thank you Edit: Thanks for all your messages here it really makes me welcome :D
The truly amazing part is being able to actually discuss things with people in good faith instead of constantly dealing with the shitstain debatelords on reddit. Interacting with this site actually makes me feel good instead of just angry.
It's been a fucking amazing site since its inception (albeit with a few missteps and hiccups). There aren't as many effort posts lately, but that can wax and wane. But I have learned a LOT from this place, so if there's something in particular you wanted some info on, or just to get some interesting takes about, use the search here and see what turns up. There is some real gold when it comes to old effort posts here and it pains me sometimes that a lot of them just get lost to time. Should be an archive or some shit.
a lot of them just get lost to time
Sites like Reddit, 4chan etc are built around ephemerality and posts that are gone within hours/days, which is great for endless content generation (ad $) but horrible in their ability to view historical patterns.
If you’re terminally online you’ll identify this as Hegelian/arboreal as opposed to Deleuzian/rhizomal, which has the effect of centralizing power in the platform rather than the content.
I suggested a way to get around this in an earlier post but am working on the ability to do this in my own content viewing which means I haven’t gotten around to coding anything for hexbear specifically
If you’re terminally online you’ll identify this as Hegelian/arboreal as opposed to Deleuzian/rhizomal, which has the effect of centralizing power in the platform rather than the content.
I never thought about it that way. Interesting!
https://hexbear.net/post/179501
Important points I gathered from that post:
- GitHub was suggested as a good tool by @invalidusernamelol
How would this work? Basically a curated MDX file where you can see changes in it's commit history? Until now I've used https://prolewiki.org/ which not always has pages to topics, but this sounds like I'd be able to personalize it? Do you (or anyone) have tips on how to organize such list (Topics, People, generally how and which tags to use?) ?
- Copypasteable agitprop being prone auto-moderation by @AcidSmiley
This is definitely a huge downside. What also about additionally to the technical solutions for spam detection you mentioned, designing it to be more as a general guide for understanding as opposed to a definite copypaste rebuttal, meaning a ressouce (Link, Book whatever) with a community sourced disclaimer why that resource holds a lot of meaning:
e.g.: ressource: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-s-a-solid-man-declassified-memos-offer-window-into-yeltsin-clinton-relationship/29462317.html
archive link: [archive links]
Importance: RFE is fully funded by the US Government. In the context of the question if NATO was still necessary after the disolution SU, this ressource supports the narrative that... etc.[Community sourced]
related ressources: [community sourced]
Or would that lead to copypasting nonetheless? I think I saw chuds doing something similar or as wiki where they had a ressource with strawmanned leftist arguments and had hottake answers as rebuttals and linked to in debate bro culture which would probably be good to avoid lol
I'm just spitballin here because I'm excited about the general idea
On the GitHub thing, you can spool up a public or private repo for free and just start going at it. Using markdown files and directory structures to organize everything. I like the GitHub option because it allows you to include documents and images directly. There also the "GitWiki" feature they added which is basically a mini markdown wiki you can use. All of it can be pulled do multiple devices and kept up to date easily and if it gets taken down you always have your local backup to rebuild it from (and vice versa, if your local copy breaks you have the online version)
Thank you for the useful info. I'm not too proficient with github, but will look more into this!
If you're just using MarkDown and uploading files to it, it's super simple. They include a graphic markdown editor on the site (it's nice because Reddit and Hexbear use MD formatting).
Until that functionality is built into hexbear, you're just gonna have to copy and paste things yourself, or screenshot them and upload.
I'm not quite sure what the upload limit on repos is, so try and avoid a ton of high res images and scanned books, maybe use another archive service for those (archive.org etc) and link them in your repo
This sounds so proficient, the insight is appreciated! Currently I've been using the note to self in signal and it's a jumbled mess. I haven't put much thought about properly organizing this stuff yet. Y'alls posts def sparked ideas.
I just found gitjournal (I was looking mobile apps to push mdx to git). Do you recommend this, or would you recommend something else?
EDIT: Just gonna give it a try it looks open source
Here is what my current structure looks like. It is more general-purpose than what I envision here but "tips on how to organize" is in this instance just "write the notes and link them," then build out a more structured Wiki-like jumping off point later. The software I use also has functionality to create notes based on templates:
What I am using for my own archive is Obsidian and am working towards publication via Quartz. It is in essence the note-taking app many PhDs use for research (Roam Research) but your notes are local rather than in a cloud structure. There is also Notion, but it doesn't suit my purposes, being less customizable and having more structure built in.
GitHub...How would this work?
The easiest way to do this imo would be a shared Obsidian repo (Obsidian hooks into GitHub with no knowledge necessary). Apps such as MarkDownload (saving a webpage as Markdown) and Zotero (academic reference collection) would likely come in handy.
Copypasteable agitprop auto-moderated
I don't think we should be solving this issue before it comes up. It seems easily fixable with your ideas and the earlier ones. I like the way you're thinking about this a lot.
I love how well you have it organized wtf! Thank you so much for the links, I will probably PM you sometime soon if you dont mind! :stalin-heart:
Isn’t this largely an internet (and Reddit holdover) culture thing though? There are posts 12-24 hours old still on the very Top of the feed. Sometimes I am away from the site for a day so I am just seeing them. And it seems to go against an unwritten rule to engage at that point. I wish posts had a longer life span, like even of a day or two instead of hours.
Yes, and that culture isn't contextless: in fact many times you can see mechanisms of control as being built into the medium itself, as with through "planned obsolescence" like you mentioned. I haven't labbed this thought out very far, so fair warning:
It wouldn't be great for Redditors to have a feed that puts past posts about how great Saddam was (when the US supported him) on equal footing with his later reputation in the US (when he nationalized resources). Thus the need for dictation at rather than discussion with; dictation requires authority which is scarce in online pseudonymous environments, so what suffices is post-first mediums. These mediums create local context without any grounding in past contexts - a perfect environment to ignore the messy issue of the myriad contradictions and contractions that US media is forced to undergo to resolve the inherent inconsistency in neoliberal ideology.
More concretely, "post-first" stuff like Reddit, 4chan, Tumblr, etc etc consolidates discussion around some topic of conversation dictated by the poster. If that poster gives an opinion in the post, further comments grow off the original like branches in a tree - but rarely break off into a fully-separate discussion uninfluenced by the OP. This is the case for books as well, which lock you into a longform dictation from the author and are usually written hierarchically, by experts for non-experts. Contrast this with a "comment-first" environment such as academia: content and discussion is (well, more) the point, and instead of a tree structure you find a weblike graph of "comments" all making reference to one another which allows for emergent coherence. Obviously there are other filtration mechanisms to keep the wrong people out of this discussion.
Were these massive environments comment-first, it would constantly be somewhat like those videos you see of authority figures saying one thing overlaid with their saying the exact opposite (most recently biolabs in Ukraine).
I switched to my day 1 acc, because it's taboo to talk about this sites culture with an account that was created two hours ago @CindyTheSkull.
It’s been a fucking amazing site since its inception
100% agree, I love how there's no downvotes and it created a culture where you can comment without having to fear someone responding in bad faith like on reddit. It definitely made me from 100% lurker to a sporadic poster
I have learned a LOT from this place
As someone who used to browse 4chan and stumbled upon r/cth this is the sanest place I've experienced on the net so far. I was able to purge a lot of reactionary tendencies in myself thanks to this community.
Thank you all for that :fidel-salute:
it’s taboo to talk about this sites culture with an account that was created two hours ago
Who says?! I made a new account for the express purpose that I didn't want to reveal my first month of hexbear's existence nym, so nyah!
Other than that... :sicko-wholesome: fully agreed, this place draws a person in, as I too was mostly a lurker who has found the joy and rhythm of posting only through the community here.
Who says?! I made a new account for the express purpose that I didn’t want to reveal my first month of hexbear’s existence nym, so nyah!
Hehe yeah I create a new account every once in a while too . There was a post the other day that advised to do so and I did. I thought about not logging into this one as you'll probably find cringe shit, but I remember wreckers usually with new accs setting off struggle sessions to alienate new users. Usually it was criticism from a "not lurked enough" perspective. New accs would also try to blend in for a few days and then switching to full reactionary for le epic troll
Just something I learned to keep in mind, because this community is in deed amazing :D
