Raddle is dead, long live Raddle!

Submitted by An_Old_Big_Tree in lobby

Hey all

I'm struggling a bit. It seems at this stage that there are a few antagonistic groups on Raddle and no clear way to resolve the issues.

In terms of running this space, emma's left again and so has leftous. I'm not too sure how much is left when the space is as fissured as much as it is, and many of our major users have deleted their post histories.

Unfortunately I don't have the energy to do much more than frame some of the possibilities, as I will do here. For any community to work here people are going to have to step forward to take on work.
(At the moment I'm not even able to read through what people are saying.)

My suggestion is for people to use the rest of this month to organise together here concrete solutions that work for them. This may mean everyone leaving Raddle to do different projects, or people getting konsent up and running and keeping Raddle, or people starting a new instance(s) of postmill, or anything we can dream up.
Make proposals, find committed comrades, and move forward.

Fossidarity has offered to help with admining in leftous's place - as things stand that may or may not be possible given that emma is the person who would make the changes. Fossidarity, please speak directly with emma, she will probably add you.

I think emma would be willing to get on board another project in the right circumstances.
If some antagonistic groups are leaving Raddle, then perhaps groups that are not antagonistic to ziq might want to remain here with ziq, since ziq started and currently pays for the space.
Certain groups are clearly incompatible and I implore you to find a space to call home and stop antagonising this space as a whole because you have problems with specific individuals. It has hurt many; you have hurt people.

From what I can tell, there is a substantial amount of active users of this site and something meaningful can really emerge from this. I encourage you all to make the world you want to see with others here, and to make it know to even more of us, so that we may join you if we decide. Don't be shy to talk with each other and see what is possible. Find each other on matrix also. If you don't, then this whole world will simply die.

I will do what I can and want, as I can.

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Comments

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DissidentRage wrote

I still feel like there has been a toxic obsession with Raddle dying. I feel like as long as people keep mentioning "oh my god THE BETRAYAL" it's feeding into a vicious cycle that doesn't allow anyone to work through shit and move on. u/ziq apologized and stepped away. We had fun with it in f/meta_. Then some of us asked if they could come back in a stripped-down capacity. I thought this was a step in the right direction. Apparently this wasn't enough.

Now I'm reading they've done some of that stuff again. I admit I haven't been paying attention because I come here for the content and relevant discussion rather than the personalities. That said, it's not cool but IMO if this is something that can break the site then our endearment to the site is more fragile than we're willing to let on.

Honestly if I felt like I could be reliable enough in the time aspect I would offer to help pick up the slack of moderating to kick out spam and trolls, because I think everyone emotionally involved in all of this needs to take a break. This is obviously stressing people out and this being a near-daily subject of discussion with little positive movement is preventing people from getting mentally away from it.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

I suspect you're only saying this because you are not the person people are engaging to help resolve issues, nor are you the person in a position of maintaining the site and the relations that maintain the site. It's a lot of work and the cracks are clear.

If you think you would be unreliable with timing, you would still possibly be better than no moderator at all, which is the status of many forums. And you could still help others who are overextended in moderation, by co-moderating.

Most forums should have many moderators. I think that insofar as we are limited to this software, it might even be desirable for all regulars in any forum to be moderators - that 'moderator' just means someone in the space. As has been the case in f/meta_ and f/readinggroup. At least for those groups with a preference for nonhierarchical relations.

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mofongo wrote

I don't think there's anything to propose. I enjoy coming to raddle, talking and sharing things and see what others post. While the site remains, I'll keep coming.

All the events of the last few months, I see it as the opportunity that raddle needed to finally outgrow the Reddit we sprang from. A new identity for us to take.

I don't think we'll be able to grow much again, but at least we'll be able to create a closer community.

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dele_ted wrote

I know I'll be sticking around, doing what I can to fix things. We've now got a domain for Konsent, a good hosting service and are working to get everything online (thanks to Fossidarity for helping with paying for it all!). Things are happening. I really hope we can get things back in shape here, perhaps even better and more robust than before.

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md_ wrote

To be completely honest, I can't even follow the developments any more. I feel so much hinges on raddle's pre-history (going even back to reddit?), and on communications that happen outside Raddle forums. I don't know if the problem is the way policies are enacted (something that Konsent could solve indeed). If any policy aspect is part of the reason Raddle isn't doing so well, it's probably that many of us (including me recently), have a tendency to over-regulate. But yeah, I don't think the voting and policy making are the main issues.

This uncertainty does often make me feel like I should jump ship before I get to attached to this website. But I don't want Raddle to vanish either, especially now that there's no way I am going back to Reddit after their new policies. So for the foreseeable future, I don't think I will stop participating.

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GaldraChevaliere wrote

I feel like this too. I always feel out of the loop about who hates who, or who did what. I really enjoy the space and feel a lot more comfortable overall in it than in a lot of others, but there's little sense of community to me. I understand that my feelings are as much if not more rooted in my efforts to hold myself totally individual to the whole for self-accountability's sake, but I haven't really felt any reason to fully invest either. I'll probably participate at the level I've been doing still, but I want to focus a lot more on actual action and bonds with 'real' people (as in, people I can speak to face to face) and break my seclusion a bit more in meatspace. I'd really just like everyone to get along with eachother on a basic level, I don't care where it is.

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Fossidarity wrote

I feel the same thing about being out of the loop too, but honestly I think that most people on Raddle don't care or aren't directly involved in the drama, it's just that the ones who are tend to be quite vocal about it.

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ChaosRocket wrote

Yeah I have no clue what any of this drama is about, I just want a social site with other leftists where I can read and discuss leftist content.

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revolt wrote

There are bitter feuds here that go back years. We'll never get a complete picture or be able to see the context behind these interpersonal relationships because of that. It's why everyone on forums should be anonymous. Being labelled with usernames that allow people to build up negative emotions against users they don't see eye to eye with is a clear disaster.

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sudo wrote

Here are the remaining problems, as I see them:

Infighting

This is really just a problem between a few users, but since the userbase is so small, it takes up a significant percentage of the discussion on the website. I don't think the solution is to force people to work out their differences, because some people will always disagree with each other. Rather, I think we should try to increase the number of users of the site, so that there will be more legitimate discussion, meaning less of the comment "real estate" will be occupied by personal arguments.

The Keys to the Kingdom

Earlier, I said that I would be fine with Ziq continuing to manage the site's hosting. However, given their recent behaviour, I have changed my mind. I'm not confident that they are mentally stable enough to be trusted with the welfare of the entire website. I fear that one day they may take someone's criticisms against them too personally, and decide to take down the entire website out of spite (and, I hope that this sentence does not become a self-fulfilling prophecy). If that happened, a large percentage of the userbase would be scattered, since many of us do not have any way of contacting other Raddle users, besides this website. So, I think it would be prudent to find a new, trustworthy person to host Raddle, and migrate the existing posts, comments, and user data to another instance of Postmill on a server in their care.

Administration

We need more administrators to pick up the workload of the ones who have left. I would volunteer myself to become an administrator, but sadly I don't qualify. Ideally, an administrator would be someone who can devote a couple of hours per day to ban trolls, and to do other administrative work. Furthermore, while they don't necessarily have to be uninvolved in any disputes, they should try to remain as objective as possible in deciding whether to ban users or not. (Also, I think we should revisit the idea of not allowing people in the "five eyes" countries to become admins - I don't think administrators have access to enough personally identifying information on users to warrant such a measure.)

Irreconcilable Ideological Differences

Lastly, I want to say that I have forseen a split in this site's userbase coming for a while now, though I didn't think it would take this form. Personally, I believe the political views of anarchists and communists are far enough apart that they will not be able to get along peacefully, at least not for very long. So, I think we should make one version of Raddle for anarchists, and one version for communists (hopefully, I am not the only communist that is still here). It would be better to separate on neutral terms, than on hostile ones. If we did this, each group of people would be able to go about their business with far less disagreement.

What are your thoughts?

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

Re Irreconcilable Ideological Differences, personally I like that people like you are around sudo and I think you bring a lot to the space despite how for example I disagree with you on many major points. There's productive disagreement often especially where people are not taking things personally to the point of attacking one another.

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jaidedctrl wrote

To the last point­— I think having two versions of Raddles is just ridiculous, and would unnecessarily split up our community. The Communist version probably wouldn't last long anyway, since the Anarchist-to-Communist ratio's pretty high.
I think that we can definitely get along peacefully. We've been doing pretty good, other than the whole “Transhumanist v Primitivist“ false drama. And when it comes to Anarchists and Communists clashing… that was almost entirely ziq fanning the flames, anyway.

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surreal wrote

This real life online forum movie that is going on for a while was fun to watch until a point. The plot in my head is that of some people getting hurt from random puppets that questioned their beliefs in a condescending way, then the people tried to seek revenge by killing all the puppets until they get to the puppeteer which at this point the movie went meta and the people started naming actors which destroyed all the fun. Raddle is the stage this and other plays take place, until it gets shutdown, actors will play their part, either it's a happy role or sad.

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kore wrote

something I've noticed is how ziq often talked about how raddle was their project. If we were to go off in a new direction, i think there should be multiple founders

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Jon wrote

Wait. what? can anyone explain me what happened? I'm new here and I missed all this stuff

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AntiCapital wrote

I'll keep posting Anti-Capital articles and such as they come out. Don't really know what the issues are, but if people aren't comfortable here, the editors of Anti-Capital all hang out at redmarx.

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Jantesviker wrote

I'm not a regular on Raddle, so my opinion might very well be misinformed, and I might not take seriously problems on Raddle.

However, I think it is sad that what seems like quibbles should dissolve an attempt at unity on the left.

The left has throughout its history been fractured by divisions. These divisions have kept us from forming a real einheitsfront against the fascist/capitalist powers that be.

My point is that one should think carefully about abandoning a project that aims at unifying the left. There is enough division and not enough unity.

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Cosmicsloth42 wrote

I didn't know Emma, and Leftous had left again. Sad news, but I wish them all the best.

I wish I had some suggestions on how to help the site but unfortunately I don't. Hopefully everything will work out for the best, Raddle is great and hopefully we will bounce back twice as strong!

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____deleted____ wrote

I'll be honest; it seems Raddle is in a death spiral and I can't imagine a solution. As such, I'll be asking here if anyone knows any other reddit alternatives that ain't voat?

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mofongo wrote

Raddle it's a cool place, it would need people like you.

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____deleted____ wrote (edited )

I'd love to stick by Raddle, but it appears to me that its just on an inevitable decline; I'll likely stick for a while, but I don't see a solution as both the dev and the host have valid reasons to hate being on this site, and even half the staff has just given up in light of this mess.

And not only staff are running into issues; this is causing issues for me due to ongoing manipulation making it difficult to justify using this site. I don't think there's a solution so long as its run by emma and ziq- but other devs have let down according to emma and I myself have no programming skills, and ziq has offered to let others host but it was turned down.

Yet, despite the site relying on these two (though, one of them has also clearly fucked up quite a good few times and whether or not the treatment of them was valid is another debate), it has driven them off not just once, leaving the site and its community in jeopardy. There doesn't seem to be a solution I could imagine.

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jaidedctrl wrote

I think the best option right now is to use Raddle while it's still up… and start a new Postmill instance soon enough. After that, switch to Nettle or something at some point.

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____deleted____ wrote

switch to Nettle

Remember, Emma quit the site but didn't remove her contributions other than her posts, which are entirely hers. Still skeptic on Nettle.

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jaidedctrl wrote

Oh, the Nettle bit's just because it's technically interesting :-)

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zombie_berkman wrote

The sites dead just let it die with dignity. If anyone wants an acp invite just drop a line. Its the last place I know to go

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dele_ted wrote (edited )

Not at all. There's plenty of life and love left on Raddle. I'll stay until there's nobody left that i want to be around, but there's plenty of good people here, so I don't see that happening anytime soon; and I'll do my best to pull things in the right direction (I know I've slipped a few times, but I'm learning from my mistakes).

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Pop wrote

what's acp

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zombie_berkman wrote

anticapitalist.party its an anticapitalist mastodon instance. its kind of like twitter but left and free software and federated

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