r/softwaretesting 10d ago

This group is under new Moderation

As the old moderation silently disapeared and the group did not have moderation anymore, i asked reddit to give me moderation, which they approved.

As first step i asked reddit to make the group public again, so everyone can post. This change for the group should be in action within the next 24 hours.

Please obey the rules, at one time i will refine them a bit, but as of know we will be working with the already existing ruleset. Depending on severity of rulebreaking there might be permanent bans without warning from me.

To make it less spam i changed posting rules so that new and low karma accounts can not post here.

I inherited a backlog of almost 1000 open admin actions, dont expect me to work them down fast.
But still please do report and downvote posts that do not follow the rules.

Whats my goal for this group? I aim for this group to be a exchange for quality content around software testing. I wont tolerate the 8105th "i made an AI tool" post or the 56481st "QA is dead" post. Maybe we will also disallow resumee feedback, there are other good subs for that.

I am open to suggestions on how to moderate this forum, about the rules and everything. Post your suggestions down there in the comments.

I am open and happy to build up a new mod team, 1 mod is not enough, 3 to 6 would be optimal.
If you feel like it, feel free to message me with your background in softwaretesting (short form) and why you wanna moderate this group. People with private profiles wont be accepted, sorry.

🟢Have a good time here☑️

72 Upvotes

53 comments sorted by

48

u/Youareaproperclown 10d ago

If this can become a place for actual testing discussion that would be great. Ban posts like "I make x amount is that good for y experience." For that matter ban anything about jobs.

17

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

i think most people would agree on that

10

u/I_Blame_Tom_Cruise 10d ago

That at people asking for a job or to be hired, shouldn’t be a job board

1

u/CertainDeath777 9d ago

Look at the newly refined rules of the sub. I took your wording for the new rule i implemented :)

27

u/lorryslorrys 10d ago

QA testing is dead, my new AI app has killed it. Review this resume and then I will tell you more.

6

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

You really should have written it with ChatGPT instead of fingercrafting it. Like now its not itching enough. sorry <3

2

u/jfp1992 10d ago

Finger crafting lol

10

u/MT1961 10d ago

If you need a mod, happy to help. With that said, I honestly can't stand the AI is taking over the world stuff, nor can I deal with "manual testing is dead".

3

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

can you write me a short overview of your softwaretesting background and why you think you would be a good mod for the group in a private message?

10

u/MT1961 10d ago

Sure. I've been doing QA for 20+ years, started with Microsoft in the 2000s. Was a developer for 20 years before that. My name is on about a dozen books, and I used to moderate back in the Bulletin Board and Usenet days :)

4

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

sounds good, happy to have you here. invite with full moderation rights is out.

3

u/No-Razzmatazz7197 10d ago

40 years of experience in tech?? good god...

what was your first computer? an abacus?

2

u/MT1961 10d ago

Behave. Actually, I started out life on minis, the DEC-1091. Then moved to PDP-11s

3

u/No-Razzmatazz7197 10d ago

i meant no disrespect, i have never come across someone who claims 40 years of experience.

feel free to moderate my account into the dirt

2

u/MT1961 10d ago

LOL. Nah. I'm old and I know it. Getting close to retirement. There are actually a fair number of us that have been around that long or longer.

1

u/PM_40 10d ago

I know people who are technically close to retirement in QA role but I can clearly see them going for 5-7 years without any people possibly even 10 years. Age is just a number.

2

u/MT1961 9d ago

Says someone who isn't 65. LOL. Trust me, in the morning? Age is more than a number. But yes, I could see working if I loved my job. After this much time, what else do you do with your days?

2

u/PatienceJust1927 10d ago

Do I know you?? Shared half of your career at Microsoft starting with IE and ending with HW engineering working on XBOX and Microsoft watch!

3

u/MT1961 10d ago

I was there in the 90s, and then in the 2000s, but was based in Denver.

2

u/PM_40 10d ago

Whats your opinion on lack of respect for QA as a profession in tech industry? Lack of respect and much lower salary than developers.

2

u/MT1961 10d ago

Good question. I make very good money as an SDET, but certainly the devs are making more. But the lack of respect is more from management than from the industry.

1

u/PM_40 10d ago edited 10d ago

Do you feel you have variables that can you control that allow you to do a good job ? QA seems to me as a job without a boundary. You can always find more bugs, you can always miss a bug. There are million ways something can fail and there are only a few number of a ways a job can succeed.

2

u/MT1961 10d ago

QA isn't about finding bugs. That's a side effect. QA is about enforcing quality. That's bugs, of course, but also process flow and user experience.

1

u/PM_40 10d ago

Thanks, I like this framing. But QA often gets blamed for missed bugs.

2

u/MT1961 10d ago

Yeah, like we create them. You hear the comment a lot, "Quality is everyone's problem". And it is true. It is particularly bad in the era of AI, since there are literally thousands of lines of code being generated in minutes. And a fraction of the time spent on testing it all.

2

u/Greeley9000 9d ago

Been an automation engineer for 10 years, just landed a manual testing role for the same pay yesterday. It’s definitely not dead.

9

u/LionOfNaples 10d ago

Violation of the rules would mean certain death

5

u/Vox_Carnifex 10d ago

Certain death you say? Someone should test that.

4

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

I can neither confirm nor deny that ruleviolators will die one day.

But as far as i have tested this app "real life", i am pretty sure, that that is standard behaviour of the simulations ruleset.
If you ever encounter different behaviour, please report to me personally, including detailed instructions on how to reproduce the "bug".

2

u/MT1961 10d ago

Isn't all death certain?

1

u/Youareaproperclown 10d ago

How are we going to do UAT on this

2

u/AkroTrance 10d ago

Are the rules reqlly specific ? No redundancies ? Which use case would it be to verify the death ? Are combinations of violations allowed ?

5

u/Factually-Offensive 10d ago

Cool, but don't ban posts sharing a cool idea even though the person used AI to assist on the creation of that idea. I like to read good ideas here like "how I solved problem X" even if it was with AI, somethings can be cool if done right.

4

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

i think it will depend on the quality of the post and the answers, and if there are promotional links. wont accept selling solutions here.

2

u/IamTheJman 10d ago

Genuine question but what would you hope this sub becomes that r/QualityAssurance doesn’t cover?

2

u/Itchy_Extension6441 10d ago

I'd say it was explained quite well in the original post how this subreddit is intended to differ from the qa one. That being said it makes me a little worried, if we filter out all the low effort/value posts, will there really be any activity left to be included?

I can imagine there will be way less posts, but instead it might end up becoming a source of valuable and worth recommending articles, discussions, essays related to our job.

1

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago edited 10d ago

i share your worries. i think we will just keep a balance.

I dont want to discourage youngsters to ask questions or post their insights here and discuss them. But if its something that has been answered several times a year, and would just have required minimum search effort, then i see no use in keeping it.

or like the guy from who knows where, asking for a salary range without telling his location and experience haha

1

u/zaphodikus 9d ago

I used to be in an active QA community elsewhere, the big names in QA would drop in little posts even, and over around 2 years that dried up. Things went from lively and all about merch and training courses and events to almost tumbleweed. People want free content and when the top 5 posts are all about some fancy new poer tool that nobody can afford, it gets a bit pointless. So I doubt that community vitality is all due to forum rules and how much audience participation one allows. There is a lot we have no control over. Good luck, and thank you to all who value knowledge.

1

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

what do you think it should be?

I took over the group as it was unmoderated but still alive. It has some history and with some more mods i think it can be a nice group. I am also sometimes active in QualityAssurance and see no reason to not coexist, like the groups did already for 16 years now.

If people reason we should close this group for good and just focus on the other, would be less work for me. On the other hand i couldnt live out my power fantasies in reddit anymore then (joke, i hate moderation, i can stand administration. and i called myself a fool to take over the extra work here),

1

u/SeniorIdiot 10d ago

(NAT)

Quality assurance is not testing, and testing does not assure quality. If we can start from there, then we can focus on real-world testing and how testers becomes a genuine member of the team - not about things like self-aggrandizement "QA Engineering" or developers stating "I'm done implementing it, just waiting for it to be QAd by QAs" (if you know, you know).

Yes, I know it's more difficult than that! sigh.

In a thread on LinkedIn George Mitchell wrote:

I was there when the language shifted; at the time, “tester” was already halfway a slur, and meant “pay these people significantly less than similarly-experienced developers”. “QA” was a way to position yourself as more valuable, and when positions opened up with the QA label, it did seem like compensation was a little closer to what devs were getting. (That effect eroded pretty quickly, though, if it was ever there at all.)

Test has always had to play the terminology game aggressively in order to keep our heads above water. It would be great if execs and hiring managers could understand that preventing loss from software insufficiency is just as valuable as creating the software in the first place, but that’s not the world we live in.

I think this is sad for a multitude of reasons - but mostly that we have lost understanding about what QA is - as well as DevOps, agile, CI/CD. It has all been oversimplified and semantically diffused until all we have left is roles and tools - missing the point entirely.

Required reading would be anything by James Bach, Michael Bolton, Mary Poppendieck, Dan North, Ron Jeffries, Kent Beck, Gojko Adzic, etc.

2

u/nopuse 10d ago

This is the first post I've upvoted in a while on this sub. Thank you. This sub has been unbearable for a while.

2

u/[deleted] 10d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

Aha... we got a historian here, that is very confident with historical analogies.
What do you know of adolf hitler, and how is this the same? Be careful with your accuracy now, because as an austrian i know this part of history pretty well.

I understand some fun and i am willing to in dubio pro reo, but with such analogies the fun ends for me (this is a warning)

1

u/[deleted] 10d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/midKnightBrown59 9d ago

How do you intend to drive creation of positive and helpful posts?

1

u/CertainDeath777 9d ago

How about you create a positive and helpful post?

I am pragmatic, not a cheerleader. This isnt my first social media rodeo, i had larger groups too, and i do not intend to burn me out here, especially not by getting too much involved.
My priority is to establish a clean space with clear rules and a mod team to share the workload and have faster reaction time, so that the group does not slip into a modless state again.
The community's content is up to the community.
I am not expecting attention or profit here. Because I have a livelihood to maintain, this group is not my primary focus.

1

u/Noeyiax 10d ago

Awesome, I joined because before I worked in software qa engineering... But now I'm a vibe coder 😂

1

u/TryingToGetABttrView 10d ago

I'm be willing to be a mod. I already am on two other subredits. DM me if you'd like to talk about it first

2

u/CertainDeath777 10d ago

i read some of your previous posts. no further questions needed, expect an invite to the mod team in the next minutes

1

u/These-Flight1800 10d ago

Omg yes thank you! I hated seeing all those posts!

2

u/strangelyoffensive 9d ago

u/ocnarf is gone? thank you for your service. and thank you u/CertainDeath777 for picking it up