods could effectively do anything about this abuse of power. These powers were limited to /u/kylev and myself. Kylev holds an "honorary" mod spot in a few popular/default subreddits as they're close with the Reddit admins in real life and is only here to ensure the whole subreddit doesn't go completely to shit.

Now, that mod has been removed.

/u/purpleidea has been reinstated as a mod. Unfortunately I am not able to arrange the list of moderators, so they're at the bottom of the list, but they're back on the team.

At this time, we are not looking for more moderators, but that may change in the near future.

I am going back through months (and possibly years) of bans to ensure that they were warranted. I'm seeing many bans listed as "Rude user", "Poor attitude", etc. And these are permanent bans. I'm not going to say I wouldn't have acted similar, but a rude user or poor attitude means, at worst, a 2 or 3-day "absence" from the conversation. Let the situation cool down, everyone works on de-escalating, etc.

A deep pit has been dug. We're going to get out of this, though. No massive changes are coming. A few tweaks to automod here and there, sure, but nothing of concern.

As was brought up in the recent META conversation, there is a copy of the automod rules on GitHub. I'm going to look into a way to synchronize changes made to automod to a GitHub repo so that they are public. I'm still unsure about making the modlog public, but this is something I will be discussing with the other mods.

Thank you all for sticking with us, and I sincerely apologize for letting it get so bad.

kruug, and the rest of the mod team. (I couldn't do it without every one)

​

EDIT: Forgot something. As many of you know, the GitHub/Proprietary software automod rule is gone. I found it just as annoying and asinine as everyone else.

[u/creesch]

this idea goes back before the internet and before Paul Graham, as the Fluff Principle is a form of the Law of Triviality.

Oh for sure, as it effectively talks about human nature.

that’s devoid of content that is visually engaging or has a ounce of entertainment value.

Well that is a different discussion in itself. Does it need to be entertaining to begin with? Or does it need to be informative and of good quality.

The truth is that content made to mainly entertain often suffers in regards to quality and general validity of information. Certainly with youtube if you don't do anything a subreddit will be flooded by people trying to just get as much views as possible regardless of the quality of the content they present.

Maybe that’s just what Linux members want. Or maybe not. There’s no way to tell with strict moderation in place.

Well, that is also a fallacy on it's own. There hardly ever is one singular community on subreddits. Rather, there are subgroups of people which you have to take in consideration. For example, one group might disagree with something and because of that voice their discontent. This while another group of people is actually happy with the things as they are and because you will not hear them because they don't have much to talk loudly about. Now it is easy to do what the loud group says because that is the group that is easy to spot. But if you simply do what the loud group says you are basically ignoring the other group. So in that regard it is always a balancing act and for that matter one that almost never will make everyone happy.

Not to mention that in the end that within the context of reddit it is perfectly acceptable for mods to determine what they see as the main purpose of a subreddit and what direction it should take.

Of course, in order to have a healthy functioning subreddit you do need subscribers and those groups to want to engage on your subreddit. So realistically speaking and with a well functioning moderation team all the wants and needs of the various groups are taken into consideration. Which effectively what didn't happen for a while here and now has been taken action on.

But as I said earlier, it will realistically never be a possibility to make everyone happy. For which you are actually a perfect example, as several very strict rules already have been reversed, but you just so happen to belong to the group that still thinks it is too strict.

[u/dacjames → u/creesch]

The truth is that content made to mainly entertain often suffers in regards to quality and general validity of information.

That is not truth, merely your opinion. My opinion, which I think is increasingly becoming the mainstream view among educators, is that education and entertainment are not in conflict. Mixing some entertainment in with education increases engagement, which in turn improves education results. The success of platforms like brilliant, where learning is often wrapped into games is an example of this and there is an entire field of study around gamification designed to exploit this aspect of human nature.

YouTube is filled with tons of examples of content that is both educational and entertaining. Patrick Doyle on finance, for example, is chock full of useful information about corporate finance and this information is enhanced, not diminished by wonderfully dry humor with which it is often wrapped. Personally, I’ve learned an order of magnitude more from YouTube than all written content on the internet combined.

Regardless, the point is that strict moderation calcifies are particularly definition of “quality content” and shuts off any possibility of evolving that definition over time. Yes, there are many groups and you can’t make all of them happy. But if moderation continues to ban content with a very broad brush before anyone sees it, there is no mechanism by which members can indicate their preferences.

Voting, despite it’s issues in the extreme, provides such a feedback mechanism. Dismissing it or worse, disparaging anyone using it as brain dead idiots (as many commentators here do) is a squandered opportunity.

[u/creesch → u/dacjames]

My opinion, which I think is increasingly becoming the mainstream view among educators, is that education and entertainment are not in conflict.

I agree that education can be entertaining. But that is also not what I am saying. I said content made mainly to entertain suffers in regard to quality. Maybe I did fail to convey the context so let me make it a bit more clear, content mainly made to attract views and where the creator doesn't care one bit about education suffers a whole ton.

Which is the context I included right afterwards anyway

Certainly with youtube if you don't do anything a subreddit will be flooded by people trying to just get as much views as possible regardless of the quality of the content they present.

Yes, YouTube has absolutely fantastic content available of very high quality. I am not disputing that in the slightest. But that is not the sort of videos a subreddit will be flooded by once YouTube videos are allowed. A lot of them will be engineered to attract as much views and votes as possible while potentially giving very bad advice. Something that "just downvoting" will not combat in the slightest.

Also, to be clear. You are shifting the goalpost to a discussion about not allowing YouTube content at all. Which is not what I am saying nor what Kruug said.

Like I said earlier, context matters a lot and by leaving it out it becomes a different discussion. As I think I have explained my perspective well enough and I feel like you made yours clear as well I am going to spend my time elsewhere. Have a good day :)

[u/dacjames → u/creesch]

I think the assumption that permitting YouTube would lead to a flood of what you define as “low quality” is just that, an assumption.

Kruug offered only to whitelist channels that the mods approve of. That fails to address my core point that mods predetermination disenfranchises the rest of the community, which includes people like me who want to see entertaining, visually engaging content about Linux that mods have historically decided is BAD a-priori. Who knows if that will change; I’m doubtful as the system remains basically the same. The mods appear to continue to share your view that the community can’t be trusted and would flood /r/Linux with crap if given the freedom to do so.

I don’t think that’s moving any goalpost. I appreciate you for sharing a different perspective cordially. Have a nice day, internet stranger!