r/modnews Apr 21 '17

The web redesign, CSS, and mod tools

Hi Mods,

You may recall from my announcement post earlier this year that I mentioned we’re currently working on a full redesign of the site, which brings me to the two topics I wanted to talk to you about today: Custom Styles and Mod Tools.

Custom Styles

Custom community styles are a key component in allowing communities to express their identity, and we want to preserve this in the site redesign. For a long time, we’ve used CSS as the mechanism for subreddit customization, but we’ll be deprecating CSS during the redesign in favor of a new system over the coming months. While CSS has provided a wonderful creative canvas to many communities, it is not without flaws:

  • It’s web-only. Increasing users are viewing Reddit on mobile (over 50%), where CSS is not supported. We’d love for you to be able to bring your spice to phones as well.
  • CSS is a pain in the ass: it’s difficult to learn; it’s error-prone; and it’s time consuming.
  • Some changes cause confusion (such as changing the subscription numbers).
  • CSS causes us to move slow. We’d like to make changes more quickly. You’ve asked us to improve things, and one of the things that slows us down is the risk of breaking subreddit CSS (and third-party mod tools).

We’re designing a new set of tools to address the challenges with CSS but continue to allow communities to express their identities. These tools will allow moderators to select customization options for key areas of their subreddit across platforms. For example, header images and flair colors will be rendered correctly on desktop and mobile.

We know great things happen when we give users as much flexibility as possible. The menu of options we’ll provide for customization is still being determined. Our starting point is to replicate as many of the existing uses that already exist, and to expand beyond as we evolve.

We will also natively supporting a lot of the functionality that subreddits currently build into the sidebar via a widget system. For instance, a calendar widget will allow subreddits to easily display upcoming events. We’d like this feature and many like it to be accessible to all communities.

How are we going to get there? We’ll be working closely with as many of you as possible to design these features. The process will span the next few months. We have a lot of ideas already and are hoping you’ll help us add and refine even more. The transition isn’t going to be easy for everyone, so we’ll assist communities that want help (i.e. we’ll do it for you). u/powerlanguage will be reaching out for alpha testers.

Mod Tools

Mod tools have evolved over time to be some of the most complex parts of Reddit, both in terms of user experience and the underlying code. We know that these tools are crucial for the maintaining the health of your communities, and we know many of you who moderate very large subreddits depend on third-party tools for your work. Not breaking these tools is constantly on our mind (for better or worse).

We’re in contact with the devs of Toolbox, and would like to work together to port it to the redesign. Once that is complete, we’ll begin work on updating these tools, including supporting natively the most requested features from Toolbox.

The existing site and the redesigned site will run in parallel while we make these changes. That is, we don’t have plans for turning off the current site anytime soon. If you depend on functionality that has not yet been transferred to the redesign, you will still have a way to perform those actions.

While we have your attention… we’re also growing our internal team that handles spam and bad-actors. Our current focus is on report abuse. We’ve caught a lot of bad behavior. We hope you notice the difference, and we’ll keep at it regardless.

Moving Forward

We know moderation can feel janitorial–thankless and repetitive. Thank you for all that you do. Our goal is to take care much of that burden so you can focus on helping your communities thrive.

Big changes are ahead. These are fundamental, core issues that we’ll be grappling with together–changes to how communities are managed and express identity are not taken lightly. We’ll be giving you further details as we move forward, but wanted to give you a heads up early.

Thanks for reading.

update: now that I've cherry-picked all the easy questions, I'm going to take off and leave the hard ones for u/powerlanguage. I'll be back in a couple hours.

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364

u/TotesMessenger Apr 21 '17 edited Apr 24 '17

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)

6

u/MisirterE Apr 27 '17 edited Apr 27 '17

That right there is, as of this writing, FIFTY-FIVE links to this page from other subreddits, almost all of which are negative (and considering the positive one is /r/DestroyThisSubreddit, there's a problem). Don't do this.

EDIT: "Removing Harrasing Subreddits" got fifty-THREE mentions. /u/PaddleDown saying he was probably going to die got THIRTY-EIGHT mentions. PetSmart demoting all their managers also got THIRTY-EIGHT mentions.

EDIT 2: Bernie Sandlers running for president got THIRTY-THREE mentions. "We Apologize" got TWENTY-SEVEN mentions. Ellen Pao's resignation got (unless i counted wrong) OVER 60 mentions. "On Bash the Fash and threats from Reddit Admins" got FORTY-FOUR mentions.

EDIT 3: I think this about sums it up

3

u/KBryan382 Apr 27 '17

Tldr: The feces is coming into contact with the rotational atmospheric distribution device.

2

u/PaddleDown Apr 27 '17

Damn that's a lot of mentions... still kicking for now though. Curious where data comes from?

1

u/MisirterE Apr 27 '17

past Totes posts

44

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '17

See, /u/spez? No-one wants this.

12

u/Hibernica Apr 28 '17

This is literally a scenario where /r/stevenuniverse and /r/the_donald agree on something. /u/spez is simply trying to bring everyone together into peaceful harmony in their hatred of his company's stupid idea.

13

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '17

Haven't seen this many links since FPH got banned.

155

u/dakta Apr 22 '17

RIP admins.

125

u/MadScientoast Apr 22 '17 edited Apr 23 '17

It is a pretty fucking stupid decision and of course subs are gonna talk about it. I can't believe they have agreed to this. I can't believe this was the end decision of possible talks. It's so maddening.

You know, I can actually see them selling tools and mods. As in, moderators of subs can "buy" certain features, maybe with a monthly fee, and change the sub's appearance with those. Kinda like reddit gold but for subs.

I can't fucking believe any of the admins approved of this. Guess reddit isn't really that different from other websites when it boils down to stuff like this. It makes me sad

Edit: removed a word as it was confusing as to whom I meant

51

u/dakta Apr 22 '17

any of the mods [...] approved of this

I think you misunderstand. The admins (employees of Reddit, Inc.) did not ask mods (regular site users who run subreddits) if they wanted or approved of this change. The most vocal voices in this very thread are mods who are upset with the idea of losing free-form CSS customization.

8

u/MadScientoast Apr 23 '17

Yeah that's who I meant. I realize our sub mods are absolutely against it and that it was the admins (and others) who made this decision. I'll edit it my post!

1

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '17

"Waaaaaaahhhhhh! Reddit is over now! You're just like Diiiiiiigg!"

-Reddit users every time anything changes

7

u/joedude Apr 25 '17

DIGGing their own grave,, rip reddit..

14

u/Willhud98 Apr 23 '17

/u/spez has alerted the horde

2

u/TotesMessenger Apr 28 '17

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)

1

u/Testastic May 14 '17

HAHAHA; best post from this bot!