Given how that's been going, and how that subreddit apparently got caught in the crossfire, it kind of makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes at Reddit. With a different person revoking it and apologising, it kind of seems like the admins aren't really communicating to each other, and that some are putting out fires that the others are lighting.

EDIT: No Apology, just an explanation.

Although I'm curious about how they might address the "clickbait" issue of people having a massively upvoted/boosted post, and then changing the post to say something else entirely.

That seems like it might be a problem if people are allowed to edit titles.

Slight shame that the contractors didn't start from the end. It could have been funnier if they had taken off the "er" instead.

For those curious about what a defibrillator does do: It stops hearts.

Which might seem insanely counterintuitive, but it's great for when the heart gets stuck in a rhythm that prevents it from being able to pump properly, since stopping it lets it restart itself in a more normal rhythm.

Before we invented the defibrillator, doctors basically had to punch the patient in the chest to hopefully hit the heart at the right point to stop it. It does also mean that if you really know what you're doing, and got lucky with the timing/amount of force, you could technically pull off one of Kill Bill's death punches, although it would be a little less dramatic than them walking five steps before their heart explodes.

But unlike video games, unless you fry the heart itself, a defibrillator won't instantly kill someone. It will stop their heart, sure, but their heart will restart itself, unless something is wrong (stopped for too long, physical damage, irreversible chemical imbalance, etc)

They, like Twitter, had good reasons for not allowing it, such as the risk of users editing posts after the fact, and the risk of abusing that privilege to scam other users, so on.

But their development did get stale some years back, and they probably know it, given that Reddit started chasing trends and implementing mostly-unwanted features some probably when they started focusing on trying to keep users on the site, and adding things like image/video uploading (which probably did terrible things to their development costs).

It could be the smaller subs for precisely that reason. /r/videos is high-profile, and is likely to kick a fit, so smaller subs would be a better testing ground, to see what the reception is, before steamrolling the others.

Sure, but I could see it being used to promote scams and things, too. You get a popular post, and then change it to something else, pointing to a scam, and feign popular support for it.

I remember that being one of the reasons for why both Reddit and Twitter didn't really have post/title editing.

It's better to also have some known method of counteracting any potential issues ahead of time, so we're not blindsided by something like that when it does happen, especially when it's something that could happen now, rather than some far-fetched issue.

A lot of sci-fi (at least where TV/Films are concerned) keeps getting too bogged down in what it thinks that it should be, and doesn't actually try to explore new possibilities or expand much, which generally means that the quality of sequels progressively gets worse, and the show ends up being a sort of even mush vaguely resembling the original.

The main example I could think of is probably Star Trek. It's too fixated on everything as it is, so even things that are supposed to be radical changes just re-establish the status quo with a new coat of paint. A radical show with radical viewpoints would never take off, as newer iterations would try to emulate the success of the show, and keep to the old.

It's part of why later Star Trek shows seem to be a bit more conservative, by comparison. Sure, values have changed since the original show, but the level of radical progressiveness has also gradually wound down too. Compared to the original show, which tried to push things from all angles, something like Star Trek: Discovery would seem almost conservative. Most of its more progressive elements are fairly standard for the time period it is set in, rather than pushing the envelope like the original did.

Similarly, all the shows end up trying to emulate the same formula, and even the same rough starship design. The Enterprise was originally specially designed and built to seem future-y, but many other of their starships since them seem to just be iterative designs on the original. Even one of them set 900 in the years in the future seems to have almost identical technologies, polities, and culture as one set in the 24th century. The visuals are different, but everything seems to be effectively the same under the coat of paint.

Not having that baggage is probably why up-and-coming shows, like The Orville, tend to be able to get away with more, since there isn't a previous Orville that it keeps trying to recapture, just yet, which should mean that it gets more leeway.

From a non Star Trek standpoint, it's also rather happened to Star Wars. The newer films are just trying to recapture the older films, rather than expand into their own thing, to the detriment of the films as a whole. The latest trilogy seems like a rehash of the old ones, down to having what is basically another death star, Rebellions, Vader-ish Masked Sith Lord, and Friendpatines.

I don't really have much of a solution, besides wanting the shows to just branch out more. I think Star Trek in the 32nd century should have gone with a brand new slate, where everything was different (from both an ideological, political, and technological standpoint), and the 23rd century ship that ended up there would be woefully outdated, not just on paper, but with the technology it was fitted with.

Star Wars has a bunch of interesting things that it could run with, such as the aftermath of the major wars, where the Rebellion is now having to deal with multiple smaller wars from various factions under the splintering empire, or have to secure its place in the resulting power vacuum.

One show that hasn't succumbed to this as much is Doctor Who, but that had a major revamp in its 2005 revival which drastically changed the nature of the show itself. Still, it doesn't seem to be particularly immune to it either. Behind-the-scenes, they're suddenly going back to the old composer and old showrunners, and the main character doesn't seem to evolve too much beyond "conflicted, but brilliant and eccentric hero". It also seems to be slowly settling into its own ruts, as well, with the most recent run rather resetting a redeemed villain's character development suddenly.

As a slight tangent, I also feel like that considering the messaging of the show itself, there could be quite a bit of interesting mileage that could be achieved by having a companion who is a species that is normally an enemy. Maybe something like a Dalek.

Isn't it not sci-fi? It's usually more classed as sci-fantasy, if memory serves.

It was fun for a while, but like any joke on Reddit, it's also been run into the ground to the point of obnoxiousness, and you kind of see users becoming tired of it in responses to protest updates.

Which I don't really blame them for. From a user standpoint, it does seem a little like a moderator/admin spat that they're just caught in the crossfire of. They're used to their cozy little community, and don't have much of a desire to leave it, or see it shut down. In fairness, there aren't very many good alternatives, either. Kbin and Lemmy are nice and all, but they both much younger, and much more limited compared to Reddit, in addition to having problems like some instances (like Lemmy.ml, or Kbin.Social) crashing under the load of new users, whilst also being less intuitive to begin with, if you're coming from Reddit.

As an alternative, I'm a bit more partial to the /r/politicalhumor method of just giving everyone moderator permissions instead. That way, nothing really changes if the users don't want it to, and it's effectively unmoderated without having to deal with potentially unsavoury content, or making as big of a mess of the sub.

From a Reddit perspective, changing things to John Oliver would get his attention, but at the end of the day, that's still more content for the site itself. Reddit Inc isn't going to care too much about what the content is, as long as they can spin it as "more content", and still put advertising revenue on it.

• /r/steam is getting steamy. Some users are blowing their safeties, but the sub seems to be on board with posting things relating to steam, and steam engines.

In fairness, that's probably more due to the novelty of the disaster, more so than whoever was actually on board.

A refugee boat sinking is a tragedy, but it's also not novel in the eyes of the media (and might be difficult to report on, depending on local laws). It happens with enough regularity that it's considered another tragedy, in much the same way that America doesn't report all their mass shootings (they tend to have one for almost every day of the year), or how the local paper usually doesn't report every robbery and homicide.

The submarine incident is a bit more like a plane crash by comparison, which is rare and novel enough that it's worth reporting on, irrespective of whoever is on board. Particularly with the other facts being dug up, which only added fuel to the fire.

This is Kirk and Riker slander.

Kirk doesn't deserve that kind of reputation, whereas Riker does.

And a Russian and Japanese crew member at the height of the Cold War. Not just as background, but as one of the main crew.

The regulations did exist, but the CEO/company just ignored/sidestepped them (and was quoted as complaining about them being onerous).

Even TOS had a blatant anti-racism episode where the conclusion was very much explicitly "if we don't get along, we'll be left extinct on an empty, dead husk of a planet".

My father was once falsely accused of being a bak'targ. Calling Gowron Law helped restore honour to my house. 35/9 great service.

Kind of like how TOS was almost flagrantly progressive at the time, with women not only being equals on the bridge, but being allowed to wear what they wanted, like miniskirts, without having to dress like the men, but today, it's seen as an artefact of the times, and as a sign of the comparatively regressive attitudes of the day, rather than the feminist icon it was when the show aired.

They not happy about it, but it was the only way for them to stop users circumventing their account creation restrictions by registering an account at places that didn't have those, and just posting over there.

According to their post, they basically did it as a last resort, since Lemmy doesn't have good enough moderation tools to deal with the influx, and they don't have the manpower either.

Honestly, the riots are probably fine, since anyone with no context would just see it as generic protest footage, or something along those lines.

Some massaging a few decades from now could tie it to the 2025 sanctuary city riots, or some other historical event instead of Jan 6 with barely any changes at all.

The Elon Musk reference definitely aged poorly, though, although having some diversity in views around historical inventors could be pretty interesting in its own right. Someone might hate Cochrane because he ended up with the credit for the warp engine, even though he didn't build it, and only did it for the fame and money, while others might respect him for his contributions to humanity, and being instrumental in Earth's official First Contact with aliens.