I’m not a programmer. I’m a statistician. I think your observation about orthogonality is correct from your industry’s perspective, though I’ve used it correctly from the context of mine (meaning statistically independent, or uncorrelated, variables). And I disagree that awareness is correlated to personal impact when it comes to sociocultural concepts like racism, or sexism, or the dynamics and behavior of an online community.
I appreciate the attempted correction despite it being wrong.
Edit: Sigh, HN being HN. I’m rate limited and can’t respond to persistent, sustained miscorrection over a single word choice in a much broader point, because I spent all my thought tokens defending the word choice, which matters approximately zero, instead of the point.
I mean, that’s fine, but that exact sentiment is trotted out every time anything critical about Reddit comes up. “Having a bad time on Reddit? You must be subbed to the wrong places” and/or “I’ve not noticed anything on my carefully curated sub list” means it’s much harder to have a realistic discussion about the actual, sitewide problems like hiring someone uncomfortably close to realized pedophilia on a site chock full of young children (believe it or not).
I used to say the same thing you have here to say pretty much the same thing about Reddit. That’s why I cited my experience in response, as you say you’re sharing yours, to point out that beyond what you’ve experienced there’s some nuance you may not have considered (and learning it was valuable to me).
Being unaware of something is orthogonal to being affected by it. I was similar to you - mostly non-defaults, which made me miss how bad the larger site had become over time. It’s easy to overlook.
I recently retired (before this drama) a 12-year-old Reddit account with close to a million combined karma. This line, that individual subreddits defy any concept of Reddit identity, needs to stop. The overlaps between moderator groups and users, as well as the impact to ALL subreddits from decisions by the administrators, mean it is completely fair game to talk about Reddit as a singular entity.
The notion that individual subreddits mean Reddit Is What You Make of It is useful only to distract just like you’re (unintentionally) doing here. It helps deflect some of these situations by having folks who unsub all defaults saying “looks great here!”
I appreciate the attempted correction despite it being wrong.
Edit: Sigh, HN being HN. I’m rate limited and can’t respond to persistent, sustained miscorrection over a single word choice in a much broader point, because I spent all my thought tokens defending the word choice, which matters approximately zero, instead of the point.