Hey All,

Tl;Dr: Save Reddit technical expertise before it’s lost to the sands of time and corporate shutdown.

Just wanted to get a discussion started on what would be, in my opinion, the greatest loss that we, as a society, would experience with the loss of Reddit. Proposed solutions welcome. And please don’t take this as me supporting Reddit in any way shape or form.

For years Reddit acted as the Internet’s foremost discussion board. As part of that it became host to a slew of subreddits which house niche information and technical expertise. I can’t tell you how often I’ve struggled to find a solution to a particular problem only to stumble across it on a years old reddit thread.

That information is, frankly, invaluable. Reddit may not be tailored to providing technical advice akin to the likes of stack overflow but, nevertheless, it is home to some of the hardest to find answers. If Reddit was to disappear tomorrow, so would that information.

As such I think that information should be treated as a goldmine, and just like a goldmine, excavated. If Lemmy is to play host to the great Reddit migration then it might well play host to these valuable tidbits. Exactly how such an excavation could be done without a blanket copy of all data on Reddit I don’t know. But I think it’s definitely something worth discussing and promoting amid Reddits recent mishaps. Who knows what the future holds for the site? But it’s downfall shouldn’t lead to the loss of decades worth of troubleshooting efforts and technical expertise.

  • HughJanus
    14·
    1 year ago

    Twitter killed their API entirely and with zero notice (among other horrific things) and their traffic has only fallen by 5%. Reddit isn’t going anywhere. People can’t be bothered to move.

    • LvxferreM
      6·
      1 year ago

      On the very least Reddit is becoming a walled dumpster fire (“walled garden” is a bit too much). Even if the info stays there, I think that “we” (people in general) should be migrating it elsewhere.

    • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
      4·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for pointing that out. But as much as numbers don’t lie, the situation is very different on reddit, at least for the technical/niche forums on there.

      A lot of subreddits that drove massive expertise to the place have shut down and moved to other places. It’s not about the api alone.

      It’s about giving the finger to the foss community and other dick moves against „the people“. Twitter has been a dumpster fire before felon husk took over. Reddit not that much. As soon as 1%ers (in members) start moving, the floor is gonna shift in reddits corporate halls.

      I moderate a couple subs there, one of those is top 5% or something. We‘re discussing moving atm. If moderators keep it low and organize, reddit is being hit hard.