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Comment by jazzyjackson | Hacker News Reader

Yea, definitely more of a mod revolt than a user revolt

I feel like a lot of users have had it up to here with mod abuse too, maybe smaller subreddits with less automation would be preferable to mega reddits with bots that auto-ban you for being new to the community

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> definitely more of a mod revolt than a user revolt

As a user I completely disagree.

As a user, I want to use a UI that works for me. I don't want to use a mobile website that prevents me from reading comments and forces me to use an app.

As a user, I want a service that releases quality of life fixes, not a service that says the fixes are coming for years but instead decides to release half-baked features every 6 months chasing some other feature in some other flash-in-the-pan social media service.

As a user, I want adware, low quality comments, and rule breaking comments removed from my subreddits. If the mods are upset at reddit because the mods can't effectively maintain those subreddits, then I'm upset at reddit too.

As a user, I want open APIs so I can log into different services to see better stats on my own account.

As a user, I want to see notifications that let me know when someone replied to me, not random junk notifications that I get automatically opted into.

As a user, I want to be able to edit my comments while I'm writing them and not have them unrecoverably and randomly delete mid-edit.

This wasn't just some mod revolt, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. I spent 9 years being part of a community fixing other's code and linking to my own code as examples that others can draw from. I deleted my 9-year old account 2 days ago: https://i.imgur.com/m54CBan.png

You'll be back.

Many of us left Twitter not too long ago, and have not returned. I wouldn't be so sure.

That's Twitter. They'll be back to Reddit before long.

HN, lobste.rs, and kbin are serving me just fine.

Polls were held in many subreddits; if a subreddit is the community - which it is - then the will of the participants is the will of the community and those who communicate it.

I think that such polls tend to vastly over-represent the small subsets of those communities who care enough about the issue to vote. Voting is very rare in subreddits so I imagine that probably most users of those subreddits did not even realize that the votes were happening. And knowing how authoritarian Reddit mods usually are, I doubt very much that for the most part they would not have done whatever they wanted to do even if the votes had gone against them. The voting is just a fig leaf.

The only subreddit where I saw a vote, it was something like 95% of people voted for a blackout. Almost nobody is siding with reddit on this.

you mean, it's massively biased to the actual participants and contributors? Yeah, that's good.

The people who care are the kind of people who make the community.

The community is the content and those who post it, aka the core that ties everything everything together.

Lurkers are not part of the community, they might as well not even exist.

If lurkers don't exist, the community doesn't exist. It's well established that internet forums and communities consist of >=90% of users not contributing -- but consuming[1]. A small portion produce where as an overwhelming portion consume.

To say lurkers shouldnt exist is extremely reductive and callous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule

I am well aware that the overwhelming majority does not contribute but consume. Communities need participation, if you are not participating you are not giving back, you are leeching. If everyone is leeching, there is no community. Consumers are not entitled to the content of the producers. Producers both consume and produce.

> To say lurkers shouldnt exist is extremely reductive and callous.

I didn't claim that they shouldn't exist, I claimed that they are not the core of the community since they do not produce or otherwise interact with anyone else.

If a tree fell in the forest and nobody heard it, did it make a sound?

You're right that you didn't say that should not exist, but you did say

> they might as well not even exist

I guess that's technically different. But you're being extremely hostile to the make up of a community. Can only active participants be allowed to claim they are part of a community? That seems very insensitive. Im a lurker, but I feel that I am a part of many online communities. But maybe... "You don't contribute, you don't matter."

In reality lurkers (or leechers as you say) play a big role. First of all they represent the community count -- they show a realistic interest in a topic/view. They also participate in other ways like up and down (validation) voting of topics/interests, report off topic/offensive content, etc. And they play a very significant role by supporting revenue for web forums -- their eyeballs and clicks do count too.

Just because lurkers aren't visible, doesn't make them any less important to the community.

> If a tree fell in the forest and nobody heard it, did it make a sound?

Yah, because 90% of the people in the forest heard it; they just didn't make a post about it.

What percentage of those communities actually voted though? If it wasnt significant, was the poll even meaningful or representative of the community?

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