No, we will not be going dark. The reasons are simple:
This form of protest has proven ineffective on reddit repeatedly.
Shutting down the sub on a Monday will have an adverse impact on our readers, including possible production issues.
We have avoided reddit “politics” intentionally and will continue to do so.
You are more than welcome to avoid participating on that day which will make the message far clearer to reddit through their metrics than shutting down the sub to folks in need who would be here anyways.
It’s disappointing to see the r/sysadmin mods take this stance, but I guess in a way it’s a good thing that they’ve shown their true colors.
Here’s hoping that c/sysadmin thrives and replaces it in the near future as the go-to place for all sysadmin stuff.
I really don‘t get their point regarding the negative impact. A platform should never be production critical. No one should rely on it for solving production issues. That is what enterprise support is for. I think that this is just an excuse for not being bothered to participate
The mods just don’t want to participate. All of the points they are using are just excuses.
It’ll cause problems for people? Like the members have said, if a sysadmin relies on a reddit sub to do their job then they shouldn’t be sysadmins.
It doesn’t work? The pandemic would like to remind them what happened to some anti-vax/misinformation subs.
They’re not political? I guess until the mods themselves are affected?
Now I’m not a member of that sub, but I just checked it out and there’s a lot of members disagreeing with the mods. It looks like it’s just the mod team’s decision and not a reflection of the members’ stance.
I see it as a massively inflated sense of self worth on the mods’ part. Yes, /r/sysadmin has been handy for keeping up to date with events in the IT world. Is it the only source of breaking news? Hell no.
A moderator on the internet with a self-inflated ego? Say it ain’t so.
Someone should tell them that “avoiding ‘politics’” is just the lazy method of supporting the status-quo rather than achieving being “apolitical”.
The only reason they can avoid politics is because they are in a position of privilege to be able to do so
Silence is compliance.
Is it a shock that r/sysadmin is run by people who’s mentality is “keep the trains running”?
EDIT: Lol, they’ve also locked the thread calling for them to join the protest. Cowards.
Lol as if career sysadmins rely on a forum where 90% of people moan about their job, how they’re the only IT person being on call 24/7/365, having abusive users.
Yeah, that is a pretty deluded take on the part of those mods. They really think their subreddit is to sysadmins as stack exchange is to developers
Overall, this is a silly take by the Mods of sysadmin.
This form of protest has proven ineffective on reddit repeatedly.
WE are the content. While I agree going dark for just a couple days is weak, it still shows a point.
Shutting down the sub on a Monday will have an adverse impact on our readers, including possible production issues.
If you are solely relying on Reddit to fix a Production issue you are not using the internet like you should be.
We have avoided reddit “politics” intentionally and will continue to do so.
By mentioning you are not going dark is being involved.
They must have gotten amnesia or lived under a rock whrn ther reddit CSScalypse happened
I just see their response as being close to the stereotypical, skeptical IT guy response to problems. Including having an inflated view of ones self… that "shutting down the sub on a Monday will have an adverse impact on our readers, including possible production issues. really got me.
“this doesn’t ever work” vs “this will negatively impact people”… Like, tell me you don’t know what a strike is without telling me you don’t know what a strike is.
Absolute shit take on their part, and a 2-day blackout is the least that they could do. Everyone’s systems won’t go down in flames because /r/sysadmin isn’t there for people to whine about how they hate their jobs for a few days. If there’s some major vulnerability being exploited on those days, mainstream news and other tech news sites will pick it up.
However, they’re not entirely wrong on the first point. I remembered the 2015 blackout to protest the firing of Victoria the AMA admin and other stuff about Ellen Chao (honestly don’t remember or care what it was all about), and it was huge. Most subreddits went dark. Reddit didn’t hire Victoria back. If I recall there was a PR statement, and everyone moved on with their lives.
When I was searching for that I found that reddit has had a handful of other blackouts since - one about the SOPA bill (which I seem to recall), another about COVID (which I don’t), etc. - and as far as I can tell the most that all of those blackouts ever did was generate press.
They’re already at that point - reddit’s tenuous situation with their devaluation and the API nonsense has been all over the news, from Ars Technica, to CNN and Reuters. And really I don’t think it’s going to change anything either. Reddit’s going public, the stakeholders will have their say, and the site is going to be monitized and crapified, the users be damned.
But again, going dark for 2 days is, IMO, ethically required. For that matter, they should stay dark until reddit changes course.
Oh well, now we have Lemmy. :)
Whether it changes Reddit’s course or not, the solidarity of people in protecting their interests against giant organizations that control stuff is pretty much always a good thing in the end. Assholes in power need to be reminded of what happens when they treat people poorly, and if that means bankrupting the richest man in the world and destroying our favorite website on the eve of its IPO, so be it. Long live federated decentralized open source!
Yeah, my hope is that reddit is about to enter the “find out” phase. If they only stick to a 2 day blackout however (or snub it like the /r/sysadmin mods), things are going to get right back to status quo real quick unfortunately.
I seem to remember protests about reddit stopping subs from using custom CSS worked, at least temporarily.
I think I remember that one, but did it reach blackout phase? I thought there was just much general negativity about it until reddit reversed course. That one didn’t necessarily make them money I don’t think, they just intended to “vanilla-ize” the site.
Part of me thinks an element of this is just to try and tank the share value out of spite, since it’s the only thing that major sub shutdowns could potentially achieve.
This doesn´t make any sense. Their readers will be forever ‘adversely’ impacted when they can’t access reddit through their favorite applications anymore.
One thing is to believe this will be ineffective (which I also believe) but there is another thing called solidarity. Specially when a lot of bigger subreddits are joining.
What a lack of empathy.
Shutting down the sub on a Monday will have an adverse impact on our readers, including possible production issues.
Lol
Yea that’s because mkosmo is a dickwad and has been on the site for 15 years. You know damn well someone that is a top mod for a big sub is gonna be in bed with the shitty admins.
including possible production issues.
“Won’t ANYBODY think of the profits? 😢”
I pity the business where its sysadmins solely relies on Reddit for troubleshooting.
Like it’s the only resource out there.
I dont think theyre thinking about profits here, but abouttheirr users
Cowards.
Honestly, I’ve been saying I’ll still be on reddit for the sysadmin sub for work, at least as long as old.reddit.com exists cause I’m at a PC when I’m working. But I looked at the sub today and realized - like with /r/news … there’s way less posts and content than there used to be.
And what is posted there is low interest. Also, IDK if I’ve “leveled up” (like 7 years ago TBH), but my problems I’d be pushed to post about usually fly completely over the heads of most other posters on that sub. So it’s not even valuable to me in solving problems unless I happen to hit on like 3 other posters who are actually as or more experienced as I am. Otherwise I get silence or “generic responses” I already know that isn’t actually helpful.
So… I’m starting to think I won’t miss much from that sub either. And I already had other time wasters.
I hope we get some more users on here, and people who are higher skilled (is the fediverse a "you must be this techie to ask questions filter?).
Used to love that sub but the top posts too often are people bitching about work or non-technical discussions. Rarely read anything there anymore.
Don’t forget to flair your post!
Yeah. Some of that is okay, we all have valid frustrations. But it went too far and I really missed seeing more news and technical discussions.
I use ChatGPT premium GPT-4 connected to bing, almost exclusively in place now, obviously there is no community discussion but the answer I can get out of it have helped me quite a bit, and I’m an engineering manager
Can you explain - is this using Bing, or is there some setting in ChatGPT premium I’m unaware of? I am planning to try https://labs.kagi.com/fastgpt some also, but it’s not the same exactly.
Premium subscribers for ChatGPT now have GPT-4 that can search the web, I find it really good and more accurate than it was previously, I just used it to write a whole load of technical documentation for me on a niche application I use in work. I gave it a template layout I wanted and asked it to write the document, previously it was hallucinating incorrect paragraphs on how to use the the product as it didn’t have up to date data, now it does as it performs a web function.
I don’t like Bing really, the answers are too brief.
To add, I’m in the UK so the feature may be geographical right now. You can see it in a drop down box when you choose GPT-4 towards the top of the screen.
I’m looking at a post saying they are going dark and even offer Lemmy/c/sysadmin as an alternative. Am I missing something?
I thought the same thing but i believe that was just a random user asking if they will go dark.
https://reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/140ikba/_/jmzyu4s/?context=1
Is the actual mod post about this.
your link didn’t work for me on mobile, this is mine https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/140ikba/is_this_sub_going_dark_on_the_12th/jmzyu4s/
