There's a pretty big set of changes coming down the pipe. These shouldn't have much impact on users - it's all internal bookkeeping - but there's a lot of it, and if there's bugs, it might cause issues. Let me know if anything weird happens! Weird, in this case, is probably "comments you can see that you think you shouldn't be able to", or "comments you can't see that you think you should be able to", or anything else strange that goes on. As an example, at one point in development reply notifications stopped working. So keep your eyes out for that. I'm probably pushing this in a day or two, I just wanted to warn people first.
EDIT: PUSH COMPLETE, let me know if anything goes wrong
Are you a software developer? Do you want to help? We can pretty much always use people who want to get their hands dirty with our ridiculous list of stuff to work on. The codebase is in Python, and while I'm not gonna claim it's the cleanest thing ever, it's also not the worst and we are absolutely up for refactoring and improvements. Hop over to our discord server and join in. (This is also a good place to report issues, especially if part of the issue is "I can't make comments anymore.")
Are you somewhat experienced in Python but have never worked on a big codebase? Come help anyway! We'll point you at some easy stuff.
Are you not experienced in Python whatsoever? We can always use testers, to be honest, and if you want to learn Python, go do a tutorial, once you know the basics, come join us and work on stuff.
(if you're experienced in, like, any other language, you'll have no trouble)
Alt Accounts: Let's talk about 'em. We are consistently having trouble with people making alt accounts to avoid bans, which is against the rules, or making alt accounts to respond to their own stuff, which isn't technically against the rules, and so forth. I'm considering a general note in the rules that alt accounts are strongly discouraged, but if you feel the need for an alt, contact us; we're probably okay with it if there's a good reason. (Example: We've had a few people ask to make effortposts that aren't associated with their main account for various reasons. We're fine with this.) If you want to avoid talking to us about it, it probably isn't a good reason.
Feedback wanted, though! Let me know what you think - this is not set in stone.
Single-Issue Posting: Similarly, we're having trouble with people who want to post about one specific topic. "But wait, Zorba, why is that a problem" well, check out the Foundation:
The purpose of this community is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal opinions and ideas can be generated and discussed fairly, with consideration and insight instead of kneejerk responses.
If someone's posting about one subject, repeatedly, over and over, then it isn't really a discussion that's being had, it's prosletyzing. I acknowledge there's some value lost in removing this kind of behavior, but I think there's a lot of value lost in having it; letting the community be dominated by this behavior seems to lead to Bad Outcomes.
Feedback wanted, though! Let me know what you think - this is also not set in stone.
Private Profiles: When we picked up the codebase, it included functionality for private profiles, which prevents users from seeing your profile. I probably would have removed this if I'd had a lot more development time, but I didn't. So it exists.
I'm thinking of removing it anyway, though. I'm not sure if it provides significant benefit; I think there's a good argument that anything posted on the site is, in some sense, fair game to be looked over.
On the other hand . . . removing it certainly does encourage ad hominem arguments, doesn't it? Ad hominems are kind of useless and crappy and poison discourse. We don't want people to be arguing about the other person's previously-stated beliefs all the time, we want people to be responding to recent comments, in general.
But on the gripping hand . . .
. . . well, I just went to get a list of the ten most prolific users with hidden profiles. One of them has a few quality contributions! (Thanks!) Two of them are neutral. And seven of them have repeated antagonism, with many of those getting banned or permabanned.
If there's a tool mostly used by people who are fucking with the community, maybe that's a good argument for removing the tool.
On the, uh, other gripping hand, keep in mind that private profiles don't even work against the admins. We can see right through them (accompanied by a note that says "this profile is private"). So this feature change isn't for the sake of us, it's for the sake of you. Is that worth it? I dunno.
Feedback wanted! Again!
The Volunteer System is actually working and doing useful stuff at this point. It doesn't yet have write access, so to speak, all it's doing is providing info to the mods. But it's providing useful info. Fun fact: some of our absolute most reliable and trustworthy volunteers don't comment. In some cases "much", in some cases "at all". Keep it up, lurkers! This is useful! I seriously encourage everyone to click that banner once a day and spend a few minutes at it. Or even just bookmark the page and mash the bookmark once in a while - I've personally got it on my bookmark bar.
The big refactor mentioned at the top is actually for the sake of improving the volunteer system, this is part of what will let it turn into write access and let us solve stuff like filtered-comments-in-limbo, while taking a lot of load off the mods' backs and maybe even making our moderation more consistent. As a sort of ironic counterpart to this, it also means that the bar might show up less often.
At some point I want to set up better incentives for long-time volunteers, but that takes a lot of code effort. Asking people to volunteer more often doesn't, so that's what I'm doing.
(Feedback wanted on this also.)
I want your feedback on things, as if that wasn't clear. These threads basically behave like a big metadiscussion thread, so . . . what's your thoughts on this whole adventure? How's it going? Want some tweaks? Found a bug? Let me know! I don't promise to agree but I promise to listen.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I would, but I don't think mods should be strictly professional. It's the power balance that gets me here, and while the mods are usually quite good about it, I am not the only one to notice the sassiness which has recently been creeping into amadan's mod notes. And while I obviously love sassiness, it is possible to bring it to a post at a level that wouldn't get a user banned, and he should stick to that in mod notes, or accept that the additional heat he is adding will receive a commensurate response.
Also it still seems pointless to me to see mods in the volunteer queue.
Sass? Sass? Oh no.
I always accept that putting heat (or sass) in my mod notes will probably piss some people off.
I still reject your claim that I rope-a-doped Nantafaria into getting banned. That was neither my intention, nor a predictable outcome; it was nothing more than him losing his shit because I (correctly) pointed out that he's been going out of his way to be antagonistic and court bans for quite a while.
Well, on the one hand, virtually all reports on mod notes are because someone (usually the moddee) is pissed off about it. Or because the mod was too "sassy." But a bunch of volunteers agreeing "Hey, this post is actually pretty bad" could in fact be useful information for us.
Did you read the next sentence? The one where I say "I obviously love sassiness"? One might get the impression I didn't think this was the worst thing in the world. That I thought you behaved spectacularly shitty towards Nanta but that it was an understandable mistake borne of a power imbalance that has previously gone unnoticed because your level of sass was too low to add heat. And that now your level of sass is rising, it has become noticeable and resulted in you accidentally overstepping the line, because you are in an elevated position of respect and users can't respond with equivalent sass.
Well of course. I don't mean because of what you have written, I knew you would reject the idea before I even posted my op. It doesn't bother me mind you, don't think I'm complaining about it, it's just a fact. I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that Amadan will reject anything I say regardless of what it is. If I said water is wet you would reject it.
So you reject the idea that mod notes shouldn't be in the mod queue because mod notes get reported almost entirely out of spite, but could be useful information on very rare occasions (rarer occasions than this presumably)?
Dude, when you rage at me for being mildly "sassy" and accuse me of abusing my power against anyone who shows sass to me (even though you are doing it right here), I don't know what kind of dialog you are looking for. Addressing what you say doesn't mean I am obligated to agree with you, nor does it mean I'm "rejecting anything you say regardless of what it is."
Is this a bit? I said it's not a big deal, you read that as me raging at you. I said it was an understandable error, you read me accusing you of abusing your power against anyone who sasses you. You rejected my explanation so hard you can't even read it. Why would I want any kind of dialog with you? Addressing what I say doesn't obligate you to agree with me, I agree. It kind of does obligate you to address what I say though, don't you think?
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