Programmer wanted to develop Reddit alternative

submitted by fschmidt from mikraite.org

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[–]magnora7 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

First, Saidit doesn't seem to support the idea that moderators own their subs. Instead Saidit seeks to impose its view on all subs.

Yes because the moderator fiefdom problem is why reddit failed and exactly how it was hijacked. This was a very deliberate choice to protect free speech, to limit what moderators can delete. (unless they take their sub off of /all, and say it in the sidebar explicitly, then they can delete anything they like)

Second, I can't tell how truly supportive of free speech Saidit is. Are they ready to switch hosting providers, DNS registrars, or whoever else attacks them for free speech?

You mean how we've switched servers 3 times, and kept this thing going for 3 years through endless attacks?

Third, Saidit is centralized. Ideally a platform should be federated and open source so that anyone can participate from anywhere.

Can't disagree there. However I think you'll find your estimate of "One decent full-time guy should be able to get something done quickly." to be extremely short of the mark in reality. It's like a 5000 hour project, not a 200 hour project. That said, I wish you the best, but I really think you should have a good roadmap before you code anything out.

[–]fschmidt[S] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Yes because the moderator fiefdom problem is why reddit failed and exactly how it was hijacked. This was a very deliberate choice to protect free speech.

I disagree. Reddit's problem is banning subs and users from the platform. We can agree to disagree here. The reason I want to develop my own platform is that no one else is taking my approach.

However I think you'll find your estimate of "One decent full-time guy should be able to get something done quickly." to be extremely short of the mark in reality. It's like a 5000 hour project, not a 200 hour project. That said, I wish you the best, but I really think you should have a good roadmap before you code anything out.

Maybe "done" is the wrong word, but at least started. I wrote a forum platform long ago (before reddit) so I know what is involved, and I have a clear roadmap in my mind.

[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Reddit's problem is banning subs and users from the platform.

That is a problem, but they also let places like /r/politics and /r/pics get completely hijacked by shills who enforce a biased political agenda on what should be neutral subs, which itself is censorship because they will delete your comments and ban you from the subreddit. This is just as big of a problem as the removal of the subreddits themselves, imo. There's basically gangs of paid shills that censor everyone they don't like on all the main subs, so it's very bad for free speech. But they're both a problem, for sure.

Your website sounds great! I wish you all the best. I think you might have a rough go doing Lua for something this complex simply because there's not a lot of package support, and it's harder to find Lua programmers to help as there are fewer of them.

But the more alternatives the merrier, I say! It sounds like worth trying at the very least

[–]C3P0 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

You know what they say, "talk is cheap." /u/magnora7 has a good philosophy for saidit because people can't actually be trusted to be impartial. You could take all the good things and put them into a perfect forum. Hopefully people would actually use the site.

[–]BrainsRsexy 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

i havent read this thread very carefully, but i see you picking your programming language and then trying to decide how much to pay for a programmer, oh my jeezus.. you are entirely backwards caddywampus on this..

nope.

as a person that has been developing various types of code for almost forty years, maybe i might have a clue.

the correct place to start is with a piece of paper and a crayon.

start kicking around ideas, like "in a perfect world, things would be like.... blah and blah and blah"..

that should keep you busy for a minute.

my name is Bond, James Bond.

I can be reached at extension double oh seven.