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Fediverse @kbin.social DrNeurohax @kbin.social

A proposal for a sane transfer of useful information trapped on Reddit

Hey all,

I know many of us have avoided Reddit entirely, while others have been working to ween themselves off the toxic bot nest. Speaking for myself, I know I've had a few technical problems whose solutions were only found on Reddit.

The migration dust has settled a bit and it's pretty clear that bots mass migrating subreddits isn't the direction the kbin/Lemmy community wants to go.

I propose that these explicit recommendations be mentioned at signup and as part of the user's profile page:

  • If Reddit is the easiest to access or only source of information you're searching for during regular browsing, please consider reposting that information to the relevant Fediverse community.
  • Begin these title of these posts with "[RX]" so that Fediverse users know why a seemingly random post has been added.
  • Please tag these posts with "RDX" (or "RedditExtraction") and the subreddit name it came from for easy filtering.
  • This is especially important for technical and detailed posts, as liberating this information will prevent it from disappearing at a corporate goon's whim, and it helps other users transition off Reddit.
  • Use whatever method you prefer for the format of the body. It's more important that the info is extracted than any rigid format be followed. You can:
    • Link to the original Reddit post.
    • Copy-paste the text, only mentioning the authors' screen names.
    • Simply summarizing the info.

General Example:

  • You search Fediverse posts for a solution to a computer problem, but find nothing.
  • A search from Google yields nothing useful except a post on r/TechSupport.
  • Create a new thread on kbin/Lemmy titled:
    • [RDX] (the question you searched)
    • Description of problem, including why it was hard to find.
    • Description of solution, preferably including some indication of time in the original post. (Was this post 1 year old or 10 years old?)
    • Any additional information you deem relevant.
    • Tags: RDX, RedditExtraction, TechSupport, troubleshooting, etc.

Specific Example:

[RDX] Do PCIE to PCI slot conversion adapters require the PCIE or PCI version of drivers?

I have an old PCI card that I would like to use on a current PC. I've seen adapters that should work, but my particular card had both PCI and PCIE versions released. Which driver should I install, or does it even matter?

Response by u/..... in 2013:

Install the PCI version.
Since the card itself is PCI, that is the "language" the PC needs to speak for it to understand. PCIE should be backward compatible, just not physically compatible.

I performed the steps recommended and it solved my problem.

Tags: RDX, TechSupport, PCI, PCItoPCIE, PCHardware

With proper identification (title or tags), it should be easier to add features to the website and apps for filtering out such posts.

I would be even more helpful if there was an option on the New Thread page that auto-filled some of this info or redirected to a form page with separate entries for each element.

Another, more complicated, possibility would be to include a user editable wiki with each community, with extracted data listed as a section. New entries and notes can be submitted, but require moderators approval. Unapproved entries would still show, but with a warning that it hasn't been approved yet.

Thoughts?

17
17 comments

  • Another, more complicated, possibility would be to include a user editable wiki with each community

    This would be my preference. Given some of the big tasks that still need to be done (advanced moderation tools, for example) adding a wiki is relatively trivial - you can piggyback off the existing user authentication and markdown regular expressions which are all the diffcult bits. I wrote my own wiki 10+ years ago and it was pretty straightforward.

    • I'm thinking more in terms of syncing and storage. It all depends on how it's implemented. Does each community have a wiki that's synced with individual users' wikis? A separate wiki per instance? How to handle edit conflicts, etc.

      You're right that just making a wiki isn't too tough, but in the case of decentralized, editable, moderated content, it's probably different enough to warrant an approach significantly different from a traditional, single site/many edit centralized version.

      (We could always temporarily have a centralized wiki and roadmap out the transition later, too.)

      • Yes, the technical aspects are straightforward, the conceptual ones might need a bit of chewing over.

        The way I see it, each community would have their own wiki but an instance could also have its own wiki for FAQs and the like which would then also act as the top level, linking to all the different wikis so it would appear as one cohesive wiki. Admins could edit any page, moderators could only edit their own wikis. You could either have a system to allow users to submit a draft edit or you could do that in a post in the community. Unlike, say, Wikipedia, there probably wouldn't need to be large numbers of edits to a page in quick succession, so community members could thrash out a proposed update or addition in the discussion.

        So, for example, I started a Home Video community and so I might want one page for a list of boutique Blu-ray releasers and another for a guide to buying a multiregional Blu-ray player. Over on Reddit I created a list of third party suppliers of STLs for the game Star Wars Legion that was well-received (which reminds me I must copy that over) which could be worth a page. Those pages would tend to be relatively static - only getting an update if a new Blu-ray publisher or STL maker popped up.

      • And the name? Lemmywiks.

        My job here is done.

    • I think you're right: a wiki is probably the best place/format for this type of information. I think this post is more interested in the preservation of information than it's formating. In that regard I think the most simple way to get the most copies produced is probably the best.

  • Maybe also archive the reddit page on the wayback machine and add the link to the post? So in the event that you needed the original you could still view it without giving traffic to reddit.

    • Yeah. Sounds like a good idea for a browser add on.

      It places a button by the post's title.
      Click that and it asks you to click the relevant replies.
      It prompts for any additional tags (autotags RDX and subreddit name)
      When you're done it fills in the title, body, tags of a new Lemmy thread and sends the archive request to whatever service they set.

  • so that Fediverse users know why a seemingly random post has been added.

    Don't disagree with the tag necessarily, but why should it be random? analogous magazines exist for pretty much everything. You can post it to the right place.

  • I like the proposal. It could be reinforced with badges defined by the moderators in specific tech communities.

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