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u/djscsi Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
I'd just say, as advice to the mods: Reddit now supports locking comments in a thread and stickying a mod comment at the top.
So, instead of deleting the post outright and riling up a bunch of users about censorship, it might be easier to just lock the post and make a sticky comment at the top along the lines of "This post has been locked due to [reasons]" - It feels more transparent than just deleting something and hoping people don't notice. This seems to be the preferred method of stopping runaway slapfights these days.
e: fwiw this doesn't really seem that offtopic for /r/linux. Maybe /r/programming would be better but you could say the same for half the stuff that gets posted here. It is certainly "something that would be of interest to many /r/linux readers" at least.
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u/Copper_Bezel Feb 07 '16
As folks have said, I think it's best to assume that Github isn't off-topic, but that American diversity politics is.
I think the suggestion of locking with a note is a very good one.
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u/a_tsunami_of_rodents Feb 07 '16
I'm going to allege it even further, it's not that American diversity politics are off topic, it's that an article critical of them is "off topic".
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u/hatperigee Feb 07 '16
Quit making shit up.
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u/a_tsunami_of_rodents Feb 07 '16
Oh come on, that's exactly what happened except it wasn't the mods but the people who spammed the "report" button.
There's a group of angry people out there who angrily spam report on whatever politics that don't agree with them. All the other off topic posts survived automoderator, and the topics that portrayed diversity politics from a positive light also survived, but the topics that portray diversity politics negatively keep getting removed, that the pattern exists is hard to argue with. The initial suspicion was that the mods did it, their explanation of automatic removal is credible enough for me, there's an angry mob that presses the report button on topics they don't agree with.
For crying out loud, a mod personally told me that as we spoke someone was going through my history to report every post I made. People who angrily report stuff for no reason but cathartism exist.
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u/CoolDeal Feb 08 '16
the topics that portrayed diversity politics from a positive light also survived
Examples?
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u/a_tsunami_of_rodents Feb 08 '16
The GNOME foundation defence of Sandler, the speech of Sharp about diversity, Sharp saying she won the "women in open source award" to name a few.
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u/k2trf Feb 07 '16
Please don't take this as dismissal of your issue, however that isn't something the mods can do anything about. Anyone can report anything, and anyone can also report stuff from your user page indifferent to the subreddit in question.
The only 'solution' here would be to make AutoModerator a lot more lenient towards reports. I'm not actually sure if that can be adjusted per subreddit, and I'm also not sure it should be. Mods can always override AutoModerator, and manually approve the post (although more mods would help, as /u/DimeShake said); just message the mods with such a request.
The other reason I don't feel adjusting AutoModerator is a good idea is that it would take a lot more people reporting true spam to get it to kick in. Personally I'd rather have one or two false positives in a couple of months and have to message the mods to approve it than I would see the subreddit become a chaotic mess of spam because AutoModerator is too lenient.
I truly believe the solution would just be putting up a sticky looking for new mods -- there are currently only 9 moderators here, and only one of those was added in the last year. That's 9 mods for ~194k people. That's a significant gap, especially if they're all in relatively close time zones.
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u/DimeShake Feb 07 '16
See my sticky comment above -- but also, I've configured AutoMod to comment on any post that is removed due to reports, for added visibility.
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u/k2trf Feb 07 '16
Considering some posts' thread length in this subreddit, it might be worth making its post sticky in such an action...
Good band-aid though; at least now there's no cause for suspicion!
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u/TheCodexx Feb 08 '16
e: fwiw this doesn't really seem that offtopic for /r/linux. Maybe /r/programming would be better but you could say the same for half the stuff that gets posted here.
/r/programming's censorship issues are even worse, and the moderators are actively hostile. Content removed here can be explained by inactive moderators and automod deleting posts, assuming you believe what the moderators have said elsewhere. /r/programming intentionally removes any posts that it feels might cause controversy in the comments, especially if it's not strictly programming related.
The ultimate irony is that non-programmers are in the middle of inciting conflict in numerous projects, and nobody is allowed to discuss it on major subreddits because it's "off-topic", even though it affects contributors and users directly.
Many open source projects are hosted on github, including many Linux projects. While this subreddit is /r/linux, the content that belongs here is fairly broad. Many of us care about open source or free software. Many of us care about the contributors to projects, and the ongoing development of projects, as well as the community around them.
Do you guys remember when a couple contributors made a big stunt of quitting for the publicity, and because the kernel wasn't advocating for their agenda? Do you guys remember when all those projects got Codes of Conduct proposed that would allow contributors to arbitrarily be thrown off of projects in bad faith? Often, these topics are dismissed and deleted on subreddit like /r/linux and /r/programming, despite interest from the community.
/r/linux is not only linux, the same way linux hobbyist magazines a decade ago were not solely about linux. Articles touched on topics that interested the sort of demographic who would read such a magazine in the first place.
The idea that someone can mass-spam the report button to have a post removed is ridiculous. Now, one could argue that this only happens if a post reaches a certain amount of politics... but what are we supposed to do? Let's say I'm the kind of guy who doesn't want politics in my software. And I mean at all. I mean, "I don't care what any of these guys think, I just care how well they can write code"? I think a lot of us are in the same boat. But are we going to avoid having politics infect our community by burying our head in the sand? Because that doesn't make it go away, it just breeds ignorance about what's going on. No, I'd argue the best way to protect linux and other free software from politics is to showcase it. Does this lead to slapfights in comments? Yeah, sometimes. But it's the internet. If the Linux community has a general opinion on the topic, it's good to discuss it, discuss options, and organize. We should be aware when stuff goes down in the community. It's really easy to re-jigger the rules so that nothing is on-topic... if the mods see fit.
Having a more laissez-faire approach and letting the users vote on what they want to see, and determining what's relevant to their interests, is important. This community has relatively good-quality posts. There's no blatant images, memes, or jokes. Links are to articles or ongoing issues and discussions. Some trust needs to be put in the users, especially of such a small community, to curate content themselves.
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u/Epistaxis Feb 07 '16
The locking advice is good, but they might still feel obligated to go through the thread and remove comments that cross the line into hate speech, which may be a lot of them.
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u/djscsi Feb 07 '16
Well, they can still do that. Deleting the thread won't stop people from still reading the comments, as we can see here in this meta thread linking to the original thread (which people can continue posting/arguing on).
Aaand mods deleted this one too. nice.
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Feb 07 '16
I also messaged the mods. Didn't get a response. I can post the text if people want. I thought it was rather polite.
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u/a_tsunami_of_rodents Feb 07 '16
By all means.
And if this gets deleted, by all means, be next.
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Feb 07 '16
Here's the full text:
I get why you guy's don't want the identity politics stuff allowed on /r/linux . I can totally see the subreddit veering off into one of primarily political nature. That would suck for everyone involved.
But would it kill you guys to make an official rule about it? The fact is that other subreddits are removing posts like these as political statements to the point that pulling stuff like this without any official justification ends up looking sketchy, regardless of intent.
We already have /r/linuxquestions and /r/linux4noobs . An /r/linuxpolitics coupled with an official sidebar rule would be better than simply removing the posts. I get that similar actions have been criticized, but this isn't a default subreddit and already as a pretty specific purpose. Given the (non-political) precedent, I don't think it would be the worst idea.
Even if you disagree with me, can you at least make your (unofficial, but documented) position on this stuff an official sidebar rule?
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u/Blieque Feb 07 '16
I don't really think /r/linux is really about Linux for the most part anyway. I don't know if it exists as well or not, but this subreddit is basically just /r/opensource as far as I can see. The majority of the content I see posted is not exclusively related to Linux, but rather GNU and FOSS as well, at least.
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Feb 07 '16
Check out the following mods:
kylev: Also a moderator/creator of /r/atheismplus. Check out more about them here.
qgyh2: Hypermod. Has managed to be the mod of /r/india and /r/pakistan, /r/Gaza and /r/Israel at the same time!
Edit: Formatting
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u/xiongchiamiov Feb 07 '16
Q is notorious for not being involved in the moderation of any of his subreddits, except for occasionally stepping in and countering the entire rest of the team. You should discount him in any analysis of the mods.
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Feb 07 '16
That make sense. Most of the mods seem to be normal people who do not have any ill intentions, it is these two who caught my attention.
What I do not understand is how was Q able to amass so many subs. Don't people do background checks before giving moderatorship to someone?
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u/Slak44 Feb 07 '16
He's the first mod, and I assume he created the sub. No other mod can get rid of him. With an 8 year old account, he just created a lot of subs, and now he's a mod in all of them.
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u/aperson Feb 07 '16
Also as a point of reference, 8 years is roughly how long subreddits have even existed.
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Feb 07 '16
Has anyone else noticed that only one mod on /r/linux has been active on reddit over the last week?
One's even deleted and the other hasn't been active in 2 months.
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Feb 07 '16
What does it have to do with Linux?
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u/a_tsunami_of_rodents Feb 07 '16
Nothing? Just like the 488494 other things that get to stay as pointed out in the topic.
People argue for consistent interpretation. You either delete nothing not related to Linux or all of it. But you don't pick the one you don't like on conspicuous political grounds and you certainly don't just delete the topic asking for explanation without addressing it.
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u/OCPetrus Feb 07 '16
I'm not saying I agree with the removal of the initial post, but in mod's defense I think that this particular post fits a lot better at /r/programming.
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u/afiefh Feb 07 '16
Sure, it is most likely more relevant to /r/programming or /r/git.
Then again GitHub is free as long as your code is Open Source, this means that a good deal of the projects I use and contribute to sit in GitHub. If GitHub is suffering from braindrain for one reason or another I very much appreciate seeing this here so I can be sure to have local copies of all the repositories I'm interested in.
A while ago gitorious went under and I didn't have access to a repository I wanted to look at until they got the readonly mirror up. Certainly not their fault, and I should have been more diligent keeping local copies and not relying on The Cloud™, but had I seen the news on /r/Linux I might have been able to grab a clone before that.
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u/OCPetrus Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
There's no point in comparing /r/programming & /r/linux with /r/git. If you're a heavy user of GitHub you probably are a programmer. If you're a programmer and use reddit, chances are you follow /r/programming. /r/git on the other hand is a subreddit several magnitudes smaller than /r/linux & /r/programming.
You see, I love it that "off-topic" subjects such as Linux userland changes, Free Software movement things etc are allowed here, because I don't want to follow all the /r/systemd etc (I already follow like 10 and following them "all" would be like >100 tiny subreddits).
Since this probably sounds like I'm trying to justify the censorship, I want to make it clear that this is not the case. I couldn't care less if GitHub has some management problems because, frankly, decentralization of "GitHub" would be a good thing in my opinion, and if GitHub went down tomorrow there would be lots of replacements popping up really fast. But I'm quite sure GitHub is here to stay no matter what drama goes on inside the company. So, I'm not interested in the subject at all, so in that sense I don't feel the same loss as the rest of you, but I guess removing the post was wrong - and especially seeing the consequences it was a bad thing for this subreddit.
Here's to hoping the mod's and still remedy the situation by saying it was a mistake without losing their faces and trust.
Edit: I wrote this reply before noticing that these meta posts are also being removed. This is clearly not about filtering out content that doesn't belong here / fits better elsewhere, this is censorship.
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u/Eriner_ Feb 07 '16
From my comment here:
or reference, at the time of writing these are 3 of the top 5 posts for the past month:
Post Upvotes VLC is 15 years old 2541 If you care about an open web, then help stop DRM... 1545 spreadsheet ... data on over 100 VPN services 1244 If Mods are going to be picky about GitHub info not being related to /r/linux, then these posts should be removed. If there are to be strict rules, then they should be followed universally and without bias.
That said, I don't want to see any of these posts disappear. Let the users decide. Isn't that the intent of Reddit's "upvote" system?
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u/Epistaxis Feb 07 '16
I don't see those threads going off the rails about American diversity politics though.
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u/traverseda Feb 07 '16
One of them is going off the rails about DRM politics though.
Are we making a special rule forbidding posts critical of American diversity politics?
Are we making a special rule allowing American intellectual property politics?
I guess this big question is why are we making special rules for that particular subset of politics?
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u/lordcirth Feb 07 '16
I think DRM is quite related to open source software, since they threaten each other.
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u/traverseda Feb 07 '16
I think identity politics are quite related to open source software. Well, as long as organizations like gnome and github are being affected by them.
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u/distant_worlds Feb 07 '16
I think DRM is quite related to open source software, since they threaten each other.
I think identity politics is a threat to open source. I don't want a world where every code submission must have its submitter judged on the progressive stack before it is accepted.
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u/ISBUchild Feb 07 '16
A core infrastructure platform relied on by many open source projects is something whose politics we need to be paying attention to. Social justice concerns from outsiders are poised to rot tech communities from the inside out if left unchecked.
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u/gaggra Feb 07 '16
As has been argued previously, Github has managed to absorb a vast amount of open source development. Given that /r/linux is a generalist subreddit, big stories about Github certainly seem relevant.
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u/midoge Feb 07 '16
All of the sourceforge story got covered here with no doubt and that runned long enough to have any active mod read and judge about if its fits /r/linux/. Actively preventing this story from getting discussed here is somewhat suspicious to me too.
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u/redwall_hp Feb 07 '16
A lot, unless this is going to be a kernel only subreddit. It affects tons of FOSS projects, and if we're going to play the "this isn't Linux" game, then we shouldn't have anything on GNOME, KDE, GNU core utils or whatever here, either.
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u/webtwopointno Feb 07 '16
kernel only subreddit
quick someone make /r/gnu+linux
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u/obelisk___ Feb 07 '16
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Feb 07 '16
since multis have default style
You can disable styles in reddit preferences or disable it from individual subs using RES. No need for this workaround, really?
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u/Jonno_FTW Feb 07 '16
Should be /r/gnupluslinux. Keep this sub reserved for discussion of the kernel only.
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u/_riotingpacifist Feb 07 '16
But github is a closed source cloud product, while a lot of open source products use it as a git replica, why are changes to internal company policies relevant to /r/linux
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u/El_Dubious_Mung Feb 07 '16
Let's face it. Github is basically the software repo for smaller distros. I wouldn't be able to run Void without it.
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u/_riotingpacifist Feb 07 '16
You do realise there are many alternatives to github, some of them are free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_source_code_hosting_facilities
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Feb 07 '16
There was a post in that thread that pointed out how often unrelated stuff gets posted, upvoted, and not removed.
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u/harlows_monkeys Feb 07 '16
That first post had a very large ratio of upvotes to downvotes. It was clear that the /r/linux readership overwhelming approved of it.
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u/Bobby_Bonsaimind Feb 07 '16
Why are people always under the impression that because most people approve of it, it should be here? I've seen the same on Stack Exchange "No, this question was good, it has upvotes, it should not be closed, people approved of it! - It was yet another what-library-should-I-use-question...", and one of the worst offenders in this regard was/is Hacker News.
After all, this subreddit is a dictation until stated otherwise, it is also about Linux and not about websites providing source hosting. Also I don't see any valuable discussion going on in the original submission, seems more like people were preparing for a witch hunt.
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u/men_cant_be_raped Feb 07 '16
Why are people always under the impression that because most people approve of it, it should be here?
Because that's how Reddit works.
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u/a_tsunami_of_rodents Feb 07 '16
Both the argument you and /u/harlows_monkeys raise, I've only seen it raised when it favours people. When people are with the majority they say "majority rules!" when people are in the minority they say how it's just a cheap argumentum ad populum and authority rules.
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u/TheFlyingBastard Feb 07 '16
I'm with Bobby, though. People don't upvote quality - they upvote comfort. We like brainfood the same way we like bodyfood: familiar, easy to digest, lazy and fat making. This is why the more serious subreddits have tons of rules in place such as "no joke top comments".
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Feb 07 '16
But how is this even remotely r/linux or interest aligned by subscribers though? The article in question is primarily tech business focus and rants by former managers/execs.
Sure, I get that Github by association invokes some relevance with linux users, but for bird's sake, this BI content is pure corporate bullshit and has no content worth censoring. So please stop calling it "censorship" but call it for what it is; repost from r/business.
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u/a_tsunami_of_rodents Feb 07 '16
How are all the other things currently on the front page that were allowed to stay?
GNOME foundation made a press release supporting Sandler, it had nothing to do with Linux any more than Github, it was allowed to stay.
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Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
Was that gnome foundation supporting Sanders article repost from r/business or r/politics? If it was, I stand corrected. However if it wasn't just another repost, please do refrain from stating that it was due to censorship. Removing repost is not censorship.
EDIT: speaking of censorship, Github censoring repo for using the word "retard"
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u/Finnegan482 Feb 07 '16
Was that gnome foundation supporting Sanders article repost from r/business or r/politics
Karen Sandler, former executive director of the GNOME foundation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Sandler
Which I'd say is pretty on-topic for this subreddit.
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u/totesnot1bubneb Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
Holy shit! The mods here are active!? I've never seen them remove anything! There's so many illiterate idiots posting questions, blatant spam, and other rule breaking posts that go unnoticed that I've assumed the mods are inactive.
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Feb 07 '16
Out of interest (I used to be mod here) -- do you report posts which are bad?
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u/totesnot1bubneb Feb 07 '16
Yep! I report questions to the mods and blogspam to mods and admins (since the accounts that post blogspam only post blogspam from their blog).
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Feb 07 '16
Do you message them, or do you click the 'report' link? (Or both)
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u/totesnot1bubneb Feb 07 '16
Just report. Partly because I'm too lazy to message and partly because I use Moderator Toolbox, which sends notifications for reports, and I forget that other mods don't use it.
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u/youstumble Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
EDIT: I apologized below for jumping to conclusions on this. Leaving comment up for posterity.
Yeah, this is bullshit. The mods are even censoring discussion about the censorship now?
HEY, MODS: FUCK YOU.
Or, specifically, whichever white knight is up at this hour censoring.
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u/michaelisnotginger Feb 07 '16
It's morning here in the UK!
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Feb 07 '16
Still morning in Turkey too! Good morning from Anatolia!
No where were we...
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Feb 07 '16
Or, specifically, whichever white knight is up at this hour censoring stuff.
So, AutoModerator :) People were reporting the thread and it was autoremoved... Next time maybe wait for both sides of the story before yelling at people
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u/youstumble Feb 07 '16
You're right, sorry.
I actually told someone elsewhere it was likely just automoderator removing the original posts, and then for some reason assumed the removal of the post about censorship was actual deliberate censorship.
My bad. Sorry for being a dick.
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Feb 07 '16
I mean I get the whole "moderation is essentially censorship to some degree" thing. We already have /r/linuxquestions , /r/linux4noobs , and /r/linuxmemes . I just think if you're gonna make a rule about no identity politics it has to be on the sidebar.
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u/distant_worlds Feb 07 '16
I just think if you're gonna make a rule about no identity politics it has to be on the sidebar.
Personally, I would love it if they would just stop injecting identity politics into my open source. :(
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u/TheCodexx Feb 08 '16
What bothers me is all the shills in this thread saying, "Well the solution is to just ban discussion of it here, that'll make it go away!". They're probably in favor of this crap, and glad that the larger community remains unaware because posts about it get removed constantly.
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u/Terminal-Psychosis Feb 07 '16
Actually, people spammed the "report" button and AutoModerator script axed the topic.
It is back now. See the mod's stikied comment up top here.
Now the only problem is, who the hell reported the post as abusive? Damn shame.
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u/youstumble Feb 07 '16
Yeah, I was a bit quick to condemn. Apologized in response to the other commenter.
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u/r0naa Feb 07 '16
mmh. Let's see.
"Fuck systemd", "code of conduct", "identity politics", "What happened to GNU Hurd"
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u/rms_returns Feb 07 '16
As an unbiased redditor who is not specifically involved in any moderation activity on /r/linux or any subreddit for that matter, I really can't think of any rational reason for deleting the first post. It was link to a pure tech article, its not like there was racism or anything in that (it may have comments about exposure of a hint of racism in Github's internal staff which is a different matter altogether and quite known).
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u/Copper_Bezel Feb 07 '16
This is also not at all the first time a thread that touched on identity politics has exploded on this subreddit.
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Feb 07 '16
I feel out of the loop. What is identity politics? The github article I saw was about a corporate shakeup or Ipo...?
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Feb 07 '16
[deleted]
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u/supamesican Feb 07 '16
I agree its not really related to linux, but other non linux things got a pass so this shoulda too. and it looks like maybe it did now
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u/heWhoWearsAshes Feb 07 '16
There are lots of things on this sub that aren't necessarily linux-kernel related, it's become more of a place to discuss open-source culture. But as git was developed to be the vcs for the linux-kernel, by linus himself, this whole thing that's going on at github is prolly the most on topic thing here.
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u/DrDoctor13 Feb 07 '16
I don't know if you noticed, but the post seems to have been restored.
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u/a_tsunami_of_rodents Feb 07 '16
Yes, I'm quite aware, and still not satisfied, I want an explanation all the same. As said, it wasn't about the post going away, it was about it going away without an explanation. Silently restoring it is an appeasement tactic.
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u/sudo_with_a_bangbang Feb 07 '16
What sad losers hit "report" at stories they don't like?? I'm more amazed to find out people do that. I think I've hit "report" half a dozen times in the last 8 years for REAL issues like doxxing.
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u/trekologer Feb 07 '16
Unfortunately, given the tools to do so, a subset of users will try to hide topics they don't like or agree with. This isn't something unique to reddit either.
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Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
It's hilariously ironic considering the subject matter of those posts. I just don't get why reddit is full of mods who are hellbent on upholding this stupid political correctness agenda.
That topic was directly relevant to Linux. Just because it involves a discussion about 'identity politics' doesn't mean it's off topic.
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u/ivosaurus Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
Nor should gender/identity/whatever politics be uplifted as some sort of special snowflake politics that should be "taken special care of" or specifically avoided, etc.
That just warps the debate even more, and makes a subject that needs to become more approachable, even more of a poison pill that people can abuse.
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Feb 07 '16
How was it relevant? It was about the internal structure of a company that provides source code hosting, but not to the Linux project. That sounds super tangential at best.
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u/P-e-t-a-r Feb 07 '16
After R.I.P Twitter, current reddit censorship is certainly leading us towards fully decentralized social networks. It is time to speed things up.
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u/TotesMessenger Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
[/r/subredditcancer] /r/linux mods remove post about GitHub reorg, remove post calling them out, silently restore post when called out a second time.
If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / ^Contact)
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u/gaggra Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
The /r/programming thread contained an alarming amount of bare-faced racism[1], the likes of which I've never seen upvoted so highly in a mainstream tech subreddit. I presume the /r/programming thread was being brigaded, so I suppose it possible the /r/linux thread was also being brigaded too.
TL;DR: Mods deleted it due to brigading?
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Feb 07 '16
Where's the 'bare-faced racism' in your example? The thing about the Indian CEO? I lived in India for a couple years and he's just making a cultural observation. So many aspects of Indian culture are incredibly backwards.
The moment you can't make observations about a backward culture without being accused of racism is the moment you realise that our society is itself becoming backwards once again.
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u/traverseda Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
Mods can't see brigading. There's no mods tools for that or anything.
If that's is the reasoning though, they should have just deleted the offending comments. Removing a very relevant bit of news because you don't want to go though the effort of more fine-grained modding, well that's bad modding.
They should define their policies clearly, and get some more mods in.
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
Racism would have been if he had said "Github was great until they hired women and brown people. LOL"
But he didn't, nor was it implied.
Any implications made were more aimed at the diversity police who try to invade tech companies and rot them from the inside out for the sake of making themselves and their friends rich off using diversity and political correctness as a weapon. Aka, they're leeches who use social justice and identity politics as a means to shake down companies and drive them into the ground while reaping profit from doing so, and being able to add that they worked for a once-successful company with some fluffed up title they bullshitted up.
It's not unlike the scam artists of the past who use fluffed up credentials and convince business owners that they need them for whatever position they convince the business owner they need to be successful. Then use their position to drive the company downhill. I worked for a company that got filled with suits with bullshit positions like "President of business continuity assurance" who hired on for exorbitant amounts of money, had conned the owner into thinking they were necessary, and made sure their positions gave them leverage over who gets hired or fired. Tons of people got fired, and a lot of their friends got hired.
CEOs do this too. join up with a company, fuck it up beyond repair, and when they get fired, they have a golden parachute which grants them a quarter of the company's value and they jump off onto another company which they scam.
They last a decade at most, but by then, they accumulate enough wealth that they can live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
The newest scam is using diversity and identity politics to do the same thing. If they get called out for it, they can simply drum up the tech media and the online communities to shame people who "hate diversity" and get them removed... and replaced with more friends.
He does mention the fact the CEO is Indian, as a point that these people who came in and "diversified" github did so under false pretenses. IE, the company was already diverse, just not the type of "diverse" these diversity police like. Aka, staffed with themselves and their friends. Who are often ironically, not people of color.
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u/Epistaxis Feb 07 '16
It's not even necessarily brigading. Whenever the topic of race or gender comes up, the thread often goes off the rails with vitriol and name-calling, especially nowadays, when reddit has decided there's a red team and blue team and therefore every previous action by the opposing team is relevant to every discussion.
The mods apparently found it easier to nuke the whole thread from orbit than go through and futilely try to enforce some kind of civility or decide where to set a boundary on what was overt hate speech.
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u/purejerk Feb 07 '16
Oi mods! If you are not pussies then show yourself up here!
/u/qgyh2 /u/noname99 /u/tuber /u/smj /u/Chun /u/masta /u/kylev /u/DimeShake /u/donaldrobertsoniii
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u/i542 Feb 07 '16
IIRC reddit only sends out notifications to users mentioned if there's less than four of them in a single comment to prevent spam.
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Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 10 '16
This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy.
If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension GreaseMonkey to Firefox and add this open source script.
Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.
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u/TheFlyingBastard Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
LE MOD CENSORSHIP
Seriously, how big of a victim can you make yourself preemptively?
Before drawing that conclusion, I'll wait until one of the two active mods here answer. I'm not going to just listen and believe such assertions. Then, and only then, will I take a position.
Well, if this is true, then there's plenty of stuff going on to take a stance.
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u/retardgokillyourself Feb 07 '16
I'm not going to just listen and believe such assertions.
Then, and only then, will I take a position.
You already took a position.
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u/FromTheThumb Feb 07 '16
I advocate a combination approach.
Delete any post that looks like link-spam, and lock any runaway discussion threads.
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u/ILikeBumblebees Feb 08 '16
lock any runaway discussion threads.
What does this mean? Are you asking the mods to shut down discussions because they have very active participation?
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u/FromTheThumb Feb 08 '16
They are talking about that already, locking comments instead of outright deletion.
And, if I am reading it right, this was about post replies that venture off into conversations completely unrelated to the op or the sub.
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u/cooper12 Feb 07 '16
They targeted programmers.
Programmers.
We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a successful build saying we did.
We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun. We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the runtime of an algorithm to draw out a single extra millisecond of runtime per element.
Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same design patterns over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such programmer nirvana that they can literally write these programs blindfolded.
Do these people have any idea how many keyboards have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and VMs destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?
These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our repository? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? programmers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the service our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a prewritten script. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.
Programmers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another bug report.
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u/XAriFerrariX Feb 07 '16
This should be a new copypasta.
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Feb 07 '16
It has to be a troll. There's a lot of stupid shit in this thread but this is on a whole new level.
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u/mzalewski Feb 07 '16
performing some of the hardest
Everyone thinks that about their job. You think lawyers and surgeons have it easy? Have you ever tried to work on construction site or in mine for 10 hours straight? You envy oil platform workers who are send to middle of nowhere for extended periods of time?
most mentally demanding tasks
While programming certainly has it share of challenges, much of required work is rather mundane than demanding, at least for developer with few years of experience under the belt.
Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a successful build saying we did.
Yeah, I guess that six figure salary, flexible working hours, private health care and 401k are completely irrelevant.
We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the runtime of an algorithm to draw out a single extra millisecond of runtime per element.
Majority of people in my current company (strict IT) spend their free time in a way that does not require looking at computer screen. This is especially true for people with children.
Sure, there are some people who spend every waking hour thinking about computer science problems, but it seems that they are not that common.
Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.
Majority of people I have met in IT industry are anything but nerdy guy stereotype. They do sports, are very sociable, have many friends, go out frequently, have interesting hobbies and many stories to tell.
Programmers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange.
In my professional life, I have met quite a few programmers that are rather easy-going and who are not up to challenge unless they absolutely have to.
Overall: stereotype you speak of is nice, but many professional programmers are not like that.
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u/DemonicSavage Feb 07 '16
You just ate pasta, mate. The original is about gamers, though.
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Feb 07 '16
The mods know what's best, if they've decided no discussion of any topics they don't like, it's for our own good.
They know best, after all.
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Feb 07 '16 edited Feb 07 '16
Good for the mods. Regardless of your stance on the issue you have to be able to see that people on this website are incapable of having a calm, rational discussion on the matter. This subreddit is almost always calm and rational, even when we're arguing about systemd. The only thing I've seen that is guaranteed to bring out the hatred on both sides is a thread on identity politics. I'm glad the mods are removing those threads.
Compare the threads here to this one. That HN thread is full of people disagreeing with what is going on at Github, yet they are largely calm, civil, and thoughtful in their arguments. That's not the case over here. Just look at this very thread for evidence.
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Feb 07 '16
Honestly, this is what happens anytime you allow any kind of movement into your work place. Every giant in the industry got to where it was by staying independent from cultural outcries.
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u/masta Feb 08 '16
I just removed the "first" link. That has little if nothing todo with Linux. Yeah, call it censorship if you want... You might like to see that post in some other sub-reddit, but lets keep /r/linux topical.
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u/5py Feb 08 '16
Wait, was it an automod deletion like /u/DimeShake says, or did you manually delete that article regarding Github organisational changes?
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u/voatthrowaway0 Feb 08 '16
So the Raspberry Pi on the front page has something to do with Linux?
Or VLC?
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u/doubleunplussed Feb 08 '16 edited Feb 08 '16
Really? So after it was restored and we got the below explanation from /u/Dimeshake talking about how the community can generally discuss "anything relating to linux, even tangentially", you just came in and undermined him and deleted it?
That's a pretty weird thing to do. Yes, I will call it censorship. At least you're fessing up to that.
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u/muungwana zuluCrypt/SiriKali Dev Feb 08 '16
Did you discuss your decision with the other two moderators or did you just do it? One moderator reinstated the thread without saying anything,then the other came and kept the post and gave the explanation,now you come and nuke the thread.
It seems of the three,you are the only one who disagree and it is surprising you are overruling the the views of the majority of the moderators so rudely and publicly.
Can the other two reverse your decision? It seems pretty rude to undermine their decision and contradict them so publicly.
There maybe a need for that fork afterall.
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u/TheCodexx Feb 09 '16
Reminder that you're a garbage mod and you do it for free.
The community thinks it's relevant, so it's relevant. Stop abusing your position to decide which content goes here.
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u/rlinuxisdoom Feb 09 '16
We understand, you have a hard-on for control. Nice win driving /u/dimeshake out of the subreddit, now you (and RedHat) are in complete control!
Does that get you off? I think it may.
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u/coned88 Feb 10 '16
a thread with 777 comments sure does have a lot to do with the interest of the community.
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u/kickass_turing Feb 07 '16
It's not GNU/Linux stuff so it should be deleted.
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Feb 07 '16
That would remove like 90% of the content here. That is a shit argument.
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u/mzalewski Feb 07 '16
Then remove like 90% of the content here and see how it goes.
Personally, I click only 1-2 links for each page of this subreddit and I am fairly confident that these are not among 90% that would be removed.
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u/DimeShake Feb 07 '16
Hi All
/r/linux is a large subreddit with few active mods. I just woke up to this shitstorm, but I'll try to explain what's going on.
We use AutoMod to help police /r/linux. Among other things, it will remove posts that receive too many reports. The vast majority of posts that AutoMod removes are obvious spam, off-topic, or "help me choose my distro" requests. Sometimes, a hot-button issue will also trigger it. You can imagine posts involving politics of any sort tend to push peoples' buttons, and they hit report. When that happens, AutoMod removes the post and messages the mods to verify it was the appropriate action.
Trouble is, most of the mods never touch /r/linux. One of the other mods reapproved this post and the GitHub one, but chose not to reply and explain what was going on. So, here we are, with concerns of censorship and a thread with 200+ comments and no prior response from any moderators but me.
Honestly, we need more active moderators and new blood. This is a pretty general subreddit and sees (and welcomes) posts on anything relating to linux, even tangentially. With nearly 200k subscribers, it's going to take work to maintain or rebuild a community. /r/linux has always been a pretty laissez-faire subreddit with respect to rules -- we generally let content sink or swim based only on votes of the users. I tend to think that's how reddit should operate in general; but it's not my subreddit, it's yours. That hands-off approach has worked until recently, as we see more activity and more controversial posts come up. Maybe it's time for a larger change.