Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

daking999 t1_j8bnr9q wrote

Reply to comment by MurlocXYZ in [D] Quality of posts in this sub going down by MurlocXYZ

Completely agree. I use reddit casually and twitter as more of a work/research tool, but I really much prefer reddit to twitter as a platform (especially post Musk). I tried getting into mastodon but it just feels like more awkward-to-use twitter. An academic focused ML subreddit might be good. Maybe even enforce "real" names for users to post?

14

MrAcurite t1_j8c9u48 wrote

I joined the Sigmoid Mastodon. It's a wasteland of people posting AI "art," pseudo-intellectual gibberish about AI, and nonsense that belongs on the worst parts of LinkedIn.

23

gopher9 t1_j8d1odf wrote

Did you take a look as Mathstodon? There are some actuall mathematicians and computer scientists there, so maybe it's a better place to look at.

10

MrAcurite t1_j8d301x wrote

I'll take a look, thanks for the recommendation. Right now what I really want is a place to chat with ML researchers, primarily to try and get some eyes on my pre-prints before I submit to conferences and such. I'm still kinda new to publishing, my coworkers aren't really familiar with the current state of the ML publishing circuit, and I could always use more advice.

6

daking999 t1_j8dn7ar wrote

It's also frustrating finding researchers that I want to follow. I work on ML/compbio so the ppl I want to follow are spread across multiple mastodon servers which makes them hard to search for.

6

MrAcurite t1_j8dnscj wrote

I get that. I've come to actively hate a lot of the big, visual, attention-grabbing work that comes out of labs like OpenAI, FAIR, and to some extent Stanford and Berkeley. I work more in the trenches, on stuff like efficiency, but Two Minute Papers is never going to feature a paper just because it has an interesting graph or two. Such is life.

7

AdamAlexanderRies t1_j8cahbg wrote

What about a public discord server that only allows actual researchers to post, but allows everyone to view? Easy with roles.

8

daking999 t1_j8dmw8r wrote

I haven't used discord but heard good things about it, even with some labs using it instead of slack.

3

AdamAlexanderRies t1_j8eb94a wrote

I'm unaffiliated but pretty passionate about good design in general. Discord's really the spiritual successor to IRC, which predates the world wide web. The server-channel-role skeleton comes from IRC, but it's so feature rich and easy to use that I can see it supplanting a large portion of the social internet over the next decade. For the last month I've been developing my first discord bot (with chatgpt assistance) and the dev interface is excellent, too.

No experience with slack, so I can't comment on it.

5

daking999 t1_j8ejfe2 wrote

Hmm well now I don't know if I'm talking to you or your bot!

Cool I should check it out. Seems like the free version is already pretty functional?

2

AdamAlexanderRies t1_j8eppdi wrote

ChatGPT's mostly a cool toy, but there are some tasks it's genuinely useful for. I use it to explain complex topics, write code, brainstorm ideas, and for fun creative writing exercises. I've only tried the free version, but I am seeing mostly disappointment about the pro version.

Definitely check it out for at least curiosity's sake.

2

daking999 t1_j8f0a6l wrote

Oh sorry I meant I should check out discord!

I've used ChatGPT for a few tasks and it's been helpful (not perfect), e.g. summarizing a long document. Current issue is mainly just it being overloaded! Haven't tried code writing or brainstorming yet.

3

VacuousWaffle t1_j8l262a wrote

I just find that Discord is bad at being archived, and not indexed by search engines. It's kind of a mess of a walled garden, and even searching within it is kind of mediocre.

3

uristmcderp t1_j8dg14x wrote

If there are people willing to moderate with an iron fist, an academic focused subreddit can work well. An open forum always get derailed, real name or no.

2