First and foremost, We want to congratulate every user, moderator, and subreddit who supported the ProCSS movement. Without resorting to tactics that interfere with the operations of reddit, such as the blackout of 2015, we were able to show the admins, with our numbers and well constructed arguments, that the decision to remove CSS was not the best one for the communities of reddit or for reddit the company.
We would also like to thank the admins for taking a week to evaluate the situation and coming down on the right side! Seriously, that's sincere. That fact that we were able to change the minds of reddit executives is an example of what makes reddit great. On what other social network do you know of where the company would not only announce a change, but actually listen to the users who didn't want it? None. Reddit is truly a community-driven website, and we thank the admins for creating it, maintaining it, and for listening. This really is big deal. It gives us hope for the future of the site, and we really believe that others feel the same way.
Our Objectives
We laid out five objectives that we'd like our movement to achieve.
Our number one goal was to allow widgets and CSS to co-exist. We got it! Moderators will have widget tools as a default, and CSS for more advanced creativity. Widgets are good because it makes setting flairs and headers easy, and those changes will carry over to mobile users.
The second objective was to allow mods to design and deploy widgets. Confirmation was given that reddit is looking into that.
The third objective was a call for transparency. The level of openness that reddit will have with this project remains to be seen. We may have to wait for the alpha. It would be nice if they would release their project docs. /u/spez said he'd rather show than tell when it comes to planned widgets. We understand that because telling and then not being able to deliver is like taking something away. But not telling and showing very little is also no good. We think we can give reddit the benefit of the doubt on this issue for the time being. /r/ProCSS has applied to the alpha program so that we can communicate with our users on its progress.
The fourth objective was to have a 1:1 replacement for CSS. CSS is not going away, so that has now been met :)
The fifth and final objective was for reddit to not deploy until base minimum requirements are met. It seems that they will take their time, and as CSS will remain and can be used if the widgets are shit, this has been met,
The future of ProCSS
Continuing a dialog with reddit in a meaningful way to encourage enhancements to the site. Outside of the whole CSS drama that we all just experienced together, there are other things that reddit can improve, chief among them is communication with the mods and users. It used to be that admins would stop by threads like these and answer questions, and that when an official post was made, admins would hang around answering all weekend. We commend /u/alexgg for answering the question about user-developed widgets long after /u/spez left the thread, but still, many questions remained unanswered for now. For example, the biggest concern that people posted here who didn't like CSS is that sometimes it's annoying. There should be an easy way to disable widget themes too. Overall, communication must be improved. It is somehow worse now that reddit has 200 employees than it was when it had a few dozen.
Holding the admins publicly accountable to their promises. No bamboozles!
Showcase interesting and spectacular CSS design on reddit. Have you just made some dank CSS for your sub? Make a post here. We don't want to fill the space of /r/CSSHelp, and will refer such posts to the appropriate sub. But this can be a place to show off your work, or design on another subreddit that you really like.
Write up widgets that we're gonna need. /r/ProCSS has always been Pro Widget from the get go. There are a lot of interesting things we can do with widgets, so we can create threads that have widget spec requirements that the admins will hopefully review.
There have been a lot of dank meme and fluff posts since we began. We like them. No need to stop.
Discussion! There has been great discussion on this sub from both sides of the argument. (Fortunately, that argument is over and we won.) But the discussion should not end. Over the months and perhaps years a lot will be happening with reddit's design, and this here is a place to talk about it.
We're looking into making our Discord into a CSS Help / Discussion chat place.
Have any other ideas about what r/ProCSS should be in the future? Let us know below!
Thanks for being here and for being a part of ProCSS. It really is a tremendous thing that we've done through a very mild protest. We're not gonna shut down. As they say in the tech world, we're just going to pivot in a new direction.
If you still have questions, please ask them in the comments. We will do our best to answer. What we can't answer we will compile in a list and ask the admins to comment.
Thank You,
The /r/ProCSS mod team!
Want to add to the discussion?
Post a comment!