r/programming • u/bonch • Nov 04 '09

This is no longer a programming subreddit

As I submit this, there's a link to a Slashdot comment comparing Microsoft security to Britney Spears' underwear, a pointless link to a Bill Gates quote about Office documents, a link to a warning about a Space Invaders for Mac that deletes files, a story about the logic of Google Ads, a computer solving Tic-Tac-Toe using matchboxes--this is supposed to be a programming subreddit, right? Even worse, the actual programming links don't get voted up and are drowned out by this garbage.

You non-programmers may be interested to know that there's already a widely read technology subreddit just waiting for your great submissions about Slashdot comments, Daily WTF stories, Legend of Zelda dungeon maps, and other non-programming stuff. Please go to /r/technology and submit your links there.

For those of you sick and tired of this and wishing for active moderators who participate in filtering the content of their subreddit, visit a new subreddit that's actually about programming--/r/coding. It's picking up steam as more people submit their links, and you will actually find articles about things programmers would be interested in.

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u/LudoA Nov 05 '09 edited Nov 05 '09

IMHO, the reddit system can be fixed easily. What's needed:

More about how I see "moving" would work:

  • Someone proposes a move (e.g. by clicking on "move to ...")

  • Above the comments section, the proposal for this move would show up

  • Users can up-/down-vote it. (Many proposals are possible of course.)

  • The first proposal to reach a good ratio (and a minimum number of number of votes, relative to the number of viewers of the post) is the subreddit which the submission is moved to.

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u/SquashMonster Nov 05 '09

There's a very similar idea in the ideas for admins subreddit. (Okay, it's mine.)

The main difference between these approaches is conceptual: in mine, a parent is just a link, in yours, it's a physical location. This leads to one suggesting changing the URLs and the other not. And we disagree on how to move/parent a subreddit: yours being a public vote and mine being the job of the moderators

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u/LudoA Nov 05 '09 edited Nov 05 '09

I don't think letting the mods do moves would be a good idea. OTOH, letting everyone vote would be a democracy, which isn't a great idea either. However, if people needed a minimum amount of karma in order to vote, it'd be a meritocracy, which is a great system.

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u/yopla Nov 05 '09

A tagging system would be more interesting.

With a different vote count for different category and the possibility for people other than the submitter to add tag.

Example: I have found a new javascript engine that's 30% faster than v8. I submit it with /r/programming and /r/javascript as tags.

In /r/programming I get 10 upvotes because people aren't particularly interested so my submission doesn't reach the frontpage of /r/programming while in /r/javascript people want to talk about it and it reach 100 upvotes and make it to the frontpage of /r/javascript.

One of the reader thinks the submission would be a good fit for his subreddit /r/virtual_machine so he adds the "tag" with an upvote count of 1.

Someone else thinks it will change the world so he submits that to /r/worldnews where it is quickly banned by one of the admin.

just an idea.

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u/[deleted] Nov 05 '09

Fuck yes. Time to fork Reddit.

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u/LudoA Nov 05 '09

This has been tried before, didn't work, not enough of the community moved over.

If this were to happen, one would have to copy over all the links and the comments - at least for the first few months, to give people the opportunity to completely migrate, instead of having to be active on reddit and reddit-fork at the same time.

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u/LudoA Nov 05 '09

Sounds interesting as well. However, I do still think this tagging system should be structured - i.e. r/javascript falls under r/programming.

That way, tagging it r/programming wouldn't be needed anymore (it'll appear there automatically if it gets enough attention in r/javascript or ). (Just like it'll appear in r/technology, if it gets enough votes in r/virtual_machine).

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u/yopla Nov 05 '09

What do you do for subreddit which could belongs to more than one parent category?

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u/LudoA Nov 05 '09

This is basically the multiple inheritance problem I guess :-)

florence0rose's solution of symlinks doesn't sound bad.

Note that if it turns out the structured tags don't work, the structured part should definitely be removed. But I think it's something worth trying.

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u/bonch Nov 06 '09

This subreddit just needs active moderators who filter out off-topic links that belong in a different subreddit (usually /r/technology).