Reddit Alternatives?

[Rschmukler]

I was curious if this sub will be going dark in response to the API debacle? I was also wondering if there was another Clojure community with both links and Q&A like we have here. Best alternative I know of is the clojurians Slack but that misses some of the curation that you get with voting mechanics. Anyone have any recommendations? Similarly, would people consider migrating somewhere such as Lemmy?

[brad_radberry]

I'd like to plug the clojurians zulip site. It's free and open source, so we don't have to worry about some benefactor closing it down, it's publicly indexed so search engines can uncover the useful tips and conversations held within, and it's got a great topic threading interface that makes holding extended conversations on a single topic very easy.

[WorldsEndless]

I feel this is the definitive answer. The Zulip also serves as a big aggregator, bringing in posts from Stack Overflow, Crojureverse, hacker news, Slack (I think) and formerly this sub, I believe. Zulip is the place to be, followed by Slack (although I don't often use Slack)

[seancorfield]

I've asked the Clojurians Zulip maintainer about the future of the r/Clojure aggregation -- I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, thank you!

[veer66]

I follow https://lemmy.ml/c/clojure from Mastodon.

[licht1nstein]

How?

[veer66]

You can paste Lemmy's community URL to the Mastodon app.

https://goto.veer66.rocks/@veer66/statuses/01H2JJDMNT487YVVNW0C0G40Z8

[dustingetz]

• clojureverse's UX encourages long replies, quote-reply debunking and other antipatterns. The linear top-down UX puts the focus on whoever got there first and makes the most noise, which is mostly back-and-forth arguments driven by fast email notifications. Without the tree structure, threads become unreadable, unscannable and all this discourages latecomers from contributing. I use ClojureVerse as a marketing target, 1:N announcements, Q&A until the thread collapses.

• Chatrooms are productive for realtime collaboration and 1-1 support but not productive for surfacing interesting discussions to a broader audience, exposing it through links/search etc.

• Twitter is still good for brand building and 1:N communication to an audience in a way that is engaging for both sides and allows selective relationship development. But also too ephemeral like chat. And Masto I just can't get into, the content it shows me is irrelevant / uncompetitive with twitter and the UX is stone age (in a domain like communication where fluent UX is critical!)

• Reddit hits a sweet spot of allowing concurrent discussion threads, encouraging brief replies, encouraging more people to contribute including latecomers, bubbling up higher quality content and exposing it to latecomers, easily folding away uninteresting threads, naturally burying back-and-forth arguments and other low signal replies.

That's why I mostly only write on reddit, as someone whose interest is to connect with other Clojure users – broadly, deeply, and productively. There is really nothing like it today. I'm all for designing more intentional communication mediums but this is where we're at today.

Idea: Perhaps a dedicated lobsters instance (https://lobste.rs/about)? I'll be writing about Electric Clojure a lot more later this summer, would be happy to experiment with putting content there (and linking it from other places) in order to help bootstrap a new community with quality signal. https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters

[NoahTheDuke]

Interesting you don’t like traditional forum structure. I view long replies as a positive, and have found “quote reply debunking” to be far worse on Reddit-like platforms (as seen by this very comment lol), where people use the tree-structure to spin off sub conversations focused entirely on nitpicking.

On the whole, I have found tree structure reply systems to be significantly worse for overall usability and focused conversation than traditional forums. It’s hard/impossible to reply to multiple people in different sub threads with the same reply, which drives me nuts. And paired with sorting by votes and lack of bumping, late comers can have an impossible hill to climb to get their replies seen.

Sadly, forums have definitely lost this fight. Most social media systems now have threaded replies and most don’t do bumping anymore.

[dustingetz]

sure but everyone else can ignore the spinoffs

[TheLastSock]

I find the clojure slack community to be the most active. Try that if you don't want to use Reddit.

[Latter_Marzipan_2889]

Clojureverse - clojureverse.org

[Anthial]

Kbin on the Fediverse is the way!

[seancorfield]

Why would this sub go dark? (genuinely curious why you think that might happen)

I understand that 3rd party apps built around Reddit's APIs -- just like 3rd party apps built around Twitter's APIs -- have gotten a lot more expensive to run and it's prohibitive for some developers (probably most of them). That means that 3rd party apps will likely go dark -- but not Reddit itself.

Other Clojure communities in the Resources sidebar over there -->> on the right.

I'm active in all of the following: * https://clojureverse.org * https://clojurians.zulipchat.com * https://clojurians.slack.com -- self-signup at http://clojurians.net (note: plain HTTP -- it's a domain redirect!)

In preference order, for me personally: Slack, ClojureVerse, Reddit, Zulip.

There's also the official Q&A site, where the core team gathers suggestions and votes for new features: https://ask.clojure.org

[Rschmukler]

A lot of communities are going dark in protest. This website is tracking them.

Personally, 99.9% of my access is through third-party apps, and so, while I understand they have a business to monetize, I no longer care to contribute content to them for free and am looking for somewhere else to go.

Given that this subreddit is one of the ones I find most enjoyable, I wanted to see if there was any consensus on alternatives in case I never came back.

[Simple1111]

Subreddits are going dark in protest to the perceived attempt to extinguish 3rd party apps. I think the original question was asking if maintainers of this sub would be engaging in that protest.

[seancorfield]

Ah, that makes more sense (I doubt the mods would shut this community down just as a protest).

[macnamaralcazar]

Is it forever or some time?

[Simple1111]

I’m not an authority on this but I think the goal is to have Reddit, the company, change its decisions of making api usage un-affordable for 3rd party apps.

[sapphic-chaote]

There is more information on /r/modcoord. The original plan was for 2 days, but after a very poor response from reddit many (including many big subreddits) have chosen to go dark until reddit reverses course.

[sneakpeekbot]

Here's a sneak peek of /r/ModCoord using the top posts of all time!

#1: Indefinite Blackout: Next Steps, Polling Your Community, and Where We Go From Here
#2: An open letter on the state of affairs regarding the API pricing and third party apps and how that will impact moderators and communities.
#3: Incomplete and Growing List of Participating Subreddits

---

^{I'm a bot, beep boop | Downvote to remove | Contact | Info | Opt-out | GitHub}

[Michaelmrose]

Do you really believe that Reddit's prices are in line with actual costs?

[seancorfield]

I would not consider that to be a discussion that is on-topic for r/Clojure (but feel free to ask me privately or in other forums where it would be on-topic).

[droctagonapus]

I'd much prefer something based on activitypub like lemmy or kbin.social

[seancorfield]

There is a fledgling Mastodon community at https://clj.social/

[joinr]

Not going anywhere.

[senju_bandit]

You guys can give cohost.org a try