[TriLUG] Linux From Scratch

[Stephen Wiley via TriLUG]

The cybernetics on Reddit are particularly bad. Subreddits develop memes
and those just get upvoted almost automatically. The last time I ever
seriously used the site I remember one that had developed around a
project I was working on which was totally incorrect but constantly
repeated and upvoted despite me and others correcting people. The
upvoting makes you feel like there's consensus around your good sounding
mistakes so to make things worse it *feels right.* It's almost harmless
for technical subjects but there are a ton of subreddits with social
topics and I think those really mess lots of people up in serious ways.

Sites with those automatic recommendation features are a bad idea but
vote order forums are probably worse.

--Stephen

On Tue, Mar 04, 2025 at 05:55:55PM -0500, William Sutton via TriLUG wrote:
> That said, anyone who has read nontechnical discussion forums should be able
> to agree that they have a higher than normal noise-to-signal ratio. And I
> once saw reddit referred to as "the grease trap of the internet."
> 
> William Sutton
> 
> On Tue, 4 Mar 2025, via TriLUG wrote:
> 
> > 
> > On 04/03/2025 15:22, Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 4, 2025, at 14:02, via TriLUG wrote:
> > > > Speaking of signal-to-noise ratio, here's a little bash script
> > > 
> > > I write for two reasons. The first is to iterate on your script to
> > > make it
> > more cross-platform, and the second is to share an example URL that
> > highlights (for me) the biggest flaw in the approach.
> > >
> > > ....[SNIP]....
> > >
> > > cmp at oof ~ % ./textsig.sh https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/
> > > html bytes:   588455
> > > text bytes:     4589
> > > Signal ratio for https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/
> > >   .00779838730234257504
> > 
> > Oh it was by no means anything scientific, much more tongue-in-cheek. :)
> > That script is a very, very blunt instrument.
> > It just compares the plain text to the HTML, so stuff like HTML tags and
> > script and css etc all get considered 'noise'.
> > 
> > I was just having some fun right there ;)
> > -- 
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> -- 
> This message was sent to: Stephen Wiley <swiley at swiley.net>
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