My discussion was removed and I believe it was an invalid remove
12 20 Jul 2015 23:43 by u/pikeymick
My post was discussing Mr. Robot the tv show about a security worker, who got wrapped up with some black hats etc. and how this seems to be a more accurate portrayal of programming in the main stream media than its predecessors.
The link was removed:
I've no idea what Mr. Robot is. Looking at the rules ..
Rule 1: Ok, so you're behaving and all, that's cool
Rule 2: Mh, it's already quite hard to see the relevance to programming. Your submission links to some YouTube video with no real relevance to it. This rule is violated.
Rule 3: Rules are already violated, would be a waste of time to check further things wouldn't it?
Clearly from this response no effort was made to find out if Mr. Robot was programming related, furthermore the "Your submission links to some YouTube video with no real relevance to it. This rule is violated." was a link directly contrasting other media portrayals of programmers in main stream tv shows. Alas how is this not programming related?
27 comments
19 u/TrivialGravitas 21 Jul 2015 00:01
2., I don't really think shitty television depictions of a hacker qualifies as relevant to this sub.
2 u/pikeymick [OP] 21 Jul 2015 00:03
Yeah it was meant to be more about the programming references actually being accurate. Now if the point is that programming in main stream media isn't an acceptable topic that is fine, but this doesn't really fit into the current 3 rules as they are.
1 u/wouldntsavezion 21 Jul 2015 00:22
He was sharing a NON-shitty depiction.
0 u/Sorahzahd 21 Jul 2015 06:24
Among TV shows that depict such things, it's actually really high up there in terms of accuracy and not having a giant glowing GUI with "HACK BUTTON" on it.
Which, if people here let up harping on the OP for five seconds and actually checked out what he was talking about, would know. Too hard, I guess.
15 u/TigrisMorte 21 Jul 2015 00:04
I think the mod was correct. While perhaps relevant to tech culture it is not relevant to programming any more than sneakers was.
9 u/Craftkorb 21 Jul 2015 01:10
I stand by my decision. A random TV show, as I said in a reply to your comment on it, does not qualify for being programming related. Even a TV show actually teaching programming is questionable, as the audience in here is global and not America-only (Where a America-only TV show would maybe work). You can replace America with anything else, it serves as example of a non-global audience.
As you can clearly see, submissions with YouTube videos or channels teaching programming in one way or the other are not removed and are there to stay.
3 u/pikeymick [OP] 21 Jul 2015 01:17
I'm not asking you to go back on your decision your honor. No one is questioning your authority. But perhaps we can update the guide lines to include information that allows us to better guide content that won't be removed. This is for the better of everyone. Rather than forcing people to learn by trial and error.
While I find random to be not helpful in describing the nature of the issue with the program, I am without insight into what specifically makes this program random.
I'm also a little confused by your example
I don't understand why the country of origin matters for programming related content, programming is a global commonality, and programming themes will be the same regardless, if an Australian programming show accurately depicted/taught programming (and was ground breaking in this effort) should someone not post it because it came from Australia?
I'm confused, you prior stated that programs actually teaching coding are questionable, but here you state they are here to stay?
1 u/Craftkorb 21 Jul 2015 01:25
As long it's directly linked through the submission, it's fine. If only a selected few can access it, it's likely to be removed. That's the point I was trying to make. YouTube (Or any other web service on that matter!) is fine because everyone can watch it from anywhere. If it's region locked, it's again borderline.
If it really is that groundbreaking (Which I'd applaud!), the show is sure to appear on YouTube, and based on that it's educational in terms of programming and not a 'correct' depiction of it, are welcome as submission. Don't read too much into ground-breaking, please. The most important factor is that it's widely accessible to everyone.
It's just not my job to read through Google about TV shows.
Edit: Forgot to mention that yes, input on the rules and such META stuff are of course appreciated.
Edit²: Is this:
4. Submissions are expected to be educational, and not only about programming (E.g. movies, TV)good or crap wording-wise?0 u/pikeymick [OP] 21 Jul 2015 01:36
Ah ok! Now I understand thank you! That is not at all clear from the guidelines! For the record this show is available on youtube, if only aspects of it. I don't have cable anything I watch is on the internet, in this day and age it cannot be assumed that a TV show is only available in a specific location. While I understand where you are coming from, this does not feel like a completely altruistic action.
I agree it isn't your job, however not being familiar with something programming related does not mean it isn't programming related and therefore should be removed. Your community could be better served if a degree of latitude is exercised if participants in a conversation are demonstrating a familiarity with the topic, and you aren't aware of it, so maybe you can let the community vote on whether it fits into programming if you don't feel like doing the work on your own. Carte blanche removing of topics benefits no one, and feels a bit like another atmosphere a lot of us have left because of this type of reaction.
0 u/Craftkorb 21 Jul 2015 01:49
I do think that deleting is the correct answer to submissions not fitting the rules, but I'd also like to have some kind of public log where people could go and judge themselves. I was thinking about like having a bi-monthly sticky to discuss the META stuff and post a list there of removed things. The reasons why the removal happened are put by me always as comment into the submission, for the OP to respond to, or at least get some kind of understanding why it was removed.
A second step on this would be having a bot or something which auto-updates the removal list. There's currently no API for that, and with the current situation I also can't write one which uses the HTML data as 'API'.
A completely community driven deletion-through-downvote process may or may not work well on the long run. I don't have any statistics, so I have to assume that not many can actually downvote. Also, I fear that we'd lose interested people because someone spams the sub (maybe from multiple accounts).
Would I appreciate this concept? Yes! But right now, with the state of voat, there's not a lot of tools at hand to do anything, hell, Reddit at least has some kind of tools, where I have literally none besides "delete". (Send me a mod mail .. oh right .. you can't -.- )
In the end, I can only delete what I as user wouldn't like to see here at all. If you fear that I kept you from tons of fascinating threads, you don't have to. I have removed I think 4 or 5 threads total. You can check comments I made, as every delete did get and will get a written (sometimes short) reason.
0 u/pikeymick [OP] 21 Jul 2015 01:51
Word! Thank you!!
0 u/pikeymick [OP] 21 Jul 2015 01:41
I think that wording is good!
0 u/Craftkorb 21 Jul 2015 02:04
Saving subverse settings is broken right now. Meh. I'll try again later.
1 u/Foobarbaz 21 Jul 2015 02:12
So just to be clear -- discussing, say, The Matrix using a legit SSH exploit would be against the rules, correct?
For those who don't know:
0 u/Craftkorb 21 Jul 2015 02:27
First, I think it's important to say: These rules only apply to submissions!
Comments in submissions are not targeted. You can freely talk about anything in there. Jokes, memes, click-bait? Happy commenting! You can cuss in there, you can even insult people and I'll leave it alone for the world to see your behaviour. The exception is of course when comments start doxxing or beyond stupid stuff like that. That's covered by the site-wide rules I guess.
Submissions are subject to the rules. You are correct: The link in your comment is borderline. That particular news article may be ok, as long they don't get too much. This isn't /v/TodayILearned after all. Just the YouTube clip showing that? Most likely violation of rule two.
"Doesn't get too much": This loose term is there to stay loose. I can't give any hard numbers. If posts of these kind don't pile up, it's okay-ish. Not encouraged either. If it gets too much, maybe multiple submissions on the first page, they're more likely to be deleted. Reasoning is, that if this happens, others will feel encouraged that it's fine to do this.
There's currently (Or was?) some kind of joke on the page. A single one. That's okay-ish. Not encouraged. A second one may be too much though.
I think it's fair to demand from the moderation to be transparent about it. But I also think it's fair to think that the mods won't begin and deleting stuff for political reasons. If a mod under would do that, that'd be a kick.
I was thinking about playing with submission flairs. Right now I think they're broken (Ugh..). Anyway, what I envision is having a "soft-delete" flair, which hides the submission by default, but is visible through some other mean. Maybe in night mode or something. Just an idea, I haven't even checked yet if that'd be possible. But would be cool, wouldn't it?
0 u/Foobarbaz 21 Jul 2015 04:03
Well I think the problem we're facing is it's hard to define a subverse named "programming". That's a wide range. So right off the bat you're in an awkward spot because of that.
Personally I'd prefer to see content like that as it relates to something only a programmer would care about or even understand. I doubt most on TIL know what CRC32 even is much less recognized it in the movie so I would argue it easily belongs here much less is borderline.
Another good example to consider is an interview about Kevin Mitnick (let's imagine this was more than a decade ago) on Oprah or something.
I suppose an interesting line in the modern grass is Edward Snowden. I would imagine reading about how he pulled some things off (from the technical aspect) would be reasonable but the political aspect of it would not be -- because quite frankly some of that was pretty damn impressive and I imagine many programmers would do well to learn many of those aspects of security. Or perhaps that might be better of in a security specific subverse. hmm.
Just something for you to ponder about ahead of time.
0 u/Craftkorb 21 Jul 2015 14:39
If it gets beefy, okay-ish if everyone can watch it and it's directly linked through the submission. So either the submission is a link submission linking to the online video, or it's a text submission with a link pointing to the online video. No Paywall, just content.
I agree. So, if it would be an article how he abused programmer mistakes and it gets beefy, I think it's relevant. But if he just (Not trying to downplay) abused mis-configured permissions for access (Afaik he at one point said that he had permissions to impersonate other user accounts which he then abused), I think that's more something for /v/sysadmin (If that's already a thing).
I'm starting to feel that there should be /v/ProgrammingInMedia
0 u/pikeymick [OP] 21 Jul 2015 02:40
Hah that's awesome!
0 u/topical_username 21 Jul 2015 21:19
That might be better off in /v/netsec
0 u/topical_username 21 Jul 2015 21:15
I don't see what's confusing. A TV show designed to be consumed for entertainment is not directly related to programming. How do you think that fits in between an article showing you how to simulate general relativity in Python, and a question about the benefits of this or that IDE? What does Mr. Robot bring to the table? Nothing. Create a sub like /v/tvshowsaboutprogramming or something. Let's not muddy the waters here. Posting scenes from Juassic Park wouldn't count would they? https://youtu.be/J1VE6C0H2bU
0 u/pikeymick [OP] 21 Jul 2015 21:16
I outlined very specifically why it was confusing.
-1 u/Sorahzahd 21 Jul 2015 06:31
By your logic, this post should definitely not be here: https://voat.co/v/programming/comments/296497
A "code of conduct" is not "directly applicable to the act of programming" and is MUCH FURTHER removed from that rule than a discussion thread about a TV show featuring black hat programmers.
These rules are crap, and make it trivial for you to remove things arbitrarily, leaving other rule violating posts up.
4 u/pikeymick [OP] 21 Jul 2015 01:45
Thank you @Craftkorb for talking through this with me, I really appreciate your effort to make this is a great and transparent community, loving it here more and more!
1 u/Augustus_II 21 Jul 2015 05:15
@Craftkorb, thank you for taking the time to interact with and inform the community on your decision.
1 u/JDWM 21 Jul 2015 05:30
Serious props! This is great to see.
1 u/Master_Foo 21 Jul 2015 07:39
Popular culture != programming.
Yeah, it has programmers in it, but generally we come here for discussion of programming, not what was on TV last night.
If a post is here on this sub it should have some code, or at least theory.
Your post was a valid discussion... for someplace else. It's kind of like all the conspiracy theorists spamming /v/news. It's like, "Yeah, we fucking know that you believe the Jews did 9/11, but just because some conspiracy blog says so doesn't mean it's news worthy".
So, yeah. I back the mod on this one.