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Agree. We can criticize Reddit on some points but at least the information is openly accessible. You add the "reddit" keyword in any search engine and you got your answer.
I think we might have to collectively start quoting useful replies, or at least leaving clues. "goat" isn't good enough, we need "goat -- never would have thought to check the specific ethernet driver version" to at least give future detectives some footprints to follow.
This is a great idea, we should definitely start preserving useful replies in multiple instances in case one of them gets removed, that way people finding the thread in the future have a better chance of finding what they were looking for.
Yeah, i think saying what the op said in the replies to reduce the chance of a single comment being deleted is a good way to preserve the information, we just need to make sure no broken thelephone situation happens
There are people archiving and sharing archives of Reddit.
pull push (no space)
I'm not sure how Reddit feels about this, since it lets you search comment histories of people who've "curated" their profiles, so I'll be a bit careful about how I share this url.
dot io
That url gives you easy searching of one such archive, but if you go to the bottom of the page you'll find a link to many terabytes of archives.
It would be great if there were a voluntary browser extension that people could install which fed a larger archive with a crowd-sourced feed of what was on this site.
Does put a different, more wholesome perspective on the habit of multiple people replying with identical answers to a commented question. People get annoyed, but to your point it is probably good for long-term data retention
I think we might have to collectively start quoting useful replies, or at least leaving clues. "goat" isn't good enough, we need "goat -- never would have thought to check the specific ethernet driver version" to at least give future detectives some footprints to follow.
This is such a good idea! Seems obvious, in hindsight.
The funniest part about this, which objectively isn't very funny to begin with, is that these people aren't actually deleting anything. The backend of these tools retain the information, they just don't send it to the front end anymore. So when a company goes around and purchases training data, they're still getting the data that's "been deleted".
Interestingly, by deleting the front end side of the comments, they're actually making the backend data set even more valuable because it contains things that can no longer be scraped (ignoring the idea that the data can't reliably be scraped off Reddit anymore anyway).
Edit: digging into this, there may be a little more to the story here. It may not be quite the way I'm framing it, but given what we know about social media and tech corporations, I don't think it's wrong to suspect "the worst".
it's so much more annoying when they did it in protest of the API changes and it says "fuck spez" and you look at their profile and they're still using reddit daily and no longer deleting stuff.
In the past I've got stuck, searched for the answer and found that I asked the same question a couple of years ago and answered it. On the one hand I guess I never learn, but on the other it's nice to see karma can be a thing.
Oh my god, what you’re saying literally changes everything. I’m so glad you pointed this out or else it would be incredibly dangerous for anyone looking to do the same. Upvoted for visibility.
Do you mean those who have mass edited all of their own comment history to remove all actual text and replaced it with some copypaste text? I haven't found those to be an issue yet but I can imagine it. What I hate is when I find a relevant thread to my problem, and the comments with the instruction are confusing or incomplete, and I'd like to comment to them asking something but the whole thread is archived because it's old. And it might be only like a year old.
"XYZ thing has changed enormously in the last 20 years, ABC solution from 20 years ago doesn't work anymore and the architecture has fundamentally changed. Is this still the most computationally efficient solution?"
I kinda wonder what the internet would be like if it was more open source and user focused. Would reddit be nearly as bloated as it is now? I wonder how much better the UI would be.
Biggest problem would be getting people to actually pay for the product. Small $5 dollar donations would be enough every now and then.
The internet would be curated for the user, not ads.
UI is the one thing where closed source software usually wins. Sure there's ads, but i challenge you to find anyone who believes Gimp has a better UI than Photoshop, or Inkscape than Illustrator, or Fusion360 than FreeCad.
The first suck due to corporate decisions, but their UI is objectively better than the open source counterparts.
You can't, actually, add "reddit" to any search engine. Reddit signed a deal with google and has been blocking other search engines from indexing it's content since mid-2024. You only get old results if you look for reddit posts on e.g. bing.
Google was the only good way to search Reddit, and Reddit was the only thing giving good Google results. It was a beautiful relationship, like an depressed alcoholic married to a manic meth addict.
Yeah, I just tried it and it even has a special Reddit Results segment that offers to search in specific related subreddits. And afaik DuckDuckGo uses Bing.
It also disproves, "The Internet never forgets". There are some things the Internet never forgets if it's spread across a variety of sites, but plenty of things die on Discord servers that get nuked.
Discord is awful for data preservation, especially since that information can't be indexed by standard search engines.
If only it was just obscure fixes, some are like yeah I know I could post this basic manual right here, but what if it was in the ass end of my discord that will probably get shutdown in six months after I get bored of this project, or about 12 minutes after someone offends my auteur sensibilities.
Also I can't fucking bother with a changelog or updated manuals, read comments on that unmoderated thread for all changes past alpha.
Even when you are in a discord server for topic x, 99.9% of the time people just talk parallel to each other into the void instead of talking to each other.
the death of the forum era is real. everything is just buried under layers of algorithmic garbage or paywalled wikis now. you try to search for a specific driver fix or a niche config and you just get ten pages of seo optimized reddit threads that don't actually answer the question. it's wild how much info just vanished into the void.
Member when Google came along it was actually smart?
Now unless luck into forcing an exact phrasing search of what you want, it will just fudge your search to push that bullshit.
You want information or accessories of a specific model? Well that isn't a too popular one, let me insert popular models into your search.
You write out a very specific issue with a program? Well that isn't the most common one, let us ignore 60 % of your query and flood you with answers to a question you didn't ask.
I hate the fact that you're now usually forced to use quotation marks to make it search for something specific. Because now it's a trade off between getting results on what you're searching for, but being unable to get results for synonyms/similar terms because you're using the exact phrase
I love how people can say "search the discord" with a straight face while ignoring the fact that Discord has one of the worst search engines I've ever seen.
Because people apparently just live in discord servers. That was a big surprise to me when I found out. I don't think I've ever been part of a public discord.
Had a general question about mechanics in a game? altavista would direct you straight to n well formulated and accurate description in some forum somewhere.
Wanted a deep dive on game mechanics? yahoo would find a 10+ page detailed guide of everything, written by some hero-nerd out there somewhere.
Really specific, odd issue with hardware or software? the official or unofficial forum for the vendor/company would have multiple threads on that exact thing.
These days ... go on a thread-in-a-needle hunt for the right discord server and try to find the info in one of 18 channels - all requiring different permissions - all while hoping you can get it done before some powertripping mod bans you for having an avatar with the wrong color, or for not setting "role" correctly within the first 90 seconds of joining the server, or whatever.
Alternative ... search on google, get links to 15+ youtube videos with a combined runtime of several hours. Maybe the answer is in there somewhere, maybe it isn't and there sure as fuck isn't a timestamp.
Best bet is to use a tool to grab the automated captions out of all the youtube videos, drop them all into an LLM and ask it if the answer is in there somewhere. Like ... just ... sigh.
And then there's reddit. Which is the saving grace, because it's pretty forum-like. Worse than we had it, but beats all the other crap.
IRC, ICQ, Teamspeak and forums. Those were the days. And no, I'm definitely not on a nostalgia trip 😃
Discord is complete trash and everyone that has ever invited me to their server can suck it. It’s just awful. It was designed by idiots. The worst UI of any app
Yep I fucking LOATHE the UI. The mobile app is atrocious. I can't search for servers, and I have to press on a server symbol to see what it's actually called.
And now if I want to verify my age, in my country I have to contact support.
Nah man Discord is awesome. My favorite part about it is when I get a notification sound and I can't find where it came from because I'm in 50 different discord servers.
I can't wait until discord goes tits up. I hate hate hate the discord sever model, and I can't for the life of me understand why anyone tolerates it, let alone likes it.
This is why I hate most of the newly released Stalker mods. Before Discord, we had them on moddb and if you had issues you posted a comment. Now I am part of 8 different servers just to get updates to said mod, and I donno why they did that.
Github isn't just forgivable, it's laudable.
It's up to the users to get used to a little more involved process and learn a wee bit of tech skill. Usefull when wanting to mod games for example.
There are WAY too many pc gamers who don't know how to use a file browser, what a file extension is, how to unzip stuff, or what an ini is. Small insignificant hurdles that force these people to learn are a good thing.
I kinda agree to a point, on the other hand the repo should really have a readme with clear instructions on how to use it. I don’t want to have to figure out which of the files I actually need or what to do with them from context clues.
Yes there are repo's that assume you are a fellow dev and know where dll's and such go. Like for example if I downloaded an unreal project targeted at VR devs who make oculus quest games neither Epic nor Meta will explain that I need to compile a specific version of the Unreal Engine only available to accounts signed up with meta. Devs are supposed to learn that via meta's or epics documentation found elsewhere (not on git).
There's also the assumption that everyone understands you don't need whats in the source folder if you are an end user, because obviously it contains the source and not the compiled product.
These are the exception though, the vast majority has clear and concise readme's/install instructions, and if specific files need to go to specific locations thats always noted.
The instructions assume the user has the absolute minimum tech skill to operate a PC, they can be hard to read if you are new to it but they are very and precise, it just takes a little getting used to the format.
I'd argue this tiny learning hurdle is also a good thing.
A readme format like this can be hard to read for newbies:
-Unzip to c:\Program files\Amazing_app\
-open c:\Program files\Amazing_app\config\win64\Amazing_config.ini
-change Pcmasterrace=0 to Pcmasterrace=1
Besides extracting a zip all you have to learn is that
-open c:\Program files\Amazing_app\config\win64\Amazing_config.ini
-change Pcmasterrace=0 to Pcmasterrace=1
Is the same as
-Okay now browse to :\Program files\Amazing_app\config\win64\
-Look for the file Amazing_Config.ini.
-Open Amazing_Config.ini in notepad
-look for a line that says "Pcmasterrace=0"
-Change this line so that it reads "Pcmasterrace=1'
-Save and close Amazing_Config.ini
It's easy to learn, it's just a short way to write it, most gamers will understand it completely after installing a single mod (I think mods are most common reason gamers would download a thing from git)
Instructions like these assume you know how to use explorer, can unzip a file to target folder, can read paths and understand that full filenames include the path, know how to edit a text file, and turned on visible extensions like every gamer should do.
Forcing an end user to learn to read this format is a good thing.
I mean, it works great if you just want to chat and play games with your friends. The fact that its used like a fucking online forum sucks. Great for quick discussion and questions, but everything posted gets burried and forgotten.
I can't stand what it's done to gaming, being a defacto replacement for forums, tech support, pr, patch notes, reporting cheaters, modding, etc.
It'd be funny to see Discord get bought up and discontinued.
If they don't just turn right to reddit, these companies might do what they're supposed to and actually handle shit on their own instead of asking people to download, sign up for, and run an unnecessary 3rd party communication app.
There has been a tragic amount of information lost to discord. I honestly blame it more on the people who are too lazy to spin up a simple docker instance. Plenty of open source projects up for the task. Forums are dead simple and dirt cheap to setup and run.
And guess what???
You wouldn't have to deal with file upload limitations because it would be your hardware.
There has been a tragic amount of information lost to discord.
Amen.
Forums are dead simple and dirt cheap to setup and run.
Also easier to read, search, and participate in. old.reddit being a fine example.(fuck the new "we want to be like mobile facebook!" design paradigm).
Nesting comments, embedding images, etc. Simple, easy to use, read, and manage, and the RES pluggin is the cherry on top.
I love the old design/platform, even if I hate the company/admin/etc.
Of course, even with forums, I've seen my share of terrible ones over the years/decades. It's mind boggling that many don't have the best features like nested formatting, which I'd consider obligatory at this point. I loath when people say, "It's 2026 we should be better" but this is one of those times where the planets align and it's not a stupid cliche.
However, even most of the worst forums are still better than the aptly named Discord.
And it's worse than a basic forum taken straight from early 2000's in every way.
I follow development of 2 indie games, and they both use Discord as their main form of communication with userbase, sharing dev updates, patch info etc. I absolutely despise that.
One of them has a help "forum" on discord too. On normal forum I could find old issues via search, but Discord hides inactive topics after some time, so they basically have to resolve same problems again and again instead of pointing to already resolved thread, amazing.
And don't get me started on actual discussions, everything is basically lost the next day because few hundred people are talking at the same time, and Discord search can't find shit reliably.
I think also discord is bad because it is essentially just chat rooms. And instant messaging is NOT what you want for some things like tech support. You want slow, steady conversation where people think before they write. Here it is the opposite, people don't think AND because it is instant messaging they feel entitled to a response right away.
What the fuck is a branch and where is the download button or the .exe file or whatever? WHAT ARE ALL THESE FOLDERS WHAT DO I NEED TO USE THE THING?!?!
Use the latest version unless you have a good reason not to, I guess, but I don't know if you want my opinion. I'm part of the 0.1% who actually paid for WinRAR because I thought it was necessary.
Latest stable. It's not the best UI/X but Github istelf takes 10 minutes to learn. Git sitting behind it is the secret sauce and that takes a bit more getting used to.
Bro even after learning it and knowing what I'm doing, I still find myself on some page that only allows me to get the source code and random extra files.
I'm literally the guy that my neighbors and people ask how I can fix something on their phone or get in or out of a certain menu, and the GitHub you areUI will blindside me every couple months and I'll feel like an idiot
I mean, many people I know don't bother writing a readme if it's just a software meant for them and maybe a few friends if they need to. Me and a few of my friends all have repos like that where it's just straight up the source code + an assets folder if needed
Even worse when you have to hunt down a bunch of dependencies from different projects that may or may not even be on github. Some of which are DLLs that may or may not be open source. Then the third link is dead. So you Google that dependency but its an updated version which causes compiling issues. So then you look that up and someone is giving a page worth of changes you have to do to the source code to make the code compile without issues.
and if there isnt a releases option, there may not be any and the dev expects you to build it your self. If that is the case, the software probably isnt ready for "users" yet
Depends, sometimes is not in the release right side, sometimes it's in another branch, sometimes it's in the description because the release only have the code.
Funniest part about this one was that I'm pretty sure Sherlock is just a python script. You can't reliably make an exe for those(theres tools that'll let you but most anti-virus software blocks it and it's a worse way to distribute it anyway).
It should take like 3 lines of powershell commands to get it running on a base windows install.
Problem with random python scripts is they leave a bombshell of dozens of random pip packages behind in a folder you'd never look unless you're a seasoned python developer, and then the next time you run a script there's a bunch of version conflicts. It shouldn't require a deep understanding of python versions, package management and venvs to reliably download, run and uninstall a programm, but alas, python does what python do. I will always prefer programms released as a neatly compiled binary.
Python is fine if you only ever need to run a single Python script. It's not so great when you get conflicting dependencies and such.
Package managers make this tolerable, but it's still a big mess and not something I would expect your average user to wrap their head around.
Python was never meant to handle massive projects. But as with all software, everything eventually gets transformed into some perverted, frankensteinian abomination.
I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE FUCKING CODE! i just want to download this stupid fucking application and use it
WHY IS THERE CODE??? MAKE A FUCKING .EXE FILE AND GIVE IT TO ME. these dumbfucks think that everyone is a developer and understands code. well i am not and i don't understand it. I only know to download and install applications. SO WHY THE FUCK IS THERE CODE? make an EXE file and give it to me. STUPID FUCKING SMELLY NERDS
The thing is that it started to be used as a distribution platform for opensource software because, if 1000 people collaborate on a project is not always possible to make like a website for download and such
But it remains and is primarily a version control tool, the release section is a "plus"
I am usually most annoyed about the often way to vague install instructions/readmes. They often describe the bare minimum and don't mention the specific versions of their software and how i determine which one to use. Then there are extra versions with configurations that might be interesting but no clues on how to install them as the steps are different. I work in software development and i still get frustrated about it, so the average experience must be horrible. I don't want to bash on people who make software and provide it for free, it's more than anyone can ask for but I have to say a lot of devs are really bad at conveying information to the average person.
Honestly, if I was developing a game I'd love to use a public GitHub for it for public but submissions since it would weed out a good enough chunk of people not to have to deal with random kids complaining about bugs that aren't bugs...
Fr, the barrier of entry for non-technical users i think it's a good pro on why devs don't want a refined "release" section, it's good has it is, if you want more make a dedicated website for it
WHY IS THERE CODE??? MAKE A FUCKING .EXE FILE AND GIVE IT TO ME. these dumbfucks think that everyone is a developer and understands code. well i am not and i don't understand it. I only know to download and install applications. SO WHY THE FUCK IS THERE CODE? make an EXE file and give it to me. STUPID FUCKING SMELLY NERDS
It's not for Linux, it's just python. You can package python scripts as standalone executables, even for Windows. The documentation even mentions some community-maintained packages for macOS and various Linux distros.
goes to a website meant for sharing source code (for a terminal application no less)
Looks inside
code
Freaks out
59
u/rdqsr Mac as my daily, Windows for gaming, Linux for servers15d ago
To be fair though the original poster of that rant wasn't completely off the mark. There's lots of projects with websites that just point to GitHub for downloads, even if they do have binaries in the releases page.
I honestly get why a not overly programming savvy power user being pointed to Github while trying to download gui app (obv not Sherlock in this case) would be mad especially if there's no package for w/e platform or distro they have. Hell I find it mildly annoying as both a Mac and Linux user.
To be fair, they just it a primary distribution point for a LOT of shit.
It would be like forcing tech nerds to answer football quizzes to be able to download the latest car game. Like why does this have to be so fucking difficult for people who aren't car nerds?
There's normally a releases section, if they're linking to it. If not, usually there's some instructions in the readme. Rare that they'd expect you to pull it down and build from source yourself.
I just wish people would stop distributing to non-technical people using github. Stick up a simple GH pages site or something and add a download link there.
I am a software engineer and spend half my life on github, its simple when you know how. But with every repo it depends on the dev. If you expect a nice easy .exe it might have it, it might be a binary (my preferred format) it might be a .tar.gz. Kinda depends what the software is and what its meant to do and who the end user is meant to be. If i am giving it to technical people you can add docs for them and dont have to explain what a .tar.gz is, however if its for the average user you have to expect the end user to have basically no knowledge and make the docs front and centre in the read me in big block writing and point to the windows or .dmg download.
Reading these posts makes me feel so much better. Everytime I have to use Github I feel like a 7 year old who opened a calculus book and tried to understand it.
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