1851 upvotes, 32 direct replies (showing 25)
View submission: The web redesign, CSS, and mod tools
EDIT 2: Join us at /r/ProCSS if you're seeking CSS support to stay.
EDIT: Fellow moderators, take this survey[1]. (Live results here[2])
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't support this.
Many subreddits are different, and have different goals or CSS tweaks. I don't see how this will actually be considered a working replacement? For example if 50 subreddits use CSS to add extra buttons like "Read FAQ" below "Submit a new link" but the other 4000+ subreddits don't, would the admins actually give this dev time to implement? Are the admins actually going to implement every use case we moderators use CSS for to accomplish functionality? I don't see that being feasible. If not, then this is simple a loss in functionality for many many subreddits.
So what, we're just homogenizing Reddit now? And I'm not talking about the visuals, but functionality.
I can never see one blanket "theme" system/style to cover *all* subreddits working as they used to.
CSS has accomplished:
At the minimum, I see this as taking away the personality each subreddit has. We also lose the ability to control and improve UX, considering the admins have been exceptionally slow to improve any UX (even something like link flair).
3: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/50f41p/claps_for_the_moderators/?ref=search_posts
To be clear, I'm not upset by the fact that the time we spent on our CSS is being made useless. I'm upset that we'll be losing functionality and *individual subreddit personality*.
[EDIT] Fellow mods, please remember to be civil here. I may not agree with this decision about CSS, but I still respect the admins and all the hard work they do.
Comment by PraiseBeToScience at 21/04/2017 at 17:38 UTC*
247 upvotes, 3 direct replies
/r/worldnews has dropdown menu to other country subs around reddit. We also have filters so users can filter out dominant topics that tend to flood the sub. These are features that users have often commented on that they love it and want it updated.
But there's also a lot of dynamically updating content on a lot of sidebars that goes beyond a calendar. A couple of examples:
/r/gunsarecool updates the CSS with the current numbers from our site massshootingtracker.org.
/r/baseball (and the 30 other baseball subs) have a ton of dynamic content on the side that updates dozens of times a day. It's not just a calendar, but standings and scoreboard. The links in the scoreboard aren't just to team subs but to that game's specific game day thread both home and away. Userflairs grey out during postseason as teams are eliminated. In fact a ton of the sport subs have a huge amount of dynamic content on the sidebar and throughout the rest of the sub.
Dynamic content in general is the biggest boon/bust I see in this. It could be a massive boon if you provide a system to bring this to mobile. There's been several ideas to bring more dynamic content to the subs I mod that have been shot down because we know only 50% of users will see it.
It's a bust if an enormous amount of added functionality is lost forever.
Comment by spicedpumpkins at 21/04/2017 at 21:03 UTC*
207 upvotes, 5 direct replies
I put a tremendous effort into learning CSS from scratch to make my subs have the look and feel I want.
What happens to all the people like me who put so much time and effort into making their sub have custom scrolling headers, pop ups, custom color schemes, etc?
I don't have time to relearn a new coding method ffs.
Comment by DrNyanpasu at 21/04/2017 at 18:03 UTC
393 upvotes, 5 direct replies
/r/anime is absolutely fucked considering we use CSS for spoilers, and have for several years now (so all old threads will either have spoilers perma-hidden, or revealed). Not to mention that we will lose our comment faces as well.
Who the fuck even knows if they'll support a comment spoiler code natively, I mean, its not like mods have been asking for it for 10+ fucking years.
I'm irate, this is stupid.
Comment by no1dead at 21/04/2017 at 18:36 UTC
16 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I will agree with this as there is so many subreddits with unique css that aids to the subreddits use, and gives it a little flair, and removing subreddit css is a huge thing, and frankly I believe will make quite a lot of the subreddits more generic in style, sure there's a header, and a image, but those only go so far.
The customization on this needs to be through the roof to keep these same uniqueness for each of these subreddits.
As it stands personally this will kill all the /r/css help subreddits out there. And frankly it removes a part of subreddit. There is countless people that I know who have been added to subreddits for help with CSS. Removing that and not adding an equivalent replacement is calling for quite a lot of backlash.
I mean even one of your defaults /r/movies has quite a nice css put in place how exactly would that be possible on the new system.
Comment by timawesomeness at 21/04/2017 at 18:33 UTC*
81 upvotes, 3 direct replies
At the minimum, I see this as taking away the personality each subreddit has.
Even though they're unwilling to admit this, I think that this is *exactly* the point of this design change. It will make everything more consistently styled which improves the strength of the reddit brand. (And in turn potentially improves advertiser confidence)
Comment by IdRatherBeLurking at 21/04/2017 at 19:20 UTC
40 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Thank you. I would love for u/spez, u/powerlanguage, and the rest of them to respond to each and every piece of functionality listed here.
Comment by NocturnalQuill at 21/04/2017 at 20:03 UTC
37 upvotes, 6 direct replies
I'm questioning what the ulterior motives are here. I don't buy into the "it's not supported on mobile and it makes things slow" explanation one bit.
Comment by CupBeEmpty at 21/04/2017 at 22:16 UTC
13 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Add to it /r/polandball which has specific national days where users make specific custom animated CSS style sheets celebrating their nation. Sometimes they are quite involved and people start working on them more than a month out most times.
Comment by eegras at 21/04/2017 at 17:27 UTC
23 upvotes, 2 direct replies
/r/pcmasterrace has changed the "report" link to red
I think our flair system is the most interesting bit of our CSS to be fair.
Comment by Hexatomb at 21/04/2017 at 17:01 UTC
225 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Correct. This change will kill probably more than 99% of all custom and individual work on subs.
Comment by Zagorath at 22/04/2017 at 00:03 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We at /r/dndgreentext absolutely *need* CSS. The chances of being able to do the single most basic part of our required functionality with some other styling system are essentially nil.
As the name implies, we need to be able to display actual "greentext", à la 4chan. Currently, we repurpose block quotes for that. We also add in paragraphing to our greentext by utilising horizontal lines. It's absolutely critical to us for our entire subreddit to make sense. This change would probably be disastrous for us.
Comment by kemitche at 21/04/2017 at 20:31 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Are the admins actually going to implement every use case we moderators use CSS for to accomplish functionality? I don't see that being feasible.
But as a counterpoint, if more and more subreddit visitors are viewing via mobile web / apps, then the CSS-enabled functionality is already effectively disappearing. So whether or not custom CSS stays on desktop, there needs to be engineering work done to enable all the awesome features you listed. At which point, it's probably better off as a unified system rather than CSS on desktop web and (new thing) everywhere else.
Comment by Georgy_K_Zhukov at 21/04/2017 at 20:20 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I agree that I'm incredibly wary without more knowledge of just what the new capabilities will be, but I will note that while it is a major blow to *personality*, for /r/AskHistorians we have always been very resistant to implementing any real functionality that is dependent on CSS hacks, as we *do* aim for a consistent experience across platforms. One of the most popular requests we get is a mechanism to pin the 'best' answer to give it visibility instead of removing other answers. Aside from the philosophical opposition to that is the simple reason that it wouldn't work for a large minority of users viewing through App or Mobile browser. So I *am* cautiously optimistic *assuming* they really go above and beyond in how this whole "widget" vagueness is done, but we've been burned too many times by poorly thought out changes in the past, so....
Comment by Ambiwlans at 22/04/2017 at 21:59 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
r/Spacex has a top bar that in effect supports multiple 'stickies' allowing mission tracking along with an active question/answer section for noobs.
/r/dota2 also uses team and hero icons inline for lots of stuff like live game coverage... so do most sports subs.
Comment by kraetos at 21/04/2017 at 19:06 UTC*
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
In my subreddit[1], CSS facilitates our weekly best post contest, which in turn is used to flair users who have made contributions the community enjoys. No CSS will make this a lot harder to promote.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/
Comment by spez at 22/04/2017 at 00:34 UTC
78 upvotes, 38 direct replies
Just replying here so you know that I've seen it.
These are all great examples of cool stuff folks have done with CSS, and there are many more.
My goal today is to affirm that while CSS isn't the technology of the future for us, subreddit customization is important, and we're going to continue to evolve it.
I doubt I can convince you today with anything I say, but we're going to move forward, test carefully, and I hope you'll be a part of the process.
Comment by jaxspider at 22/04/2017 at 03:11 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'm making a subreddit for mods who do not want the removal of CSS in its entirety. We need to organize in a professional manner. And come up with a plan instead of just complaining.
Comment by ristar2 at 22/04/2017 at 04:15 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Comment by iBleeedorange at 21/04/2017 at 18:46 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This breaks at least 2 of my subreddits.
Comment by iiEviNii at 21/04/2017 at 22:19 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
/r/CoDCompetitive has match threads designed for the ongoing LAN League, dropdown menus with lots of updates. We also have a user verification system for players, commentators and game debts, which would be dead if CSS was pulled. We have some other fun stuff like flairs and gifs that would be gone too.
It would cause massive problems for our subreddit.
Comment by rbevans at 21/04/2017 at 18:49 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It comes across as making everything cookie cutter.
Comment by jb2386 at 22/04/2017 at 14:50 UTC*
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
EDIT 2: Join us at /r/ProCSS if you're seeking CSS support to stay.
I mean, I support you but the admins are not going to change their mind on this.
It's time someone build a site more community orientated than what reddit is becoming. (And voat sucks so don't tell me to go there).
I mean, I've always wanted to build one. I've had this idea of having communities inside communities. It seems to be how reddit ad-hoc works a lot of the time, like for example why not on this new site have a general level say like /r/gaming, and more specific levels like /r/somegame will show up in /r/gaming if they voluntarily join as a sub-community of /r/gaming.
Comment by Mlahk7 at 21/04/2017 at 23:28 UTC*
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I 100% agree with you /u/reseph. CSS allows for so much customization and I love the level of freedom that us mods have over our subreddit styles. I am really dreading this change.
Comment by 73297 at 25/04/2017 at 17:18 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If you're wondering where this is coming from, there was a recent CSS expansion in /r/the_donald which the admins don't approve of. Their response, removal of all CSS, is catastrophic collateral damage, all because the admins don't like the_donald. It's sad to see them literally DESTROY so much work in other subs just to attack a sub they don't like politically. Very sad.
Comment by wEbKiNz_FaN_xOxO at 25/04/2017 at 17:03 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Yeah this is stupid. What makes subreddits unique is the different CSS each has and the different functionalities they provide. Forcing everyone to use a template is going to kill all that. There's a reason every website isn't made with a Wordpress template. People like being unique and creating their own designs.