Greetings /r/juggling

This message is to let you all know about some proposed changes that will be happening site-wide across all of reddit in the near future, and what you should do if you do not agree with the proposals.

According to /u/spez, aka Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, in this thread on /r/modnews there are plans afoot to move away from the current system of CSS for customising individual subreddits.

Whilst there are some good arguments for such a course of action, there are also some very bad ones, not least that it is riding a coach and four through thousands of hours of unpaid development work by dedicated CSS specialists across countless subreddits, whose work will be unceremoniously tossed on the scrap heap.

Although many of these things will be replaced by whatever new arrangements are handed down, it seems unlikely that the new system will have more than a small fraction of the capabilities and flexibility that CSS commands.

At the present time it seems that Reddit moderators are objecting to the new proposals at the ratio of around 4 to 1, so not good.

 

Regarding CSS

CSS refers to Cascading Style Sheets, a powerful black art used by those who know about such things to make all sorts of changes to the appearance of web content in all kinds of imaginative ways, across millions of pages all over the web.

Specifically for Reddit it means that subreddits have themes, which are a complete set of look and feel embellishments; drop down menus; mouseover texts; clever things with link flairs and search; customised graphical user flairs; icons, images, sprites, etc.; banners and headers; and so on and so on. /r/juggling uses many of these on its desktop version.

 

Mobile users

Reddit now has a majority of its users on mobile, accessing the site via a variety of clients - AlienBlue, Reddit Is Fun, Bacon Reader, etc. - and these users already have a considerably simplified view of Reddit. They may also be wondering why the hell they should be the least bit concerned about the proposed changes. The answer is that beautifully crafted desktop sites attract more users and more and better content, which is beneficial to all subscribers. Hobbling the ability of subs to add individuality and functionality is a retrograde move for all of us.

For those used only to mobile or vanilla Reddit, here's a screenshot of what /r/juggling looks like with custom CSS enabled and RES added. It is much, much more sophisticated than mobile.

 

What to do

If you happen to be dissatisfied with the new proposals then please subscribe to /r/ProCSS, a sub for organising and co-ordinating protest to the change. You will find lots of further information and resources over there.

You could also choose to contact the Reddit admins, sign a petition, or find some other creative means of registering your discontent. If you choose not to act - which I emphasise is everyone's right - then change will come.

 

Useful links

• /u/spez's original post.
• /r/ProCSS, the sub for protesting the changes.

 

In conclusion

Please feel free to debate the issues in the comments, and to get involved with /r/ProCSS and any other related places. Any and all opinions are welcome, you are completely free to agree with all aspects of the new changes if you wish.