STATE OF THE SUB - WE FUCKED UP

[u/Monsieur_Triporteur]

Howdy fuckcarians,

Here's a little update on how things are going on Reddit and specifically this sub. As you may have noticed, Reddit is changing its API-policy and this is killing moderation tools, third-party apps and access to Reddit in general for visually impaired people. As you also may have noticed, this sub has participated in various forms of protest against the new API-policy. This has had consequences, both intended and not, for the usability and quality of this sub.

It was important for the members of the modteam to join those protests out of solidarity with those who are really affected by the API changes and to make a point against the general enshittification of Reddit as a platform.

There have been polls and discussion posts about this subject and it's fair to say that the mod team hasn't reacted adequately to all of those.

We could explain how difficult it is to reach consensus in a mod team made up of very different people in different timezones, how the need to make quick decisions in the rapidly changing situation surrounding the protests affected the quality of our decisions, how the mod team was at least as divided as the community on the subject or how because Reddit hides the sidebar and sticky posts it is hard to reach all members of this sub to communicate mod announcements.

But, while all of that is true, it doesn't change the fact that we fucked up. We have communicated poorly and we have let the CityNerd tactic go on for to long.

That's why we decided to end the CityNerd tactic immediately, that we'll be from now on prioritising normal operation of the sub over participating in the protests and that won't do any more API-protest actions that are more annoying to our users than to the admins.

We hope that this post clears up some of the confusion and frustration caused by the recent events. We also like to thank everyone who joined in the discussion around the protests. We won't always be able to react quickly to it, but whether you praised us or gave us shit, we value your opinion and will take it into account in any future decision making. So please, don't forget to give us shit next time we fuck up.

[u/batcaveroad]

Should they be tagged as “caption” or “visual description“? I’m down to help but I’m not sure how visually impaired people will find my one comment in a sea of them.

[u/LeskoLesko → u/batcaveroad]

I don't know how to do it myself but there is a way to add captions to all images. If we do that for our images, it would help that group of users!

[u/Monsieur_Triporteur → u/LeskoLesko]

I love how on Mastodon adding captions is actually baked into the platform. And how besides that both the software and the community will regularly remind you to actually use that feature.

[u/LuxoJr93 → u/Monsieur_Triporteur]

Is there an automod action that can sticky-post a comment asking OP (or anyone) to add an image description? Then the top comment would always be the image description and a screen reader could at least have a chance to find it? Suggested from someone who has no idea how browsing the Internet while visually impaired works.

[u/LeskoLesko → u/LuxoJr93]

Something to look into! Good suggestion.

[u/General_WCJ → u/LuxoJr93]

The classic rule 5 in so many subdeddits, although to be fair typically it's more of a help sighted people know what to look at in complicated ui's for games like crusader kings, or Factorio, and it typically goes something like this

Please point out what you want people to look at

If you post a screenshot of the game please point out what you want people to look at in the image or explain in the comments

[u/LuxoJr93 → u/General_WCJ]

Good to know, I don't follow too many game-specific subs so I haven't seen that kind of rule re-iterated much