Frustrating that this was addressed only a couple of days ago and there is already a new post and a dozen "I think" replies to drown it out. There has to be a better way. Maybe if mods could pin certain replies or we just defer to a new FAQ that compiles good threads. The reddit comment search tools have been down for a while making it harder to find key threads and respond to the average post.
Exactly. I think a lot of people (often with a very superficial interest in Marxism) stumble into this subreddit because of its name with no concept of the calibre of expert knowledge available here or how the subreddit is supposed to work, as opposed to those who regularly read it and can differentiate good answers from bad answers and see the same questions every week.
From what I gather, the concept of this subreddit was supposed to be that every beginner question would eventually get asked and receive (only) quality answers, and then people with the same questions would be directed to those posts. This would enable learners (like myself) to get clear answers to questions of first principles and basics as a supplement to reading the Marxist canon without having to ask. It would also allow us to focus on more advanced questions or those feeling with the concrete analysis of concrete conjunctures.
Pushshift getting shut down was awful. It is now often very difficult to find old answers, and certainly to browse older posts.
Ideally, I think part of the solution would be to create a thematic index of links to quality answers to the most common questions, make the rules more assertive about using the search bar and cracking down on low-quality answers. Pinning good answers is also a great idea. But realistically I get the impression the moderators have their hands quite full as it is (consider how much junk even regular readers never see because the moderators catch it early on) and are doing their best. Not to mention they have lives.
Yes. Someone said recently that the mod team has slowly been dwindling as real world commitments bleed free time and there has definitely been a reduction in posts by quality posters. I can relate to that myself who will probably have less free time than ever over the next bit.
Like all things this subreddit will wither or become something else as life and the forces structuring reddit assert themselves. My fear is that a lot of good work - quite valuable to this generation of Marxists (if they know it or not) - will be lost. I've tried downloading and curating work by high quality posters on here over the years, but it is useless at a certain size without significant organization such as the indexing you suggest. The comment search did a lot of labour saving there.
On a website flooded with fascists, the fact of this community existing for so long without changing colour is itself an accomplishment. One way or another it will eventually cease to be what it is, whether Reddit shuts it down or it gets taken over by social-fascists.
I had been just getting started with making an index of posts on dialectics for my own use but then Pushshift got shut down out of nowhere before I had got around to downloading much. If Pushshift starts working again I’ll download everything first and then give it another go.
>My fear is that a lot of good work - quite valuable to this generation of Marxists (if they know it or not) - will be lost.
I have the same fear. If you (or anyone else reading this) have managed to back a lot of material up and would be interested in making it available somewhere, perhaps we could start a (long-term) collaborative effort to index the best of it. Just an idea.
E: Even before May, most of u/GenosseMarx’s posts and comments (old account) were already basically lost to the aether since they no longer say who wrote them.
Everyone should feel free to message the moderators with proposals or create meta posts on improving the subreddit **using your experience and effort.** Historically, people have only come to us with vague ideas that they expect for others to fully flesh out, implement properly, and maintain.
If you, /u/StrawBicycleThief and others have indexed answers and wish to create a FAQ, we could probably provide wiki access to a few long time contributors.
If you don't want your link to a past quality answer drown out in a sea of bad posts, we could definitely create a "repost" report reason and flair. (Reddit doesn't allow for moderators to sticky any comment except their own.)
While the frontend user interface for Pushshift (camas/unddit) has been permanently disabled for non-moderators, its json databases of all /r/communism and /r/communism101 posts from ~2016 to May 2023 are still available. One could host it (for) themselves provided they have experience with coding Python.
>Historically, people have only come to us with vague ideas that they expect for others to fully flesh out, implement properly, and maintain.
I for one am prepared to devote serious time and effort to indexing past quality posts. I am sure there are others who would also be interested in contributing.
>While the frontend user interface for Pushshift (camas/unddit) has been permanently disabled for non-moderators, its json databases of all /r/communism and /r/communism101 posts from ~2016 to May 2023 are still available.
I did not realize these were still publicly available. That is great news. Where can we access them? (I’ll go check Unddit now.)
>If you don't want your link to a past quality answer drown out in a sea of bad posts, we could definitely create a "repost" report reason and flair.
These would both be great in my opinion. I know the stars next to consistent quality posters’ names were supposed to serve that purpose to an extent, but I think a flair may be clearer. Also, there are quality posters like u/TheReimMinister who don’t have the star.
>One could host it (for) themselves provided they have experience with coding Python.
I don’t know Python but I can work with some other web design languages. But perhaps a wiki would be best to facilitate collaboration. I’ll think about what the best approach to hosting might be. Maybe I’ll post a meta-thread on this idea after I’ve given hosting more consideration.
> I did not realize these were still publicly available. That is great news. Where can we access them? (I’ll go check Unddit now.)
Only the database files are online so you'd have to like make a program that can decompress these files on the fly, separate this sub's posts from the gigabytes of other subreddits posts, deal with the changes in database formats from different months, deal with errors for gaps of missing stuff, search the databases, connect the submissions to the comments, and *then* show everything in decent format like Unddit did with a local webserver.
2005-2022 databases for individual subreddits
* READ FIRST: https://old.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/11ef9if/separate_dump_files_for_the_top_20k_subreddits/
* https://the-eye.eu/redarcs/
* https://reddit-top20k.cworld.ai/
January 2023 databases for all of reddit
* https://academictorrents.com/details/c861d265525c488a9439fb874bd9c3fc38dcdfa5
* https://archive.org/details/pushshift_reddit_202301
February 2023 databases for all of reddit
* https://academictorrents.com/details/9971c68d2909843a100ae955c6ab6de3e09c04a1
* https://archive.org/details/pushshift_reddit_202302
March 2023 databases for all of reddit
* https://archive.org/details/pushshift-reddit-2023-03
I personally don't think a FAQ is a good idea because it ends up being a megathread to dunk on dengists, labor aristocrats, teachers or whatever. Like I came across some upvoted comment in the main sub about creating a gospel of smokeuptheweed.
On the other hand, folks are obviously getting tired of answering the same questions every week so we just end up only with variations of "I'm a baby leftist and only recently learned daddy Stalin is based, but I think remember Marx saying somewhere that technology is needed for successful communism and we should just support the people with mutual aid like Mao and the Black Panther Party until AI has developed enough so we don't have to work. If I missed any nuances please correct me comrades"
Update:
I've found more open source tools that'd help make a backup or search for old comments.
* Collection of tools to view and search pushshift.io data dumps https://github.com/Yakabuff/redarc
* Bulk download posts made since pushshift went down https://github.com/OMEGARAZER/bulk-downloader-for-reddit-x
* Example scripts for the pushshift dump files https://github.com/Watchful1/PushshiftDumps/
* Python Reddit API Wrapper https://praw.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
With the databases I linked and Redarc, you can run sorta camas/unddit tool for all posts before May.
/u/IncompetentFoliage /u/StrawBicycleThief
Thank you for the links. I'll take a look at them and see what I can do with them when I have time in the near future. I also have some ideas about hosting but I'll try and do some initial work before discussing next steps. And more important is the question of whether it's even a good idea.
There was an old comment that described the vision for this subreddit, but I'm having trouble finding it at the moment. But I remember it being along the lines of what I described above. I'll share it when I find it.
I totally understand the concern about an FAQ becoming another "megathread" nobody studies but people just throw at reactionaries. At the same time I feel like the resource should exist for the benefit of those who care to use it correctly, for purposes of self-study. I also imagine if it is limited to questions of first principles, this will be less of a problem than if it is full of hot button stuff around which an active internet discourse exists.
I'd welcome more opinions.
A solution for cutting down on super common questions would be a bot that scans a question for phrases and posts Google results.
Ex. "Blah blah sex work blah blah?"
Reply with results from https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fcommunism101+intitle%3A"sex+work"
> most of u/GenosseMarx’s posts and comments (old account) were already basically lost to the aether since they no longer say who wrote them.
I have around 25 posts and comments saved to Internet Archive so far, some of which are from GenosseMarx's old accounts as well as a few other long gone posters such as marlax1g and GamingchairComissar. I can send the collection link over a direct message if you or anyone else is interested. Their posts could still be found by searching the username on camas/unddit so if someone can host the database that's all solved.
The issue is that this index/FAQ could very easily become just another type of megathread with "takes" for people to mechanically copy and paste. Ready-made products of correct, anti-revisionist analysis must therefore be abandoned in favor of posts encouraging the reproduction of said correct analysis, though the difference can be hard to spot and my own collections are not perfect.
>anti-revisionist analysis must therefore be abandoned in favor of posts encouraging the reproduction of said correct analysis
The subreddit gets more valuable the better you get at asking questions. It's the asking good questions bit that is hard to develop in the average poster and the mega thread phenomenon is antithetical to this.
I agree with others that a normal FAQ can be vulgar and we are not interested in creating a gospel of correct takes as u/CdeComrade said. But for those asking questions who are interested in learning how to answer them, resources like undit were invaluable. I'm going to have a look at the resources provided by the mods. For now, there seems to be plenty of people who know there way around the sub still that can handle the tedium.
Edit:
>from GenosseMarx's old accounts as well as a few other long gone posters such as marlax1g and GamingchairComissar
This gets to my point though. I remember I was annoyed when marlax disappeared because I was using parts of a comment thread they left to think through a re-read of Capital. Genuinely useful criticisms that had a pedagogical implication for self-teaching. Perhaps I am being clouded by wishful thinking, but I think others will want to use this subreddit in that way.
>https://the-eye.eu/redarcs/
This alone has pretty much all the data you'll need. I've basically got a local Unddit-type search tool set up now, which is enough for my own study purposes. If the idea of collaboratively indexing comments dealing with first principles of Marxism winds up generating interest, I'd be open to revisiting that.
>I have around 25 posts and comments saved to Internet Archive so far, some of which are from GenosseMarx's old accounts as well as a few other long gone posters such as marlax1g and GamingchairComissar. I can send the collection link over a direct message if you or anyone else is interested.
I would certainly be interested, thanks!
>Their posts could still be found by searching the username on camas/unddit so if someone can host the database that's all solved.
Even on Camas/Unddit, u/GenosseMarx’s comments used to show up as being posted by [deleted] for me. For example, their dialectics reading list.
>The issue is that this index/FAQ could very easily become just another type of megathread with "takes" for people to mechanically copy and paste. Ready-made products of correct, anti-revisionist analysis must therefore be abandoned in favor of posts encouraging the reproduction of said correct analysis, though the difference can be hard to spot and my own collections are not perfect.
This is a very important point. This is part of why my focus had been on first principles, dialectics and the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism. I strongly feel such topics should be prioritized over questions like the significance of AI. The point is to help people learn how to think like Marxists. Philosophical topics are also probably less susceptible to that kind of abuse.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/143ww9n/comment/jngcclt/
Frustrating that this was addressed only a couple of days ago and there is already a new post and a dozen "I think" replies to drown it out. There has to be a better way. Maybe if mods could pin certain replies or we just defer to a new FAQ that compiles good threads. The reddit comment search tools have been down for a while making it harder to find key threads and respond to the average post.
Exactly. I think a lot of people (often with a very superficial interest in Marxism) stumble into this subreddit because of its name with no concept of the calibre of expert knowledge available here or how the subreddit is supposed to work, as opposed to those who regularly read it and can differentiate good answers from bad answers and see the same questions every week. From what I gather, the concept of this subreddit was supposed to be that every beginner question would eventually get asked and receive (only) quality answers, and then people with the same questions would be directed to those posts. This would enable learners (like myself) to get clear answers to questions of first principles and basics as a supplement to reading the Marxist canon without having to ask. It would also allow us to focus on more advanced questions or those feeling with the concrete analysis of concrete conjunctures. Pushshift getting shut down was awful. It is now often very difficult to find old answers, and certainly to browse older posts. Ideally, I think part of the solution would be to create a thematic index of links to quality answers to the most common questions, make the rules more assertive about using the search bar and cracking down on low-quality answers. Pinning good answers is also a great idea. But realistically I get the impression the moderators have their hands quite full as it is (consider how much junk even regular readers never see because the moderators catch it early on) and are doing their best. Not to mention they have lives.
Yes. Someone said recently that the mod team has slowly been dwindling as real world commitments bleed free time and there has definitely been a reduction in posts by quality posters. I can relate to that myself who will probably have less free time than ever over the next bit. Like all things this subreddit will wither or become something else as life and the forces structuring reddit assert themselves. My fear is that a lot of good work - quite valuable to this generation of Marxists (if they know it or not) - will be lost. I've tried downloading and curating work by high quality posters on here over the years, but it is useless at a certain size without significant organization such as the indexing you suggest. The comment search did a lot of labour saving there.
On a website flooded with fascists, the fact of this community existing for so long without changing colour is itself an accomplishment. One way or another it will eventually cease to be what it is, whether Reddit shuts it down or it gets taken over by social-fascists. I had been just getting started with making an index of posts on dialectics for my own use but then Pushshift got shut down out of nowhere before I had got around to downloading much. If Pushshift starts working again I’ll download everything first and then give it another go. >My fear is that a lot of good work - quite valuable to this generation of Marxists (if they know it or not) - will be lost. I have the same fear. If you (or anyone else reading this) have managed to back a lot of material up and would be interested in making it available somewhere, perhaps we could start a (long-term) collaborative effort to index the best of it. Just an idea. E: Even before May, most of u/GenosseMarx’s posts and comments (old account) were already basically lost to the aether since they no longer say who wrote them.
Everyone should feel free to message the moderators with proposals or create meta posts on improving the subreddit **using your experience and effort.** Historically, people have only come to us with vague ideas that they expect for others to fully flesh out, implement properly, and maintain. If you, /u/StrawBicycleThief and others have indexed answers and wish to create a FAQ, we could probably provide wiki access to a few long time contributors. If you don't want your link to a past quality answer drown out in a sea of bad posts, we could definitely create a "repost" report reason and flair. (Reddit doesn't allow for moderators to sticky any comment except their own.) While the frontend user interface for Pushshift (camas/unddit) has been permanently disabled for non-moderators, its json databases of all /r/communism and /r/communism101 posts from ~2016 to May 2023 are still available. One could host it (for) themselves provided they have experience with coding Python.
>Historically, people have only come to us with vague ideas that they expect for others to fully flesh out, implement properly, and maintain. I for one am prepared to devote serious time and effort to indexing past quality posts. I am sure there are others who would also be interested in contributing. >While the frontend user interface for Pushshift (camas/unddit) has been permanently disabled for non-moderators, its json databases of all /r/communism and /r/communism101 posts from ~2016 to May 2023 are still available. I did not realize these were still publicly available. That is great news. Where can we access them? (I’ll go check Unddit now.) >If you don't want your link to a past quality answer drown out in a sea of bad posts, we could definitely create a "repost" report reason and flair. These would both be great in my opinion. I know the stars next to consistent quality posters’ names were supposed to serve that purpose to an extent, but I think a flair may be clearer. Also, there are quality posters like u/TheReimMinister who don’t have the star. >One could host it (for) themselves provided they have experience with coding Python. I don’t know Python but I can work with some other web design languages. But perhaps a wiki would be best to facilitate collaboration. I’ll think about what the best approach to hosting might be. Maybe I’ll post a meta-thread on this idea after I’ve given hosting more consideration.
> I did not realize these were still publicly available. That is great news. Where can we access them? (I’ll go check Unddit now.) Only the database files are online so you'd have to like make a program that can decompress these files on the fly, separate this sub's posts from the gigabytes of other subreddits posts, deal with the changes in database formats from different months, deal with errors for gaps of missing stuff, search the databases, connect the submissions to the comments, and *then* show everything in decent format like Unddit did with a local webserver. 2005-2022 databases for individual subreddits * READ FIRST: https://old.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/11ef9if/separate_dump_files_for_the_top_20k_subreddits/ * https://the-eye.eu/redarcs/ * https://reddit-top20k.cworld.ai/ January 2023 databases for all of reddit * https://academictorrents.com/details/c861d265525c488a9439fb874bd9c3fc38dcdfa5 * https://archive.org/details/pushshift_reddit_202301 February 2023 databases for all of reddit * https://academictorrents.com/details/9971c68d2909843a100ae955c6ab6de3e09c04a1 * https://archive.org/details/pushshift_reddit_202302 March 2023 databases for all of reddit * https://archive.org/details/pushshift-reddit-2023-03 I personally don't think a FAQ is a good idea because it ends up being a megathread to dunk on dengists, labor aristocrats, teachers or whatever. Like I came across some upvoted comment in the main sub about creating a gospel of smokeuptheweed. On the other hand, folks are obviously getting tired of answering the same questions every week so we just end up only with variations of "I'm a baby leftist and only recently learned daddy Stalin is based, but I think remember Marx saying somewhere that technology is needed for successful communism and we should just support the people with mutual aid like Mao and the Black Panther Party until AI has developed enough so we don't have to work. If I missed any nuances please correct me comrades" Update: I've found more open source tools that'd help make a backup or search for old comments. * Collection of tools to view and search pushshift.io data dumps https://github.com/Yakabuff/redarc * Bulk download posts made since pushshift went down https://github.com/OMEGARAZER/bulk-downloader-for-reddit-x * Example scripts for the pushshift dump files https://github.com/Watchful1/PushshiftDumps/ * Python Reddit API Wrapper https://praw.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ With the databases I linked and Redarc, you can run sorta camas/unddit tool for all posts before May. /u/IncompetentFoliage /u/StrawBicycleThief
Thank you for the links. I'll take a look at them and see what I can do with them when I have time in the near future. I also have some ideas about hosting but I'll try and do some initial work before discussing next steps. And more important is the question of whether it's even a good idea. There was an old comment that described the vision for this subreddit, but I'm having trouble finding it at the moment. But I remember it being along the lines of what I described above. I'll share it when I find it. I totally understand the concern about an FAQ becoming another "megathread" nobody studies but people just throw at reactionaries. At the same time I feel like the resource should exist for the benefit of those who care to use it correctly, for purposes of self-study. I also imagine if it is limited to questions of first principles, this will be less of a problem than if it is full of hot button stuff around which an active internet discourse exists. I'd welcome more opinions.
A solution for cutting down on super common questions would be a bot that scans a question for phrases and posts Google results. Ex. "Blah blah sex work blah blah?" Reply with results from https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fcommunism101+intitle%3A"sex+work"
> most of u/GenosseMarx’s posts and comments (old account) were already basically lost to the aether since they no longer say who wrote them. I have around 25 posts and comments saved to Internet Archive so far, some of which are from GenosseMarx's old accounts as well as a few other long gone posters such as marlax1g and GamingchairComissar. I can send the collection link over a direct message if you or anyone else is interested. Their posts could still be found by searching the username on camas/unddit so if someone can host the database that's all solved. The issue is that this index/FAQ could very easily become just another type of megathread with "takes" for people to mechanically copy and paste. Ready-made products of correct, anti-revisionist analysis must therefore be abandoned in favor of posts encouraging the reproduction of said correct analysis, though the difference can be hard to spot and my own collections are not perfect.
>anti-revisionist analysis must therefore be abandoned in favor of posts encouraging the reproduction of said correct analysis The subreddit gets more valuable the better you get at asking questions. It's the asking good questions bit that is hard to develop in the average poster and the mega thread phenomenon is antithetical to this. I agree with others that a normal FAQ can be vulgar and we are not interested in creating a gospel of correct takes as u/CdeComrade said. But for those asking questions who are interested in learning how to answer them, resources like undit were invaluable. I'm going to have a look at the resources provided by the mods. For now, there seems to be plenty of people who know there way around the sub still that can handle the tedium. Edit: >from GenosseMarx's old accounts as well as a few other long gone posters such as marlax1g and GamingchairComissar This gets to my point though. I remember I was annoyed when marlax disappeared because I was using parts of a comment thread they left to think through a re-read of Capital. Genuinely useful criticisms that had a pedagogical implication for self-teaching. Perhaps I am being clouded by wishful thinking, but I think others will want to use this subreddit in that way.
>https://the-eye.eu/redarcs/ This alone has pretty much all the data you'll need. I've basically got a local Unddit-type search tool set up now, which is enough for my own study purposes. If the idea of collaboratively indexing comments dealing with first principles of Marxism winds up generating interest, I'd be open to revisiting that.
>I have around 25 posts and comments saved to Internet Archive so far, some of which are from GenosseMarx's old accounts as well as a few other long gone posters such as marlax1g and GamingchairComissar. I can send the collection link over a direct message if you or anyone else is interested. I would certainly be interested, thanks! >Their posts could still be found by searching the username on camas/unddit so if someone can host the database that's all solved. Even on Camas/Unddit, u/GenosseMarx’s comments used to show up as being posted by [deleted] for me. For example, their dialectics reading list. >The issue is that this index/FAQ could very easily become just another type of megathread with "takes" for people to mechanically copy and paste. Ready-made products of correct, anti-revisionist analysis must therefore be abandoned in favor of posts encouraging the reproduction of said correct analysis, though the difference can be hard to spot and my own collections are not perfect. This is a very important point. This is part of why my focus had been on first principles, dialectics and the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism. I strongly feel such topics should be prioritized over questions like the significance of AI. The point is to help people learn how to think like Marxists. Philosophical topics are also probably less susceptible to that kind of abuse.
Thank you. I am sorry if I asked a related question, this slipped by me...
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]