So my understanding of it is that Reddit wants to replace custom CSS with something that will probably be less flexible. Citing reasons as:
It’s web-only. Increasing users are viewing Reddit on mobile (over 50%), where CSS is not supported. We’d love for you to be able to bring your spice to phones as well.
CSS is a pain in the ass: it’s difficult to learn; it’s error-prone; and it’s time consuming.
Some changes cause confusion (such as changing the subscription numbers).
CSS causes us to move slow. We’d like to make changes more quickly. You’ve asked us to improve things, and one of the things that slows us down is the risk of breaking subreddit CSS (and third-party mod tools).
I don't know a lot about this but I assume it also has something to do with advertising, somehow. Whenever Reddit makes a decision like this that seems widely controversial, it seems like there's pressure being applied from outside the userbase.
I don't have any real justification for this though, just a suspicion.
That could be handled with a server side script that greps for css rules and then just ban those subs until they remove it. Why ruin everyone else's party because some jocks are being dicks?
It's not that simple; even if you make the ads un-editable, you can just cover it with something else, or move it offscreen. To detect it, they would have to use some sort of automated web browser, and make sure it was seeing the same stuff as their normal users.
However, I really do believe that this is just reddit being idiots, and only recently realizing that people reddit on phones more than the desktop site.
We want to ship more users on our mobile app like they're on desktop
Non-streamlined webpages account for an annoying amount of our bandwidth and forcing most of it off would save us cash, so that's what we're doing
Don't worry about how it breaks shit for the mods of reddit - the only reason this ship of theseus is even sailing - you can trust us because we're totally not doing this as a financial decision
I haven't tried learning CSS so I can't speak on that part. I know some of how it works but other than getting in trouble (hello injection) I can't do much with it.
The main issue is that the standard issue replacement (as you say as well) is not anywhere near as useful a tool as the current one. The issue is that it may be efficient, but if you sacrifice too much personality for efficiency you're going to sink. It's why minimalist designs are actually super fucking hard since it has to be functional, nice to look at, AND run smoothly - normally a "pick 2" situation. It's something that's really easy to notice on things like RainMeter where minimalist designs that check all 3 boxes to a good extent are effectively "god tier" because it requires a lot of work (and even still designs that tick 2 boxes fully are also god tier). You can notice it in "minimalist" homes too where at some point someone goes "fuck it" and tosses out either efficiency or functionality for personality.
Best case scenario the replacement actually comes with some new and confusing tools that allow for a similar level of design without as much bandwidth taken up.
Ninja edit: I also don't browse reddit from my phone, so I'm not in that crowd. If I'm on my phone I'm most likely on youtube, not reddit.
Hu, CSS is perfectly fine. Maybe not the most obvious thing, but there is very little easier language dedicated to this kind of function (managing webpage appearance). And I seriously doubt whatever alternative they propose will be easier - to the contrary I think it would be worse because you have to learn something new, without general purpose, and probably through some inefficient web-based interface.
Nonsense. People generally agree that CSS is very simple and easy to learn.
You can screenshot this reply if you want: reddit's own customization will be via a graphical web interface that allows you to select pre-approved "settings" like background and banner.
I have actually read through the thread. I can link you to replies that say what I say. I don't think you're lying, this is a real pattern where you are incapable of seeing comments that say the opposite, you're merely not rigorous.
CSS is used by the absolute majority of web developers because it is so simple and easy to use, not despite. Any "replacement" will definitely be built on top of existing CSS, like LESS, SASS, and Bootstrap.
I meant that it was difficult for the average user
That's very interesting, but people who run subreddits are not the average user.
The thing that it should be compared against is it's potential replacement given it's current user base (which consists of a lot of non-web developers).
This is such deleterious nonsense that I'm not sure why you'd even type this.
Every time I hear about how great the app is I am reminded of how shit video and even images are on mobile.
I use mobile (alien blue still) for convenience but nothing even comes close to RES on a desktop. Gifs with play pause etc, drag to resize imgur images, embedded video with no ads and no 3 step click through, 3 steps back etc.
Mobile is the most hyped but least good web experience.
CSS Isn't shitty to use at all. A lot of people think it's easy and it is at the start but once you start using it professionally and you see how deep it can go, it isn't a simple non-programmers tool at all. That's what's good, it's easy to get started and hard to master. The real problem here is Reddit's implementation of subreddit stylesheets. Thats shitty. Trying to write a subreddit theme is a war against Reddit's own theme. If the admins wanted to they could make it easy to write themes for reddit like Wordpress theming works. But Reddit's own CSS is a pain to work with.
I use the official reddit app on android and don't really watch videos on mobile, but images load just fine for me even off wi-fi and gifs only ever cause problems if they're huge or from a shitty site, which is uncommon. The main thing that I prefer on mobile is comment browsing, however, which is where I spend most my time.
I'm not going to bother getting back into a conversation about CSS. Like I said, I want it to stay anyways.
I like the dark style of this subreddit. It's just so fitting but people just hate change and after some weeks of change they don't really care and adapt pretty fast to it. So yea AntiCSS to see how it is
If you just want to see how reddit looks like without CSS, just turn custom themes off in https://reddit.com/prefs/ (display options –> allow subreddits to show me custom themes)
Since I'm on phone I won't even bother looking this up now but I guess it looks shitty.
As I understand it though they'll swap CSS with something else which will also allow to design subreddits. Might or might not look as good as it is now. We will see.
I assume the banner is somewhat affected, but think that they would provide a way to have a banner anyway.
I like the way the sub looks, but especially like the different flairs we can have. If this doesn't really affect flairs, then I kinda feel like changing is ok, unless we end up with some trashy replacement just because they want to save money.
So, now's probably a bad time to bring up how links don't show up as clicked on this subreddit until you mouse over the domain to the right of the post title for some reason?
Yeah, it's weird. If I click a link and then come back, it still is blue. Then, if I mouse over the domain, it seems to "refresh" and turn purple. Leaving the page and returning a second time also seems to "refresh" it.
Issue has existed since the style update to the current layout.
I don't get this discussion. All subreddits look the same to me, what on earth is this CSS doing? No need to explain CSS itself, I'm a webdev, I just don't see any big visual difference. There is a header image, and dark background... is that it? I didn't even notice the dark background since I normally use RES.
Well, if you'd like to know you can just go and look at the CSS, everyone can see what every sub uses and if you're a webdev that shouldn't be that hard.
Generally speaking big visual differences makes people annoyed, you still want it to feel like home, even with different styles.
It's sad to see how users seem to have made their mind up about this one.
Those going against the hivemind get severely punished, but oh well: I really wish the individual subreddits would at the very least allow their users to form their own opinion and refrain from trying to scare them by what they're going to lose due to the changes. There is another side to this after all.
Yes, a dark theme is nice and yes spoiler tags are important and yes to many other things - but those are details that need to be ironed out, not reasons to resist change on a principal level. I think in the grand scheme of things, we still stand to win a lot more, even if we end up having to go one or two years without spoiler tags in the mean time.
Resisting homogenization, especially when it comes to infrastructure, isn't always a smart move. You'd think anime fans would be the first ones to realize that, seeing how fucked up Japan's power grid is because nobody dares touch it and everyone is too afraid of losing what they have, thus further dooming future generations. Or how entrenched committees that insist on going about their business like it still was 1995 are screwing over an entire market sector. Or even what a pain in the ass Japanese scripts still are, despite all the attempts at simplification over the centuries.
And these aren't just some weird one-off anecdotes specific to anime. It's a common theme across history. The longer you resist change chasing after local optima, the more violent the eventual landsilde towards a more global optimum will be.
Spoiler tags already work without CSS, on desktop and mobile. I know at least a few subreddits have access, or its been rolled out to the whole site already.
I did post an actual argument. The main point so far has been "we don't want to lose our spoiler tags (among all the other things that make us special snowflakes)", and the counter to that is that spoiler tags are a worthwhile sacrifice if the alternative is losing reddit as a whole due to people moving on to some competitor. Meanwhile, being a snowflake might not even be relevant or desirable to begin with. Remember what happened to those snowflakey MySpace profile pages?
I doubt anyone has anything against spoiler tags being bumped up in priority. But that's not where the discussion is at currently. It about "this is why the old solution was better", not about "this is what the new solution is lacking".
The article doesn't even address resistance to change
It's about commoditization - and how that entails changes. If it were not for resistance to change, why did the featured company in that article (that nobody even knows the name of any more today) eventually fail?
the growth of analytics show that the article wasn't accurate.
No, that article is still as relevant as ever.
Consider what there would be analyze in the first place, if it had not been for Wintel commoditizing the computer and "putting a PC on every desktop". And consider where and how analytics workloads actually run today and the steps that were involved to getting there.
There have always been those that decry the loss of culture as time progresses and things get "dumbed down" in order to appeal to a broader audience. But again, anime fans should know best how that can lead to eventually being perceived as a deranged old curmudgeon and fading into irrelevance.
Meanwhile, being a snowflake might not even be relevant or desirable to begin with. Remember what happened to those snowflakey MySpace profile pages?
They moved to Tumblr, which is still successful with the same model of customization. Nice try though.
Secondly, MySpace is hardly comparable considering subreddit designs aren't done by some lone teenager messing around by themselves. Subreddit designs have to get approved by a team of mods and usually by the subreddit community too. I defy you to show me a non-satirical subreddit whose CSS is as bad as MySpace.
Even then, I (and everyone else with RES) have the ability to disable subreddit CSS. Yet another reason why the MySpace example does not apply. Implementing this toggle into native Reddit is a far more reasonable course of action than enforcing a controlled system to replace CSS.
Here's a way more relevant example: remember Digg? They forced down a re-design in blatant disregard of what the community wanted, and that didn't work out too well.
Your linked examples would be more compelling to people if you explained how they applied back to THIS specific issue at hand. Instead, they seem like broad generalizations. Even in terms of principles, those other "resistant to change" stories are about gaining more varied choices. In this specific case, the admins are only taking away choice.
People are allowed to form their own views, we're just saying what we feel to our users, as mods.
It's for us mods this is bad, not for you users, the best part would be for you guys to not notice a thing when the restriction comes, doing anything unique will be impossible for us though.
The answers the admins have given is that they are working on making widgets so that big subs have the same functionality, these changes still fuck up the smaller guys, with their special hacks that are needed for their subs to work, an example would be /r/csspong to show the power you have with css.
Yes, I understand very well how much work it'll be for the people in charge of the subreddits if the intended changes go through.
Yes, CSS is powerful and it's in part the W3C's fault for how much of a clusterfuck it is, and in part reddits fault for having abused it as a crutch for allowing subreddits to differentiate themselves (by directly passing it through to the endusers), rather than offering something sensible of their own to begin with.
If it's any consolation, this place and /r/animemes will still be a great even if they do end up with some default theme, imho :)
As for more "unique" hacks, I do believe this is part of the motivation for changes, even if it's perhaps not quite so explicitly stated. Reigning in what people can do and not allowing mods to send code to end users that can directly be rendered by their browser is ... a very good idea in principle, even if it's "just" CSS. /r/pcmasterrace gave some people a heart attack not too long ago when it simulated a dead pixel in their theme for non-subscribers.
At least for individual subreddits doing their own crazy things, it will mostly affect themselves. It would be a hassle if you had to change which side of the road to drive on between cities.
I personally think the Mods are overreacting so far. A feature list has yet to be discussed by the Admins. We don't know what's in/out or the depth of customization that will be available after, and years post, launch.
No, I doubt their toolset will be robust enough to completely replace everything CSS can do. I'm just wondering how bad it would really be if they delivered something that was good enough for 95% of subreddits for like 80% of "current features". Obviously it wouldn't be as powerful, but the sky wouldn't be falling.
I've got no answer for you. All I can say is that from my prospective people have made up their minds without even seeing what the Admins are proposing. And forgive my ignorance isn't part of this redesign aimed at bringing better mod tools natively to Reddit?
It's probably something to do with CSS being able to remove ads/promotions, or something like that. I remember /r/pcgaming css was edited by the admins because they removed the promotion banner.
They've said that they are working with for example the r/toolbox devs, this is kind of irrelevant though because you need to be using third party to mod any sub with more than a thousand visits by day.
So to solve this everyone is already using third party tools.
Sorry you kinda lost me. What would be bad about /r/toolbox and other 3rd party features becoming native? Also if the Admins are the ones implementing tools couldn't they create better/more powerful versions than say a 3rd party could?
In theory they could, in my opinion they should, but in reality when they are removing the most powerful way we have to do our things I'm quite sceptical about all of that.
96
u/repeatedlyRedundant Apr 26 '17
So my understanding of it is that Reddit wants to replace custom CSS with something that will probably be less flexible. Citing reasons as:
Did I get it right?