Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of Reddit Admin

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by termain on Friday July 03, 2015 @01:11AM (#9823630)

I'd suggest directed acyclic graph comments, too, so that a comment can reply to more than one other comment. Potentially super nice, but I haven't seen anyone implement them yet.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by kefka on Friday July 03, 2015 @08:27AM (#9825088)

You mean "Bring back Usenet".

Because that is what Reddit is serving, as well as the previous board sites the people came from.

Usenet was decentralized, no logins, and some were moderated. But this is what the people want, yet they do not know the name.

Most NG servers are shut down.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by pjc50 on Friday July 03, 2015 @10:00AM (#9825611)

Usenet was decentralised, and therefore utterly unable to deal with spam and abuse. That's a problem any distributed system will have to face too.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by kefka on Friday July 03, 2015 @10:19AM (#9825708)

There were techniques we were working on prior to the ISPs neglecting them.

One such technique was a crypto method, similar to what has been recommended in reducing spam in emails. The client has to do some lengthy crypto transform for the message(and NG) they send. On average, it would take .5 sec to generate per message. Small amounts of messages would get through, but spammers would be unable to bulk-send without some sort of supercomputer.

The appropriate algo could be agreed up and updated to increase the amount of time for the message. Even in worst cases, you're utilizing a slow computer for a second or 2. Solves the spam issue.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by pjc50 on Friday July 03, 2015 @10:35AM (#9825787)

On average, it would take .5 sec to generate per message

So if I want to post from a mobile device, I have to wait considerably longer? And if I hijack a lot of computers for a spam farm, I can send as much as I like?

Spam is not only defined by bulk. You still need moderators, and that means a process for establishing and maintaining who moderates a particular group. You need people to delete the child porn and the death threats, and that means a process for deletion. (Signed cancels were a pretty good solution in the end). You probably want some means for identifying persistently troublesome users and their sockpuppets from legitimate new users.

You need hosting so that people can effectively access it despite firewalls and on mobile devices. You need a means of paying for that hosting.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by Slothrop99 on Friday July 03, 2015 @11:40AM (#9826155)

As someone who hung around a few usenet discussion groups well into the 21st century, the problem was less "spam" and more "trolls and kooks". It only takes a very small number of people to completely disrupt a group, and no, "plonking" was not a solution that worked. A new usenet would need some sort of moderation system.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by dagw on Friday July 03, 2015 @12:01PM (#9826290)

Even in worst cases, you're utilizing a slow computer for a second or 2. Solves the spam issue.

Not really. 300 messages a day would only be a few minutes of compute time and could seriously disrupt a large number of small group.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by pervycreeper on Friday July 03, 2015 @12:12PM (#9826364)

Today, we have cryptocurrency, which is a better way of accomplishing the same thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by jarman on Friday July 03, 2015 @07:08AM (#9824764)

Imageboards implement such system, by having plain hyperlink(s) to parent(s) in post body, and JS to produce backlinks and convenient navigation

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by steve-howard on Friday July 03, 2015 @03:38AM (#9824100)

Though I'm sure HN's audience would appreciate it it would be quite hard to get a lot of traction when people think reddit is complicated as it is.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by leod on Friday July 03, 2015 @05:11AM (#9824419)

That's certainly an interesting idea, but wouldn't some people just "reply all" for more visibility?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Front Page Subreddits Go Private in Response to Firing of... by termain on Friday July 03, 2015 @09:40AM (#9825505)

That's a good point. I was thinking along the lines of something that's essentially like reddit or HN, but had a field where you could add additional parent comment ids, so that the parent poster was notified of the reply.

[ Parent | on HN ]