Reddit won’t work without API access… it just turns into a 4Chan-like cesspool over night without auto moderation.
After all, Reddit is so shitty that HN will ban you for pointing out behavior here as "Reddit-like."
That's not what made Reddit seem like a cesspool to me. It was the commenters.
Mods can be great, and many of them are. But... there's plenty of bad ones out there that make participating in some communities stifling at best.
I was banned from all field-recording-related subs because I asked a question about microphones, and the lack of a particular kind in the market. More people piled in, and eventually we contacted the CEO of a mic company who engaged with us and said he'd make a modified version of a product if enough people expressed interest.
Everyone involved with the thread was banned and it was deleted, with no excuse. I never raised the topic again, but was immediately banned from another recording-related sub when I answered a question about a recorder... as if my account had been flagged by some inbred cabal to auto-ban if I ever showed up.
This behavior utterly defeated the purpose of the forums and stole from users. Yes, stole. It's time that people took stock of the fact that the time we spend to compose questions and answers on forums is not free, and those who deliberately steal it should be called out every time.
"Dumb question, but why is OS or browser support necessary? Couldn't an HTML canvas element and some JS that can parse the file format display any kind of image that you might want?"
Persecuting people who ask sincere and relevant questions is Reddit-like, and it happens right here on HN. And of course, when I asked why this guy's question was downvoted, my question was attacked.
That is pathetic. I don't know exactly what the solution is, but people are abandoning Stack Overflow for similar BS. I'm just not going to go quietly.
Downvote away.
That one is not downvoted currently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203733
Sometimes posts get downvotes "in the noise"; I've had some of my posts go to -1 or even -2 before jumping to >30. It happens; people have axes to grind, think you're stupid for asking a question, etc. and by chance sometimes they cluster just after you posted. Don't assign too much value to it; it's very rare that I see a normal on-topic question like that downvoted.
That currently stands at -3. And heaven forbid someone decry THAT. I mean, my comment two above this one stands at a negative. That's shitty behavior. So yes, I will call out those who bring down this site by attacking other users.
I've written an entire Stack Overflow rant on "a basic but valid question getting downvoted"[1] and this kind of stuff is one of the main reasons I no longer contribute there, so I do sympathize, but HN is not Stack Overflow; downvotes "mean" less here in the first place, and it doesn't seem to be a structural problem. I've asked plenty of basic questions over the years, and I've rarely been downvoted for it, and some of the replies have been very detailed and excellent.
At the end of the day it's impossible to get all thousands of people that can vote on HN to act reasonably, so sometimes unfair things happen. It is what it is.
Oh --- wow --- another SNI clause!