Don't use Reddit for Linux or BSD related questions reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-10-26 06:36 Food for thought, but please note: * **I disagree** with the headline! > Don't use Reddit for Linux or BSD related questions (It's not *my* headline … still, I expect this post to be down-voted for verbatim use of the blogger's words.) The blog post seems to tar *all* of Reddit with the same brush :-( ---------------------------------------------------------------------- minus_minus · 2022-10-26 07:26 I’m gonna upvote this just so we can talk about it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TrenItaglia · 2022-10-26 07:32 right, nobody answers, and when you have the solution nobody listens ---------------------------------------------------------------------- minus_minus · 2022-10-26 07:37 These types of posts ignore the fact that the vast majority of technology users only use it to accomplish something. Should somebody trying to fix the wonky brake pad on their bicycle also read multiple blogs, subscribe to mailing lists and join a cycling club? No. If they can ask their question on a public forum that is *very* likely to show up in a search for the next person who has the same problem. They are actually doing the community a service by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of the conversation. Also, once he takes a dump on Reddit for using a points system, he’s painted himself into a corner and can’t include Stack Exchange as a resource for the literal dozens of different technologies that they cover for their millions of users. If Stackoverflow didn’t exist, somebody in the programming world would have to invent it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- graemep · 2022-10-26 10:15 My experience of *nix subs (including this one) has been very good. People are helpful and discussion interesting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wishingwellfool · 2022-10-26 10:15 Hey, the complaints are all true but why do we still try? Just like IRL, there's still a chance we find what we're looking for -- a connection in the guise of information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 486DX4-100 · 2022-10-26 10:51 The counter argument is that UNIX and UNIX-like subs, especially the platform specific ones, are less likely to have large followings and therefore less likely to give you a lot of karma for posting. The effort to reward ratio is inverted. So people driven by dopamine are less likely to participate in those subs, and good technical discussion can happen. The voting and moderation serves as a method of curating quality content. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CaptainDickbag · 2022-10-26 10:53 > If you want to get valuable information, why would you try to locate it at a place that is mainly occupied by childish, immature, hostile and selfish people? It sounds like the author is sour about some negative experience. People are dicks, especially on the Internet. It's not ok, but it's a fact of life, and something you have to learn to sift through. While you're doing that, remember not to base your personal value on the opinions of strangers on the Internet. The author has some valid criticisms, especially of the voting system, but the entire post reads like he has regular experiences of negative reactions to posts he makes on forums. If that's true, maybe it *is* time to examine what he's doing. While the information he's posting may be correct in some sense, maybe he's off topic, missing the point of whatever he's replying to, or maybe he's actually regularly a dick. You absolutely should try to solve your own problems through reading the documentation, or any number of the suggestions he made, but sometimes you need someone else to help connect the dots for you, and forums are the perfect place for that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SextroDepresso · 2022-10-26 16:00 > The voting and moderation serves as a method of curating quality content. Moderation, yes. Voting, OTOH, often incentivizes low effort posting and commenting. Reddit and other social media is pretty terrible for technical discussions without firm moderation and commitment from the audience to high quality. Meanwhile, mailing lists and dedicated forums for technical discussions tilt towards being of higher quality simply because the perverse economic incentive of “make shitty joke, get karma/likes” is removed (usually). I deleted my comments on how JITs use deferred garbage collection/freeing and arenas to achieve higher performance than a naive malloc/free Rust program but because my background is in Python (which I learned about JIT techniques from PyPy and friends) it became a “lol this bitch does Python” circlejerk. Even though the techniques I shared can be reimplemented in C/C++/Rust et al to various degrees. But low effort language bigotry was more rewarding for enough Rustaceans so I figured I’m not going to give assholes a thoughtful comment on high performance computing techniques in memory management if they’re gonna be jerks about it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JuanSmittjr · 2022-10-26 16:36 lol. just lol. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrdeworde · 2022-10-26 17:15 This. It varies by sub. The BSD subs are IMO less hostile than a lot of BSD places, similarly there's a soldering sub I'm subscribed to where people are absolute mensches to newbies: helpful, thorough, kind -- and still providing useful criticism. A welcome, a quick answer, and a gentle RTFM ("this sort of thing can be found in the handbook, in \[linked section\]") makes a huge difference vs many forums' "RTFM fucking newb" approach. And then you go into some of the political subs and remember you're one floor up from a sea of fascists and authoritarians. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vext01 · 2022-10-26 17:45 The OpenBSD sub is frequented by developers answering user's questions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thenovum · 2022-10-26 17:48 Funny, ive got alot of help from redditors. Or did i miss something ---------------------------------------------------------------------- graemep · 2022-10-26 17:48 Yes. The other thing about most political subs is that people vote down comments simply because they oppose their ideas - even purely factual ones, and the more narrow minded ones regard anyone who does not agree with their group-think as evil. Religious subs can be similar (as can anti-religious subs) but well moderated ones can be really. Hobby and interest group subs can be good. Self help and mutual support ones are mixed - but there are some good ones out there. Anything that can be sales channel needs mods who are prepared to constantly fight spam. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Innominate8 · 2022-10-26 19:59 How to convince yourself that is a toxic evil place that is unfriendly to new people: 1. Ask an uneducated question that has no thought, research, or effort behind it. 2. Ignore clarifying questions. 3. When someone does finally figure out what you want and provides a solution, argue with them and refuse to do it. 4. Follow a bad response that provides a bad solution even though it explains why nobody should actually do that. 5. Complain that it's everybody else's fault you didn't get the help you wanted. This goes both ways. When you're asking dozens or hundreds of people to take the time to study your problem, you owe it to them to put some effort into the question and into the responses. If you act like the internet owes you an answer, you're going to have a bad time, and this is far too common. I don't want to discount that toxic responses are far too common, but they get called out often as a problem where the problem of toxic requests is rarely brought up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CreativeGPX · 2022-10-26 20:16 Yeah it's pretty hard to take the article seriously when it opens with a massive rant with generalizations that don't match with my observations. The author sounds closed minded and out of touch... Quick to call anything they aren't a fan of "garbage" and to have rose tinted glasses for the non social media ways of communicating. Ironically, their attitude embodies exactly the kind of redditor who would be a problem (posting personal stereotypes as fact and being kind of aggressive towards anything you disagree with), but I found that unless you're in some pissing match kind of post, people are pretty helpful on reddit. Obviously totally depends on the subreddit which, as they note, is also true for these alternatives. Each community is different. It'd be much better to just take all that out and name it "places to go for Linux and bsd help" and just have it be that list at the end. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Known-Watercress7296 · 2022-10-26 22:01 That's halirious. Instead of asking on Reddit create a blog, spend time gaining a following whilst filtering out any Reddit users who may be posting or linking to it. Dude's got some serious issues with Reddit 🤣 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IanArcad · 2022-10-27 00:30 That's funny because I thought the growing consensus was that the only useful parts of Reddit are the technical info and Q&A subs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IanArcad · 2022-10-27 00:42 I see what you're saying, but you have to understand the other side too. Lots of us technical folks have had the experience where we post accurate technical information that is then attacked and downvoted. Like once I provided a link to a replacement motherboard for a laptop, and a guy downvoted me and replied that the motherboard that I linked to had no CPU, and that buying and installing a compatible CPU for the motherboard I posted would take too much time and cost too much money. Then other folks piled on and upvoted the guy and downvoted me. And that's even though you could literally click on the link and see a photo of the motherboard and see that it had a CPU on it, and its common knowledge that CPUs aren't socketed in laptops, which means that every laptop motherboard comes with a CPU attached (with a few minor exceptions). I'm sure plenty of people have similar stories, but things like that make me not want to bother answering any questions at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CaptainDickbag · 2022-10-27 00:59 People are dumb, and you have to hand hold them. I think everyone has a similar story to yours. It doesn't mean Reddit doesn't have forums with knowledgeable people, or good information. Looking at that particular thread though, it seems like people were talking about one thing, and you kinda got stuck on your own point. This is one of the things I was talking about. It's easy to get mired down in your own details, when everyone else is talking about something similar, but not quite the same. Happens to me all the time. One other thing, you were frustrated, and maybe your feelings were hurt a little, and you started talking about why people were downvoting you, and how they were the problem. People fucking love jumping on that. Try to let stuff like that go. It only makes you feel worse. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ClickNervous · 2022-10-27 02:23 So, this is an interesting blog post. I like the aesthetics, the minimalist theming, feels like a very clean. I appreciate how the blog is put together, and I like how fast and simple it is. The content, unfortunately, feels a bit light on content. It doesn't communicate anything interesting... let's see: * The title is click-bate. It starts off with a very extreme view about Reddit. Okay. * The body then backs off on the extremeness of the view... just a little bit, though. It says that it's most likely not the right place, suggesting that you might find it helpful if you try hard enough. Okay. * It then clarifies that the problem is not unique to Reddit. They say it's a problem with "social places on the Internet", but doesn't really clarify what this means. They offer some characteristics around this, suggesting that places where you vote for responses are especially bad... but then again, fails to explain what this means. I know Reddit has this, but so does Hacker News, Slashdot, I mean, this seems like a pretty common thing on the internet nowadays, am I to conclude that the modern internet sucks or something? I understand they explain that the voting doesn't work because up-votes can be used to reinforce a message and down-votes can be used to silent descent... but this argument seems to be undermined in the next section. * They then point out that other places, like mailing lists, also suffer from this problem. The big problem here, though, is that mailing lists, as a medium for communicating on the internet, is probably older than most people on the internet... they point out that some people can be bad... this is true, but the problem is that this seems to contradict the observations about how bad sites like Reddit are... since ancient (by internet standards) platforms like mailing lists are not immune to this. I mean... the thing that toxic mailing lists and toxic sites like Reddit seem to have in common is toxic people... okay. * They talk about how some platforms develop cliques... what I've heard referred to as "tribalism". This is very true, but I wouldn't say Reddit falls into this category. There are sub-Reddits on Reddit that are "tribalistic", where the people in that sub-Reddit pretty much reinforce their own mentality and such, but it's not an "across the board" problem with Reddit. * They finally offer some suggestions... but the suggestions are, in my opinion, useless. The only good one is read the documentation. Everything else is useless. Join mailing lists... but be careful that you don't join one that's toxic... read blogs, but if they have ads, they're most likely garbage. E-mail a blog author, but don't be surprised if they don't respond. Make your own blog (without ads no doubt, I put this in, author didn't suggest this) but be prepared to filter out the noise. I mean, why could they not also write, read stuff on Reddit and make sure you don't post on a toxic sub-Reddit? I mean, literally every option they suggest places all the burden of rooting out toxic behavior on the reader, but for some goofy reason, this exact same advice can't/won't work for Reddit or other platforms... because? Never explained. So what are we left with? An opinion by someone who, I guess, hates Reddit. Maybe they had a terrible experience. Or perhaps they hate platforms like Reddit... I don't know. I can't conclude anything. The advice provided doesn't help because, from what I was able to understand from the post, is "be careful where you go on the internet", and arbitrarily rules out some areas in favor of other areas, without really explaining why. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-10-27 04:06 > … hard to take the article seriously when it opens with a massive rant with generalizations that don't match with my observations. … It's like: 1. a brief but massive rant that's too far out to be acceptable – the **"Don't use Reddit"** headline 2. a less imbalanced subheading – implicitly, **Reddit is sometimes, not often, the right place** (for Linux or BSD) 3. first paragraph 𠄶– **"… mainly occupied by immature, hostile and selfish people"** – I don't take offence, but it's simply **NOT** true for the subreddits that I frequent 4. second paragraph – **"… Reddit and other places like it are often toxic and superfluous."** – true for some areas (I'll not get into statistics), but **NOT** true for the subs that I frequent 5. third paragraph – **"Exceptions do exist and occasionally you will good channels and helpful information, …"** – and here we are, in what is, no doubt, a good channel with helpful information :-) ---- It's unfortunate, because based on a miniscule fraction of the author's work (see below) I had bookmarked various other posts for future reading. Finding the rant neither raises, nor lowers, the likelihood of me actually getting around to reading the other posts, however it *does* taint things a little. ### Background tl;dr 1. a few months ago, I enjoyed reading 'Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux' (I'm biased), linked from e.g. and 2. yesterday, after finding [a minor issue](https://old.reddit.com/r/f reebsd/comments/ydlz5z/how_to_replace_a_failed_hard_drive_in_a_geli/it tl5rf/) with an October tutorial, I sped through [some titles of past work](https://unixsheikh.com/articles.html) … that's when I stumbled across the rant. ### Personally It is, ahem, not unknown for me to have an occasional rant, online. So, whilst I disagree with the headline, I'm no position to complain about the rant (pot, kettle, black). What to do? Well … there's my bookmarked list of things to read in the future. If ever I get to this list, I might begin by reading what (respectable) Reddit users think of the originals, before reading the originals: * https://old.reddit.com/domain/unixsheikh.com/controversial/ ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-10-27 04:33 > … The author sounds closed minded and out of touch … Certainly out of touch with the best of Reddit. I prefer to believe that the rant was isolated, that the author is not *generally* out of touch with things. > Quick to call anything they aren't a fan of "garbage" and to have rose tinted glasses for the non social media ways of communicating. … Reflecting on my own experience: I chose to delete my Twitter account, after a long period of finding myself posting tweets that were, collectively, somewhat opposite to who I am. The simplest summary of that period might be: I posted garbage in response to worse garbage, which, ultimately, did *not* make me a better person. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-10-27 05:01 > … maybe he's actually regularly a dick. I suspect not. The *About*, *FAQ* and *Contact* pages don't smell dicky, and so on. > You absolutely should try to solve your own problems through reading the documentation, or any number of the suggestions he made, but sometimes you need someone else to help connect the dots for you, and +1 to the value of people connecting the dots. > forums are the perfect place for that. Also, mainstream NNTP.† ---- † I'm joking. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-10-27 05:16 Thanks. Your comment overlapped with one of mine around the same time (draft began before I found yours): * under > … I like the aesthetics, the minimalist theming, feels like a very clean. I appreciate how the blog is put together, and I like how fast and simple it is. … +1 > … Maybe they had a terrible experience. … Either had (personally), or observed other people's terrible experiences. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JakoDel · 2022-10-27 05:58 I really, really couldn't care less about US politics but isn't putting all the blame on the right wing supporters a bit.. biased? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CreativeGPX · 2022-10-27 12:52 > Certainly out of touch with the best of Reddit. I prefer to believe that the rant was isolated, that the author is not generally out of touch with things. Could be, but I'm just reacting to the post itself, not who the author is in general. I'm not going to blacklist this author because of this article, but since IMO they undercut their credibility, I read the article with a much less trusting eye. > Reflecting on my own experience: I chose to delete my Twitter account, after a long period of finding myself posting tweets that were, collectively, somewhat opposite to who I am. The simplest summary of that period might be: I posted garbage in response to worse garbage, which, ultimately, did not make me a better person. It was partly the word itself that gave me a bad impression. "Garbage" and words that appeal to our most basic revulsion are used when a person wants to elicit an emotional lens of looking at things. It usually puts me on alert that either the person talking is speaking from emotion and not reason or that they're trying to convince me through emotion. It's like when a news article says "senator guts X program", I know I'm probably not going to get a remotely non-biased take compared to "senator makes substantial cuts to X program". So, my objection to calling things they disagree with garbage was more about what it implied to me about their state of mind. You never hear a person say "that's garbage" and then give a fair and reasonable opportunity for rebuttal or to reconsider the view. It just signaled to me that the author (regardless of how they got there) is probably at a point where this viewpoint is insulated from healthy criticism so it really undercuts their credibility to me. Social media can definitely have negative incentives. But it's better for discussion and debate to actually note what those are than to just sweep them under the rug with vague words like "garbage". Like I said, that sort of shuts down the conversation by not actually specifying what you're talking about, yet asking all listeners to just assume the worst. What's the person who disagrees with you supposed to say? "Well, actually garbage can be nice?" When you're forced to articulate how/why your engagement with social media is bad or unhealthy with specific and accurate words rather than emotional metaphors, that can start to open up ideas about how to engage with it better. If I say "the drive to New Jersey is BS" that's a lot less helpful than saying "the drive to new Jersey has a lot of traffic". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrdeworde · 2022-10-27 16:43 I'm going to assume that your question is in good faith, and give you an answer, though I don't intend to follow up further. I'm putting it behind a spoiler tag because this isn't a political subreddit, and the only place politics really ought to have in BSD is when we debate the merits of MIT vs GPL. :P >!First: I said "fascists and authoritarians" -- while by fascists I absolutely did mean right-wing fascists (in theory, left-fascism is possible, but in practice it doesn't exist), authoritarianism is a politically neutral term. Tankies, for example, are authoritarian leftists, and they revere Stalin, an authoritarian leftist leader. !< >!Secondly, the concept of bias as an intrinsic evil is puerile, and the idea that each side in an argument invariably is equally legitimate and must be given equal space is at best facile naivete. If we start out from some pretty basic moral precepts and one side consistently fails to acknowledge them, it's pretty safe to say that side doesn't have real legitimacy -- even within the wrongheaded framework of cultural relativism. !< >!I'm not going to treat the Sharia nutters who want to hurl gay men from towers or stone people to death for improper dress as the moral or ideological equals of civilized people, nor will I treat those who have a clear and open contempt for democracy and human rights (see: gerrymandering, the state constitutional convention movement, Santorum's remarks on how its explicit purpose is to get around majority rule, etc.) as equally worthy of a fair shake. You know a man by the company he keeps, and when half of the people in the room with you are OK with clearly evil things and you don't expel them, "bias" ceases to be a bad thing. !< >!Thirdly, fascist does not mean "all right wingers.", nor -- in a US context, though I am not American -- indeed all Republicans, or merely Republicans. There are some members of the GOP who absolutely do have respect for the basic liberal-democratic order and human rights, and there are many members of the Democratic party that do not. To use a historical example, Barry Goldwater supported both gay marriage and marijuana legalization despite being in many ways the father of modern conservatism. !< >!In short: In the same way putting the blame on cancer in a body is biased against the cancer, yes.!< ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-11-02 15:44 I half-regretted sharing the link to the post about Reddit, because almost immediately after I did, I discovered an article (same day, coincidence) that's much nicer … linked from https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/yek29c/-/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lenzo1337 · 2022-11-06 23:13 Hmm... Idk, I think solving technical stuff on reddit might not be the best, simply because having a archive of solutions and tribal knowledge stored on reddit seems a sub-optimal solution. Especially given the ads, spam, unrelated posts, etc. It's good for what it is though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grahamperrin · 2022-11-08 04:58 > … I think solving technical stuff on reddit might not be the best, … As a medium, it's occasionally better than other media. I reckon, best would be Discourse. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KnuckleBine1 · 2023-01-13 02:08 >many forums' "RTFM fucking newb" approach. Basically Arch