carleton

R E D D I T is one of the most popular news websites in the world. Why is it a bad word like ****, ****, *******?

It's my understanding that, several years ago, some spammers were posting links to that domain.

Please remove ****** from the banned words list.

If not, please explain why it is there.

Rollfast

Because they are a bunch of crazed (blanks) sometimes and cause too much mischief.

I'd insert a picture of Gene Rayburn here but vB has ceased to work in IE and the photo uploader stalls at 100% or just doesn't work at all in Firefox.

All vB versions I use in IE are broken.

carleton

Who is "they"? Red-dit users or BF site admins?

IBThomas

What isn't working on IE? Uploading photos on IE and Firefox are working fine for me, the images you're trying to upload might be too large.It's best to keep your photos around 1024 X 768 in pixel size.

carleton

Rollfast

Ask Paul. I dunno, vB is on the fritz in general for me. Unrelated but also a prob is one site that migrated to a new server last week and it's a Where's Waldo moment if I an find them from any link or even after clearing and typing it in fresh.

carleton

Hey, man. Go report your own bug!

Rollfast

I just squish 'em.

IBThomas

I checked in on why it's a banned word and it's because too many people were linking to inappropriate content from there.

carleton

OK. That was about 7 or 8 years ago. I believe Stormcrowe (RIP) implemented that rule.

Please "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

It's literally the #3 most visited site in the US and #6 most visited in the world.

Right now it's possible for a user post links to inappropriate content on YouTube, FB, Vimeo, IG and explicit content on Twitter, Tumblr, Blogspot, etc...and that user will simply be admonished or banned. But, the sites would not be blacklisted. It's clear that the criteria for which a site may be banned isn't applied to all popular sites.

Yes, individual user behavior was why the ban was originally made. There is no way that Stormcrowe would know how big and mainstream ****** would become.

I humbly submit that this rule should be reevaluated.

IBThomas

I'll bring this up with the team to see if they also feel it should be unbanned.

carleton

Awesome. Thanks!

Maybe lead with the question, "How many of you have a ****** account?..."

Further, if they deny the request, it's probably for a reason they aren't telling us

ksryder

I second the motion, and incorporate by reference @carleton's arguments herein.

Moreover, there's actually a lot of valuable info on there, even though there's a lot of terrible things too. I.e., it's just like the rest of the internet.

Rollfast

I think the problem has to do with the number of sub-******s that can run into what the owners and management could call not safe for work. It's a lot harder for a group of volunteer moderators who have other things in life as well as BF and it's much easier for it to get out of hand.

Verifying all this constantly can create saddle sores.

Tom Stormcrowe was a very wise man, and Siu Blue Wind looked up to him as a good friend. His absence hasn't suddenly made that wisdom obsolete.

That site is the Wild West, and when you have to qualify it with yeah, it's a mess in spots the conservative and sound thing for a site with around 200,000 registered members (active or not) is to protect the site. This is the largest authority on cycling issues on the internet after all. As long as members of all ages and sensibilities come here then they can be them and BF will be BF.

carleton

Well, if you think that about ******, boy...wait until you hear about Twitter!

Further, the YouTube comment section is known for being some of the most toxic on the internet.

My point is that moderation of ****** should be on a case-by-case basis, not with a heavy-handed ban of everything.

As ksryder states, "it's just like the rest of the internet."

I worked with Tom on the moderator team here. He was a fair and reasonable admin. I think that when the ban was implemented, ****** was largely unknown. Digg was the popular user-submitted "look what I found on the internet" site back then. Then Digg was rocked with a few discrediting scandals and a critical mass of users moved over to ****** and that's how ****** grew to what it is now. Recall that I am the internet. I was there when it happened

Rollfast

I don't work here and I'm not going to argue that to death. I have also seen R enough lately and I don't see where Tom's guidelines have lost any of their merit.

I'm on record however as not being fond of it.

unterhausen

it wasn't 7-8 years ago. I recommended it be added to the censor and I haven't been a mod that long. Tom might have been in charge of the censor back when it was done. People still try to post links to movie spam from there, which is why it is censored. I never saw any reason why there needed to be links to another forum anyway.

carleton

Rollfast

I doubt BF starves.

carleton

@Rollfast, hey, man. With all due respect, Please just refrain from defending BF incessantly in the threads I make. That question was directly and obviously to @unterhausen.

Some quick stats:
- 19 posts in this thread.
- 6 of them are from you.
- 0 of your posts are on-topic.

You are not helping and you are hurting the discussion by distracting others.

carleton

@Rollfast, I appreciate the chatter...in another context.

This forum is essentially an unofficial bug reporting system. Discussion and chatter wouldn't be welcome in a bug report. That's what we have the other forums for

unterhausen

competition really isn't my concern here, you would have to ask IB about that. I just think the mod team workload has been reduced by censoring the site name of a source of spam. I don't particularly see the need to change it. Don't we accept link shortener links?

carleton

If it's about spam, then that's addressed with a whitelist of approved sites. Without that, what's to keep a spammer from simply spinning up a web server and spamming links from there, like: https://127.0.0.1/GimmeDemPasswordsYo.html

So, is it about objectionable content? Spam? Viruses? or Bad users?

When you get bad users posting links to Twitter, do you ban Twitter or the users? Please answer.

Rollfast

Now, both unterhausen and IBThomas have provided you answers. I hope they were of assistance.

carleton

Any update, @unterhausen?