all 7 comments

[–]magnora7 7 insightful - 5 fun7 insightful - 4 fun8 insightful - 5 fun -  (10 children)

Yeah there are two halves of saidit... one wants things to always be high quality (aka remove or hide things that are low quality), and the other side of saidit wants it to be a total free for all where anyone can say anything. When saidit was small these conflicting goals were not a problem, but now that saidit is bigger, it has become a bit of a problem.

I'm thinking of launching another saidit-like website that's focused on very high quality discussion, and let saidit be more of the catch-all type of reddit replacement site. In fact I might launch another site that has a "no politics" rule as well, that seems to be a common desire. I think a variety of sites with various rules (and different admins, and different cultures that develop over time) is a good way to actually diversify discussion on the internet and protect free speech. And we have the tools to do it.

[–][deleted]  (5 children)

[deleted]

    [–]magnora7 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

    Seems interesting for a small forum. There's a lot of great solutions for small forums, the problem is a lot of them don't scale if they happen to get popular. And you can't just swap out all the software half way through. Just depends what you're trying to do with it. I love the saidit/reddit software because I know it can handle literally millions of visitors a day with hardly any changes, even though it can be a bit of a pain to get going at first. Although we streamlined it quite a bit so the install process is about 2 hours and anyone can do it without knowing anything about linux.

    [–][deleted]  (3 children)

    [deleted]

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

      I changed one thing and now none of it works.

      Yeah that can suck. The saidit code is easier to deploy on a server than it is to run a local copy, it's really built for performance which makes some things easier. But modifying it is like trying to modify an f-1 racecar engine, everything is already so hyper-engineered

      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

      [deleted]

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

        Yeah a team of 15 people spent 7 years working on the saidit code as their full time job... and it's proven to scale to handle literally hundreds of millions of users a day. So having this software is an incredible gift, even if it can be a bit clunky and patchwork in terms of writing new improvements

        [–]IridescentAnaconda 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

        I love this site and am eternally grateful to all the work you have put into creating an alternative community that works pretty well under the circumstances.

        While I love the idea of "high quality discussion", I wonder what that can really mean. Ultimately I have found in my time on the internet, under various user names, is that "high quality discussion" rarely influences anybody. It does influence some, but at a very slow rate. Not quickly enough to matter sociopolitically (but perhaps enough to matter spiritually). Usually you end up just exhausting yourself.

        I guess what I've settled on is using the internet as a surrogate pub (since there are no meatspace pubs anywhere anymore). I just want to relax, mostly with quips and ironic one-liners, in a place where I don't have to be on the defensive 100% of the time.

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

        Thanks. Good thoughts.

        Everybody wants something different, so I think more sites with more types of rules would be great. "High quality" would probably mean more stringent enforcement on the pyramid of debate. I.e. all ad hominems would result in a ban, and there'd be several admins watching over that. Like hackernews.

        [–]eh-non-plus 0 insightful - 1 fun0 insightful - 0 fun1 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

        If the new website doesn't have pure javascript two-way bindings and http2