tuning reddit?

[cross-posted to tuning]

The software that runs reddit.com was open sourced today.
For those of you not in the know, reddit is a collaborative
news site like digg.com (but much better in my opinion).
I've been thinking for months about how it could be good
for the tuning community. It's the perfect evolution of
a mailing list in my mind. The ratings system could be
used to generate a ad hoc FAQ. There could be even a
subreddit for "Frequently Asked Questions", along with
subreddits for "tuning math" and "making microtonal music".

A few of us could chip in for hosting (I'll cover the
first year) so we could be ad-free. You wouldn't be able
to get e-mail -- you'd have to use the website. It has
captchas to keep out spammers.

The comments system on reddit is really good. It's very
smart about detecting quotes and avoiding ugly line wraps,
but its threading and indentation could save us a lot of
trouble with all the quoting text in the first place.
You can edit your posts, so no more sending out a separate
message to fix typos.

It doesn't support constant-width fonts at the moment,
but presumably that wouldn't be hard to fix.

I'm not suggesting this as a replacement for the current
lists. Rather, just that we could give it a try. If it
works out so well that it displaces the current lists,
then that's what happens.

Is anyone else interested? Especially in being the
sysadmin, or at least in providing some tech support if I
get stuck?

-Carl

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote
Is anyone else interested? Especially in being the
sysadmin, or at least in providing some tech support if I
get stuck?

-Carl

I have too much on my plate to take ownership but I'd be willing to help
some during a startup phase. Even though it doesn't send email I assume if
has an RSS feed. There is news reader software that will send email based on
RSS.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

At 03:02 PM 6/18/2008, you wrote:
>On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote
>Is anyone else interested? Especially in being the
>sysadmin, or at least in providing some tech support if I
>get stuck?
>
>-Carl
>
>I have too much on my plate to take ownership but I'd be willing to help
>some during a startup phase. Even though it doesn't send email I assume if
>has an RSS feed.

It does indeed. I'll wait for more comments and then contact
you offlist. Thanks for speaking up!

-Carl

Why not a subreddit on reddit.com itself?

On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Carl Lumma wrote:

> [cross-posted to tuning]
>
> The software that runs reddit.com was open sourced today.
> For those of you not in the know, reddit is a collaborative
> news site like digg.com (but much better in my opinion).
> I've been thinking for months about how it could be good
> for the tuning community. It's the perfect evolution of
> a mailing list in my mind. The ratings system could be
> used to generate a ad hoc FAQ. There could be even a
> subreddit for "Frequently Asked Questions", along with
> subreddits for "tuning math" and "making microtonal music".
>
> A few of us could chip in for hosting (I'll cover the
> first year) so we could be ad-free. You wouldn't be able
> to get e-mail -- you'd have to use the website. It has
> captchas to keep out spammers.
>
> The comments system on reddit is really good. It's very
> smart about detecting quotes and avoiding ugly line wraps,
> but its threading and indentation could save us a lot of
> trouble with all the quoting text in the first place.
> You can edit your posts, so no more sending out a separate
> message to fix typos.
>
> It doesn't support constant-width fonts at the moment,
> but presumably that wouldn't be hard to fix.
>
> I'm not suggesting this as a replacement for the current
> lists. Rather, just that we could give it a try. If it
> works out so well that it displaces the current lists,
> then that's what happens.
>
> Is anyone else interested? Especially in being the
> sysadmin, or at least in providing some tech support if I
> get stuck?
>
> -Carl
>
>

Could do, but there are a lot of distractions there. :)
Also, we couldn't do things like enable constant-width
font, etc.

-Carl

At 06:57 PM 6/18/2008, you wrote:
>Why not a subreddit on reddit.com itself?
>
>On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Carl Lumma wrote:
>
>> [cross-posted to tuning]
>>
>> The software that runs reddit.com was open sourced today.
>> For those of you not in the know, reddit is a collaborative
>> news site like digg.com (but much better in my opinion).
>> I've been thinking for months about how it could be good
>> for the tuning community. It's the perfect evolution of
>> a mailing list in my mind. The ratings system could be
>> used to generate a ad hoc FAQ. There could be even a
>> subreddit for "Frequently Asked Questions", along with
>> subreddits for "tuning math" and "making microtonal music".
>>
>> A few of us could chip in for hosting (I'll cover the
>> first year) so we could be ad-free. You wouldn't be able
>> to get e-mail -- you'd have to use the website. It has
>> captchas to keep out spammers.
>>
>> The comments system on reddit is really good. It's very
>> smart about detecting quotes and avoiding ugly line wraps,
>> but its threading and indentation could save us a lot of
>> trouble with all the quoting text in the first place.
>> You can edit your posts, so no more sending out a separate
>> message to fix typos.
>>
>> It doesn't support constant-width fonts at the moment,
>> but presumably that wouldn't be hard to fix.
>>
>> I'm not suggesting this as a replacement for the current
>> lists. Rather, just that we could give it a try. If it
>> works out so well that it displaces the current lists,
>> then that's what happens.
>>
>> Is anyone else interested? Especially in being the
>> sysadmin, or at least in providing some tech support if I
>> get stuck?
>>
>> -Carl
>

Well I'm definitely all for organizing the three groups and getting a
FAQ together. When posting to reddit, the way it works is that the
first person makes an actual post, and then everyone else leaves
comments under it?

Also, why do you prefer reddit over a more traditional forum like
invision board or something? Just curious.

-Mike

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
> [cross-posted to tuning]
>
> The software that runs reddit.com was open sourced today.
> For those of you not in the know, reddit is a collaborative
> news site like digg.com (but much better in my opinion).
> I've been thinking for months about how it could be good
> for the tuning community. It's the perfect evolution of
> a mailing list in my mind. The ratings system could be
> used to generate a ad hoc FAQ. There could be even a
> subreddit for "Frequently Asked Questions", along with
> subreddits for "tuning math" and "making microtonal music".
>
> A few of us could chip in for hosting (I'll cover the
> first year) so we could be ad-free. You wouldn't be able
> to get e-mail -- you'd have to use the website. It has
> captchas to keep out spammers.
>
> The comments system on reddit is really good. It's very
> smart about detecting quotes and avoiding ugly line wraps,
> but its threading and indentation could save us a lot of
> trouble with all the quoting text in the first place.
> You can edit your posts, so no more sending out a separate
> message to fix typos.
>
> It doesn't support constant-width fonts at the moment,
> but presumably that wouldn't be hard to fix.
>
> I'm not suggesting this as a replacement for the current
> lists. Rather, just that we could give it a try. If it
> works out so well that it displaces the current lists,
> then that's what happens.
>
> Is anyone else interested? Especially in being the
> sysadmin, or at least in providing some tech support if I
> get stuck?
>
> -Carl
>
>

At 07:35 PM 6/18/2008, you wrote:
>Well I'm definitely all for organizing the three groups and getting a
>FAQ together. When posting to reddit, the way it works is that the
>first person makes an actual post, and then everyone else leaves
>comments under it?

Yes. Same as threads, except the threads can be rated by users
for quality, as can the individual comments. The home page shows
an age * thread-rating sort, but there are also views for plain
age and plain rating sorts.

>Also, why do you prefer reddit over a more traditional forum like
>invision board or something? Just curious.

Because it doesn't suck?

-Carl

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 11:28 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
> At 07:35 PM 6/18/2008, you wrote:
>>Well I'm definitely all for organizing the three groups and getting a
>>FAQ together. When posting to reddit, the way it works is that the
>>first person makes an actual post, and then everyone else leaves
>>comments under it?
>
> Yes. Same as threads, except the threads can be rated by users
> for quality, as can the individual comments. The home page shows
> an age * thread-rating sort, but there are also views for plain
> age and plain rating sorts.
>
>>Also, why do you prefer reddit over a more traditional forum like
>>invision board or something? Just curious.
>
> Because it doesn't suck?
>
> -Carl

So IPB is like the 12-et of forum software? I'm all for this reddit,
but I don't like the idea that threads could be voted down by people
on the forum that simply disagree with the author's posts or don't
like the author for whatever reason. Seems like in the end it could be
counterproductive, although it certainly would help to reduce the
amount of clutter.

-Mike

-Mike

Mike wrote:
>>>Well I'm definitely all for organizing the three groups and getting a
>>>FAQ together. When posting to reddit, the way it works is that the
>>>first person makes an actual post, and then everyone else leaves
>>>comments under it?
>>
>> Yes. Same as threads, except the threads can be rated by users
>> for quality, as can the individual comments. The home page shows
>> an age * thread-rating sort, but there are also views for plain
>> age and plain rating sorts.
>>
>>>Also, why do you prefer reddit over a more traditional forum like
>>>invision board or something? Just curious.
>>
>> Because it doesn't suck?
>
>So IPB is like the 12-et of forum software? I'm all for this reddit,
>but I don't like the idea that threads could be voted down by people
>on the forum that simply disagree with the author's posts or don't
>like the author for whatever reason. Seems like in the end it could be
>counterproductive, although it certainly would help to reduce the
>amount of clutter.
>
>-Mike

We'd have to try it to know. Like anything else where you entrust
people with power, success depends on if they use it wisely.

One stopgap if things go pear-shaped would be to turn off downvoting
on comments. Maybe we could turn off all voting and just have
"nominate for FAQ" and "this is abusive" buttons.

-Carl

> We'd have to try it to know. Like anything else where you entrust
> people with power, success depends on if they use it wisely.
>
> One stopgap if things go pear-shaped would be to turn off downvoting
> on comments. Maybe we could turn off all voting and just have
> "nominate for FAQ" and "this is abusive" buttons.
>
> -Carl

I'm all for that. Alternately, leave the voting system on, but make
the default view age-based, and then over time we'll see the most
highly rated threads come up in the alternate view. That way well
established topics of discussion don't dominate the view forever, and
new ideas end up lower down the pipeline. Then if people wanted to see
what the most highly rated topics were, they could do that, and then
we could also have ones that were nominated for the FAQ, or something.

-Mike

Mike wrote:
>> One stopgap if things go pear-shaped would be to turn off downvoting
>> on comments. Maybe we could turn off all voting and just have
>> "nominate for FAQ" and "this is abusive" buttons.
>
>I'm all for that. Alternately, leave the voting system on, but make
>the default view age-based, and then over time we'll see the most
>highly rated threads come up in the alternate view.

Yes, that might be a good way.

>That way well established topics of discussion don't dominate the
>view forever,

Well, age * rating does that, as long as you put a big enough
exponent on age (actually youth).

-Carl

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Mike wrote:
> >> One stopgap if things go pear-shaped would be to turn off
downvoting
> >> on comments. Maybe we could turn off all voting and just have
> >> "nominate for FAQ" and "this is abusive" buttons.
> >
> >I'm all for that. Alternately, leave the voting system on, but make
> >the default view age-based, and then over time we'll see the most
> >highly rated threads come up in the alternate view.
>
> Yes, that might be a good way.
>
> >That way well established topics of discussion don't dominate the
> >view forever,
>
> Well, age * rating does that, as long as you put a big enough
> exponent on age (actually youth).
>
> -Carl
>
From Robert. I'm all for it. When do we get started? (Just kidding).