You guys saw saidit got mentioned in a "The Atlantic" article a ways back, right?

submitted by magnora7 from theatlantic.com

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[–][deleted] 10 insightful - 6 fun10 insightful - 5 fun11 insightful - 6 fun -  (27 children)

Nice! Here's the lead Ruqqus dev saying he wishes he would have thought of your two-upvotes-no-downvotes idea. I happened upon it the the other day, thought you'd dig it https://tube.4aem.com/w/jDcF3z8p1B4A7DdAGM4kfU?start=2m40s * now with timestamp

[–][deleted]  (7 children)

[deleted]

    [–]Zapped 11 insightful - 3 fun11 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

    I think I remember the Ruqqus founder talking with u/Magnora7 about getting his site running and M7 offered free advice. He seemed excited and grateful at the time.

    [–]magnora7[S] 8 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    Yeah I tried to form an alliance with them and offer help, but they seemed like their plates were full.

    [–]American_ 9 insightful - 5 fun9 insightful - 4 fun10 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

    Lul, they wish. How long was it before they bent down and blew SJWs and shut it down?

    [–][deleted] 7 insightful - 4 fun7 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 4 fun -  (2 children)

    hahaha yes, it's a terrible example. His +general community and kicking posts to there is way more interesting.

    my hot take is ruqqus never had a /s/subscribed aka 'popular' feed, which really fucked them and ultimately ruined the site. because this feed didn't exist, they had no way to show logged out 'normies' 'tame' content. they could only show them the /s/all feed in its full free speech glory.

    their ideas for fixing this issue were insane, like admins marking which subs were offensive and which were not, or prompting you to choose what you were interesting in before seeing any content, like a damn online dating site.

    [–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Insightful and fascinating stuff I hadn't considered before.

    [–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    That makes a lot of sense, I agree with that analysis. New users saw their most extreme side right away and ruqqus admins didn't have a way to change that without just changing the whole site culture.

    [–]magnora7[S] 8 insightful - 4 fun8 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 4 fun -  (4 children)

    Check this out, I was looking around for more saidit-related media and I found this guy showing people saidit in arabic with 1,800 views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LXZApOIM0c

    That's a new one.

    [–][deleted] 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (2 children)

    I see hearts and smiley face emojis, whew....

    [–]Zapped 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    It looked like he was using s/technology as a backdrop for the tutorial, too.

    [–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    Lol. I'm just impressed the arabic works and is usable, I've never seen the saidit arabic language pack in action before

    [–]Zapped 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    At the 6:30 of the video: Ah, yes. I remember the "Horse Cock Enthusiast > Nazi" post. At least it was citing how crazy Reddit has become.

    [–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (8 children)

    I love his praise of saidit (and man does it warm my heart to hear someone knowledgeable say "I wish we had thought of that"). I also think he is dead-on about his assessment that saidit got stuck being perceived publicly as "just a reddit clone". Even though we made a lot of changes to the functionality, he is correct about the general perception of saidit. Just kind of reaffirms my idea that we should launch another separate site and just pay someone on fiverr.com like $500 to completely redo all the CSS to look modern (and most importantly very different from old.reddit.com style), name it like xangleborp.com or something and roll the dice again. And just let saidit keep being saidit. Our costs are so low that we could run 5 websites for the amount of money it took ruqqus to run one, lol.

    [–][deleted] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (7 children)

    we should launch another separate site and just pay someone on fiverr.com like $500 to completely redo all the CSS to look modern

    Works for me. I'd like to see the saidit branding change to more accurately reflect what it is, something like 'civilly debate anything'. Maybe that's just small potatoes but it could help toward not being "just a reddit clone". I love how the Ruqqus guy throws that criticism our way all the time while he also builds "just a reddit clone".

    [–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

    I've realized the difference between "something totally new" and "just a reddit clone" is literally just the appearance of the UI for 99% of people. Ruqqus was "different" literally only because it looked different. I think genuinely many people see old.reddit.com layout and they instinctually assume it's corrupt in the same way because it visually looks the same. This is one thing ruqqus got right, and I'd say honestly it's the main reason they caught on so much. It just looked fresh.

    I'll start poking around fiverr and see if I can find someone competent who will take on this huge CSS project.

    [–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

    they instinctually assume it's corrupt in the same way because it visually looks the same

    You're totally right, it's the goddamn CSS. They constantly talked about Ruqqus being purple.

    I'd say honestly it's the main reason they caught on so much

    It helped for sure, but I think their killer feature was their "US free speech" content policy. They were citing case law and shit in their content policy docs. They unleashed that amidst the /r/thedonald slow push off of Reddit. They pulled in Trumpers who were scared of Voat. But then it all backfired when Voat imploded over their insane hosting costs. You are right about us being able to run 5 websites for the cost of 1, that's one of our killer features. Aaron Swartz and Spez designed it well back in the day.

    [–]JasonCarswell 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

    I'm as keen as anyone on good branding, design, and makeovers, but I wonder if there are any other more pressing issues that need to be dealt with first.

    [–]MarkJefferson 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Like updating the app, maybe?

    [–]MarkJefferson 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

    You're totally right, it's the goddamn CSS. They constantly talked about Ruqqus being purple.

    They really had a purple fetish. Frankly, I always felt Ruqqus interface was pretty ugly. It had those needlessly large guild links on the side, when it could just show more links at a glance if they cut out the icons. Saidit is so much more simple and pleasant to look at. And I never had a problem using the desktop interface. And you can save comments/posts. Like, sure it's an old.reddit clone- but if the non-clones look and work like Ruqqus, then well...

    Well, they were still loads better than voat, I guess.. lol. Terrible site that.

    [–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Yeah I wasn't a fan of their UI either. They wasted like 250px of vertical space on every list page with the fake "submit a post" field.

    And you can save comments/posts.

    amen

    [–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    It helped for sure, but I think their killer feature was their "US free speech" content policy.

    Yeah that's a good point, but they were far from unique in that regard. This plus their CSS (and the fact the site worked smoothly) is truly the thing that set them apart. Then they just lost control of the culture once it grew past a certain size, and I think the ruqqus admin team fractured from external pressures (real or manufactured). So the craziness of the culture they manufactured ended up being their downfall, in a way. They had a tiger by the tail and lost control. Meanwhile saidit has a more level-headed culture, which is more sustainable.

    You are right about us being able to run 5 websites for the cost of 1, that's one of our killer features. Aaron Swartz and Spez designed it well back in the day.

    Amen to that!

    [–]magnora7[S] 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    Nice. It is great to see people who know what they're talking about, re-walking the pathway we've already completed.

    [–]JasonCarswell 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

    PeerTube Incompatible browser

    We are sorry but it seems that PeerTube is not compatible with your web browser.

    Please try with the latest version of Mozilla Firefox.

    If you think this is a mistake, please report it.

    I'm using the latest Basilisk which DuckDuckGo always thinks is PaleMoon - both are Firefox-based.

    [–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woIFPpfnbwI

    [–]Zapped 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    At 2:57 ".....which I know they've done a lot of their own hard development work to improve upon the Reddit code base....."

    Pat yourself on the back, why don't ya?

    [–]Airbus320 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    Thats strange