This is true for the their frontpage at least. Many say it wasn't a good knowledge base, I feel like it was. Specially for those who starting hobbies or running into issues. Also the most random knowledge would show up there.

If you were using it to get facts to form an opinion, I would say it wasn't the best but then again, that style of research is difficult even without reddit.

I miss the good quality reads I'd get from it, but Lemmy is now that filler for me.

A quote from the article: "response to concerns that the new r/homeautomation mod team could overlook posts with dangerous misinformation, the anonymous Redditor pointed me to the subreddit's sidebar, which has a disclaimer about the dangers of electricity. However, the disclaimer is only visible on old Reddit. The mod doesn't know why."

That kinda sums it all up, right there.

If a mod can't be bothered to know why something only shows on old reddit, they shouldn't be a mod at all. It takes all of two minutes to find out why, and not much longer to fix.

It's fine to jump in and learn on the go. It isn't fine to jump in and not learn at all.

While I enjoy some Reddit drama every now and again as much as the next person, this article had a plenty of words but very little substance. A few former mods are concerned that new mods don't have the proper knowledge and background to moderate effectively (but with no concrete examples of a post's misinformation directly leading to harm), and researchers are worried they may no longer be able to use Reddit data for their studies (although Reddit has a policy around research-based access and is working with Pushshift to improve access).

These examples feel cherry-picked, and the article itself says that it's too soon to say whether or not content quality was impacted by the API changes and mod replacements. Without actual data - or at least many more examples of specific concerns that weren't present before the changes - it doesn't do much other than say "a few people are worried that something bad might happen."

I mean… tech news articles on Lemmy are posted by a bot, so we're not far better off

Reddit was never a place to go to for facts. Reddit has always hated facts.

To quote Nelson Muntz: “Haha!”

Consider

old.reddit.com/r/redditseppuku

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The dangers of food canning were explained to me clearly, succinctly, and with cited sources by Brad Barclay and someone going by Dromio05 on Reddit (who asked to withhold their real name for privacy reasons).

He noted various canning misconceptions, from thinking the contents of a concave lid are safe to eat to believing you don't need to apply heat to food in jars.

For example, Barclay pointed to one mod recommending "citizen science," saying they would use a temperature data logger to "begin conducting experiments to determine what new canning products are safe."

It includes already-canned tomatoes, which experts like the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) recommend against, as there's no safe tested process for this.

What's critical for Reddit's content quality is not that moderators adopt identical philosophies but that they are equipped to facilitate healthy and safe discussions and debates that benefit the community.

But the hastiness with which these specific replacement mods were ushered in, and the disposal of respected, long-time moderators, raises questions about whether Reddit prioritized reopening subreddits to get things back to normal instead of finding the best people for the volunteer jobs.

The original article contains 670 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!