I think I first found out about the site in 2015. It look me 2 1/2 years to get an invite, and I visited it every day, and frequently contributed links. I belive at some point I was among the top 10 users, but I was kicked out because the main admin had some grudge against me, so when I wrote a controversial comment he banned me. Fair enough, his site. Retroactively I think this was for the better, as the climate was getting worse and worse. I have met some of the most dishonest people on that site and had some of the most frustrating discussions I can recall. In this respect, HN is preferable. What is sad is that I don't think this was always the case, and is it Lobste.rs that deteriorated over time. There was a long thread on this last year: https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg/lobster_burntsushi_has_left_site.
When I was banned, I sent a message to the administrators whether I could get a machine readable file of all my comments. I thought to myself, if I had already spent all that time commenting, I might as well repost them on my own site. But the administrators all refused to even discuss this with me. I sent them SQL queries and everything, but they didn't even regard me worthy of a response. This was very disappointing and unprofessional.
So what I want to say to the sibling comments who are looking for invites, consider it twice. There are annoying people everywhere, and I haven't found a website format that can prevent these from popping up.
I don't think this is the place to air out all the dirty laundry from the past two years, so I'll just say this: since the time I've joined the site (three years ago), I haven't seen a single ban that wasn't warranted, be it due to a single incident of flouting the site rules or a pattern of behavior.
It is true that the moderators are fairly strict regarding behavior that wouldn't be punished here (such as abusing flags to down vote), but I don't see that as a necessarily bad thing.
Regarding the thread you linked, I'll agree it was the admin's fault for writing the passive-aggressive banner that led to that (well-respected) user leaving.
My account on Lobsters is in good standing, but I agree with daptaq. The site has a very strong bias. You either agree with the very online culture of the site or you get mercilessly jeered in the comments (and potentially have the admin coming for you.) At this point all I do is post meek comments every few months or so because I don't trust the admin or, mostly, the members of the site, to respect me. The comments on the site have become predictable enough to be GPT generated.
A bit ago, we got to see the "joys" of having users comment on and upvote a comment that justified pogroms because "the West keeps peddling anti-Soviet propoganda because they hate communists." The comment thread was killed but only after lots of upvotes, way too many to make me comfortable to stay on the site. If you're okay with that sort of thing then Lobsters is your site, but I'm not. Honestly I don't know why I'm still there.
Thanks, I know the links. But I was looking for stated rules which apply to what the fellow commented above:
"the moderators are fairly strict regarding behavior that wouldn't be punished here (such as abusing flags to down vote)"
> since the time I've joined the site (three years ago), I haven't seen a single ban that wasn't warranted, be it due to a single incident of flouting the site rules or a pattern of behavior.
That is hard to say, if you were to look up my final thread, all my comments were deleted, and you have no way of evaluating if the judgement was fair or not. I held the same position, assuming the moderation team was doing a good job until the hammer hit me.
> Regarding the thread you linked, I'll agree it was the admin's fault for writing the passive-aggressive banner that led to that (well-respected) user leaving.
That is what I am getting at. He has "joked"[0] that the job of moderation is stressful, and it is known that he has other problems[1] that aren't making the job easier for him. I believe that this shapes his moderation style, and not for the better. He errs on the side of over-moderation, which was exactly one of the faults HN hat, that motivated the creation of that site.
Not necessarily, this actually sounds like a great bootstrapping tool. All you need to write on a new platform is a BLC interpreter, which should be easier to implement. Using the C->BCL translation, you might be able to build something like TinyCC and work up from there.
I would think that the amount of RAM used by the lambda-monster (100+ GB to compile single-page C files) would make a practical application like that rather unpractical, for the time being.
Most people I talk to dislike the camera hump on the back, but Google insists on it. I guess it is their new design language. Sad, because I think the simple design from the Pixel 4 to 5a was quite nice. But from what I hear, the series 6 hasn't been that much of a hit as they had anticipated it. I even once saw an ad for it in a cinema, which surprised me as non-internet Google advertisements have been rare in my experience. Not sure if the 7/7 Pro will be better, or if they will just throw everything away in a year or two, and start all over again.
Then again, the only reason I was even interested in following the development was because I had been considering to buy a new phone after 5 years to use Graphene OS.
I don't mind, every phone has that now anyway. The big deal is that it isn't so asymmetrical, which I quite like visually and has practical benefits too (you can use it lying on a table).
> ...because one of the letters against Stallman stopped accepting signatures at three thousand people, but the "pro" Stallman letter never did.
It was always a hunch, but I suspected that part of the reason they stopped is that they reached a plateau, while the open letter was continuing to rise in popularity.
I have personally communicated with RMS, even privately, and see a discrepancy between the way he is portrayed and the way he behaves on a regular basis. Of course, I might have just caught his good and kind side, who knows? Either way, my impression remains that those who see him as bad want to see him as bad.
I am male, and I do get what you mean, which is why I wrote "Of course, I might have just caught his good and kind side, who knows?". As a person living in Germany, with a non-German accent, I also understand that not everyone perceives everything. Any person who feels excluded from participating in the Free Software movement is a loss. The more people with more perspectives, the stronger the movement is, which is in everyone's interest.
That being said: I do agree that some of the statements made in the past were tasteless, and I am disappointed that he did so. Yet when reading his own texts like https://stallman.org/articles/necessary-changes.html, I have to either conclude that he agrees but has made mistakes or is himself lying.
Another thing might be that I have only had contact with him via Email. Perhaps he is different in person, that I cannot say.
> Any person who feels excluded from participating in the Free Software movement is a loss.
Yes, but not every loss is equal, and in a changing world, growing groups will eventually reach a point where not everyone who wants to play will agree on the same ethics, which will lead to someone feeling unappreciated.
If I had the choice between losing a F/L/OSS contributor who has spend their life writing highly influential software and a F/L/OSS contributor who opened a 200-line-Python script once, half a year ago, I know who I would consider less of a loss.
I want to believe that this is not a necessary conflict, or rather is at best one that can be resolved. The choice still remains difficult, as you don't know the future, so it is preferable to have both on board.
I often remind people that you are only ever duped by those you trust. I have no idea how you could think email exchanges with someone would lend credence one way or another in respect to this type of accusation. It is well-known that even serial murderers are often charming and everyone is surprised when they are caught. How kind, cordial, or charming someone is means nothing in this type of situation.
OK, but just because a serial murdered can be charming, doesn't mean that every charming person in a serial murderer. It is true, I can't deduce anything with certainty from my personal and public correspondence, or the messages I see him send to others. But as opposed to the serial murderer, the issue here is the way he communicates and behaves.
I guess you could try this out empirically, by creating a throwaway Email address and sending him a dry, technical question under a female name, and see how he responds.
That would be anecdotal, and after the fact when he is trying to be on his best behavior. Also, email and online communication in general is not a good way to judge somebody. for better and worse, People read non-existent tone into things I write endlessly, and you have to just stop caring about the disconnect it is so bad.
To be clear, I have no idea as to the truth of this situation, I am just saying the criteria to judge it must be different than that, especially because creeps do their best to hide their creepiness to the general world.
Nobody would have guessed, also that you are male too. I really do believe that you have a problem with racism and sexism, but it won't be solved by accusing others.
> So as far as I know [...] quite some apparently have
You should not regurgitate these rumors without further evidence. I can imagine someone like Stallmann being awkward with women and maybe some of the accusations are true. That is certainly no reason to prosecute him like this. Not your job to do so, work on yourself instead. There is enough to do here and then you can lead by example.
> There is a reason, why the free software movement is largely dominated by men
Certainly not a fault of Stallman. Some women also do not like men trying to make their mark everywhere and these easy accusations of sexism or discrimination feel a bit like that. Pretty sure you won't find the "fault" for that in others.
This was written by Yusuke Endoh, who also wrote this submission to the IOCCC that I remember being arguably more astonished when I saw it for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMYfkOtYYlg (ASCII fluid dynamics).
Wow, that was cool, never found that one when I went on a deep dive after discovering their quine relay. The other amazing ASCII program of theirs that I love is the Qlobe: http://mamememo.blogspot.com/2010/09/qlobe.html?m=1
> 1) "Jumping from one project to another. How do you stay focused ?" : that screams ADHD to me (not a doctor, not a shrink). Full disclosure : I have ADHD.
I've been hearing this a lot recently, and while I don't doubt that there are people who are affected by ADHD, it seems to me that the condition can very easily be treated as an excuse. Certainly people without ADHD can get distracted, and someone with ADHD wouldn't be indistractable if they didn't have ADHD, right? So how do you distinguish between cases where ADHD is actually the cause and where someone uses it as an excuse (e.g. there was this guy on Twitter recently who claimed he could only use Twitter and not a blog because of AHDH, which sound like an excuse for some other behaviour to me)?
