225 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: The web redesign, CSS, and mod tools
I'd heard some terrible ideas from you in the past but this is the worst by a pretty sizeable margin. Stylesheets may annoy some thin slice of users who want to customize their subreddit more but don't want to learn how, the rest of us either learn or seek out others who do and there's been no problem with that. Even in the cases where this has been an issue, you could as easily have written a front end to generate CSS that's directly editable afterward instead of this excuse for a 'solution.'
Mobile site display isn't an excuse, stylesheets could work fine on those as well.
CSS is a pain in the ass: it’s difficult to learn; it’s error-prone; and it’s time consuming.
No it isn't. CSS is incredibly easy to learn. Reddit's stylesheets on the other hand are sorely lacking in documentation, so picking apart which classes affect which is what makes it annoying for users because now they have to read through the rats nest their web browser shows them to write it.
Some changes cause confusion (such as changing the subscription numbers).
Too bad, that's the cost of giving mods free reign over their subs- some of them alter the way subs are displayed as a joke. Given the number of explicit political subs that seem to push the idea of an invisible consensus on the default front page lately, you admins aren't exactly immune to 'causing confusion' either- and in your case I'd even assert it's with more explicit intentions more often than not.
CSS causes us to move slow. We’d like to make changes more quickly. You’ve asked us to improve things, and one of the things that slows us down is the risk of breaking subreddit CSS (and third-party mod tools).
Then document any major changes a few days in advance and **let things break**. If your changes aren't a nightmare, an alternative way of implementing whatever effect the sub is going for is out there. Unless you're just looking to take this right to complain away when you add changes that are a nightmare. Like you're proposing now.
Everything about this reeks of walled garden. CSS is an open web standard, people can pull from it and add to it, and that's not acceptable for a media site trying to pull in and hold as many users as possible- skins shouldn't be easily exportable, functionality like disabling a specific type of vote (or discouraging votes entirely in the case of np) shouldn't be possible without your approval, or hiding or minimizing branding identity, or using contributed assets elsewhere on the web without easily tracking them, or allowing other platform apps to easily read and display the site outside of the official channel..
We know moderation can feel janitorial–thankless and repetitive. Thank you for all that you do. Our goal is to take care much of that burden so you can focus on helping your communities thrive.
Big changes are ahead. These are fundamental, core issues that we’ll be grappling with together–changes to how communities are managed and express identity are not taken lightly. We’ll be giving you further details as we move forward, but wanted to give you a heads up early.
I keenly await your announcement that the hammer is dropping and you're federalizing reddit and chopping more mod control away in favor of administrative centralization and easier appeal to those cherished advertisers and spammers. Everything else you've announced here points in that direction. When you do, it will likely give me that final incentive I need to burn everything I've built with this site to the ground and go find a new place with respect left for its users.
Comment by WHEN_BALL_LIES at 25/04/2017 at 03:28 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
reddit is digg-ifying.