Actual Discussion

This community has been around for a few months now. How do we feel about it? Are things working out? Any plans for further growing the community?

This is one of the topics I’ve been thinking a lot about quite a bit for the past few years (i.e. how to set up a community that values discussions with diverse viewpoints), so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts in relation to what I’m seeing here.

1. I think such a community necessarily needs to be a full self-contained instance, or else you’ll get very little activity. Think about how these discussions usually start. Someone posts an article/meme/question/etc, a few people show up and comment with similar thoughts about it worded in slightly different ways, then another shows up and goes against the grain, everyone dogpiles on them, and that’s when the real discussion starts. Very rarely do people go out of their way to ask “what do you think of X controversial topic?” And even if you do, that only leads to a very high level discussion that very quickly gets stale. If you get discussion in the context of specific events, then these discussions can be grounded in reality and lead to more unique context-dependent takes each time it comes up.

2. Regarding upvotes/downvotes: as stated in the rules, they should be used to measure whether a post/comment is a positive contribution to the discussion rather than the number of people who agree with your viewpoint. I don’t believe there’s a way to actually enforce this with the voting system we currently have, but I also think a relatively simple change can fix it. It will require a bit of coding.

   My proposal is a voting system with two votes: one to say that you agree/disagree, and another to say good/bad contribution. With this system, you can easily see if someone only thinks posts they agree with are good contributions, and you can use that information to calculate a total score that weighs their votes accordingly. It’s also small enough of a change that I think most people won’t have a problem figuring it out.

Thoughts?

Also, thank you Ace for taking the initiative in creating this place. It makes me happy to see that others want to see this change too.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on debate, discussion, and the lack thereof on social media (including Lemmy).

My apologies for "leading" a bit more than I try to normally in these weekly threads, however this is a topic that pisses me off in particular. Not only as a mod of a discussion-based community, but as someone who loves it when someone challenges me and proves me wrong / disproves my logic so I'd very much like to hear outside opinions on the topic. I can't even partially understand how people don't want to have a more cohesive / logically sound opinion.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Do you feel that discussion is worse now? If so, what caused it? If not, where may others get this feeling from?
• Is it potentially a platform issue, or does it happen everywhere?
• Does discussion even matter any longer? Why or why not?
• Do you feel that more could be done to encourage discussion with outside views or are we better off just "bubble"-ing ourselves and blocking everyone we disagree with?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on the word "Woke" and its meaning, use, and misuse.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• What does the word mean to you?
• Is it applied correctly or incorrectly?
• Is it even applicable any longer?
• Do you feel that Conservative media misapplies it, and is "everything I don't like is woke" an appropriate sentiment or simply uncharitable?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on words, their import, and their use / misuse.

With respect to the late, great George Carlin.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• How do you feel about political (or forced) movement of language? For example, pro-life and pro-choice being two sides of the same issue because nobody wants to identify as "anti-"anything.
• What are some words that are nebulous, but everyone "knows" the meaning of?
• Are there any manipulated words that annoy you?
• Do you find any common patterns with how words are used by various groups?

I've been thinking about enshitification recently, and I'm also working on a startup with a friend that just received funding. I've been wondering how one might arrange a business such that it won't gradually trend towards shittier products in search of higher profit margins.

Obviously, it would be nice to redesign all of society so that this isn't a thing, but barring that, does anyone have any ideas for setting up a business in such a way that motivations are aligned with producing a good product?

Currently, we're trying to retain as much control as possible, but at some point we may go public, and if we do, I'm not sure how to keep us aimed at accomplishing our goals. We're building a platform that should solve or at least improve the replication crisis in scientific research, and we could lose control to investors that want board seats, or sell to someone like Google.

If we do either, I doubt the company will do what we want it to do in the long term.

Going public is the route that seems less likely to lead to this change in direction, but it seems like it could end in the same place over a long enough timeline.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on getting other people to watch movies we love, but others may not have seen or even know about.

In order to make a recommendation or two, simply let others know an appropriate amount about a movie and why they should give it a chance.

If you want to deeply discuss one, please remember to use Spoiler tags where applicable!

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Great bad movies
• Hilarious garbage for a big group movie night
• Best genre movies
• Underrated films

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on the phrase "The Cruelty Is The Point", which may take some explanation.

Frequently on Lemmy (and elsewhere), I see the phrase in comment threads. In my experience, it has been referencing any policy that is contrary to a Liberal or Leftist belief that the thread discusses. I have found the phrase when discussing trans issues, housing, taxes, healthcare, abortion, and many more.

This does not mean it doesn't exist elsewhere, it is simply where I see it since I spend much of my social media time on Lemmy. If your experience differs, please let us know!

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Do you believe this? If so, why?
• Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?
• Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?
• Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?
• Is what is considered "kind" always the best course of action?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on Protests, both effective and ineffective.

Over the past 15 years, we've seen more protesting since the 1960's in North America. Some feel they are needed, and some feel they are wasteful and silly.

Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):

• Have you ever taken part? What was it and why?
• What protests have you felt have been effective or ineffective?
• If you feel they are not effective in general, what would you rather people do?
• Have you ever had your opinion swayed by any form of protest? Please note that this could be either to the side of the protesters or away from their cause.
• How would you try to ensure a successful protest?
• Do you feel that violent protest is mostly uncalled for? If not, how do you know when you need to escalate things?
• Just for fun, what is the absolute worst protest you've ever heard of?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on work and work culture.

This has been a back-burnered issue since COVID came and upended many workplace traditions worldwide, but I'd really like to hear about what you all think about it!

Some Starters (and don't feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don't care to):

• What is the ideal work / life balance? Right now, the worldwide average is 5 days per week, 8-5 PM. Is this too much / too little / just right?
• With productivity skyrocketing and wages falling, what would you like to see to fix things?
• Would you accept less money and shorter hours?
• What would you feel minimum wage should do to adjust?
• Do you feel that the current resurgence of Unions is positive or negative?

Been going back and forth on this, as personally I don't have much problem with politics posts and discussions. I know how they can get, and some of why people dislike them, but nevertheless...To not discuss politics enables the worst among us to take the reigns and drag us all over the cliff.

Given that, I'd like to pick apart what may be meant when people say politics. It's a can of worms, so to try to focus things a little, let's say, is it when they're distinctly partisan that disliking them may be meant?

Something you find across the board is the sentiment that a lot of political journalism has very blatant partisan-leanings, and for some organizations there's zero doubt of that.

I should also take a moment to clarify here, when I say partisan, I mean any strongly held political views, not merely left or right, but also including moderate/centrist.

Or is it slightly less the kind that matters, and more the volume of it, pervading every discussion? Especially when one may already be aware and trying to address it in their own ways, and is visiting an online community to get a little respite.

What's your take on this?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

No, it's not a joke. I'm frustrated and I'm probably not choosing my words carefully.

This community has had steadily falling engagement - our last 3 weekly threads have had a grand total of 1 (excellent and well-articulated) response, and the number of topics not generated by myself (or the other mod) since the inception of the community has also been 1.

Very few people want to actually talk. From what I've seen, the masses want the same things that they wanted on Reddit:

1. Memes
2. Articles they don't read (but will bitch about endlessly) that reinforce their opinion
3. Angry responses to someone (who may be trolling) that reinforce the current politics of the reader (that they couldn't have given a fuck about a few years ago until it became heavily politicized)
4. Shitty easy jokes
5. Personal politics circlejerking

I hate that I can see a hundredth point-free meme post and view 200 replies on it. I hate that it's just the same talking points being strawmanned over and over again in every thread. I hate that any point outside common groupthink is downvoted to oblivion and buried instead of discussed.

The reason I'd like to back away from Lemmy seems to be the same reason I started this community: we need more people who can articulate points, and less downvoting, but it doesn't seem to be getting better.

Maybe one day, but today is not that day. Lemmy needs to mature in more ways than one.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on current political divisiveness occurring nearly worldwide. I'd post links, but I feel that everyone knows what I'm speaking about.

This issue has been especially prevalent in American politics as of late, but it is felt nearly everywhere.

Some Starters:

• What do you feel has caused it? Add proofs if possible.
• Once caused, what has added to it and why?
• What can be done to ameliorate the issue, if anything? On a personal scale or a national one.
• Can it be remedied or is civil war the only option?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread we will focus on Activism, both positive and negative.

Here is the definition we will be using, so please make sure your argument matches.

Some starters:

• What would you classify as effective forms of activism?
• What are ineffective forms of activism?
• How does a group know when their mission is achieved? What if the mission is ambiguous or changes over time?
• Do you feel they stop too early or too late?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be trying something new. We'll be focusing on the age old question "If you could change one thing positively in the world what would you change?"

Difficulty Level: (Pick your difficulty, let us know what you picked, and stick to it)

0. Go wild.
1. You can't harm others.
2. The change has to be somewhat realistic or believable.
3. If I could convince 1,000,000 people right now, it would work.
4. If I could convince 100,000 people right now, it would work.
5. Souls Mode: If I could just get motivated, I could do this myself.

(Also, let me know if these "fun" weeks are welcome here, or just stupid)

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Linux. I know that Lemmy is VERY biased towards Linux and FOSS, but I'm curious what non-technical people feel about it and what your thoughts are.

Some starters:

• Have you used Linux? If so, what was your experience like?
• Would you run it as your primary system? Why or why not?
• What would it take to get you to do so?
• Do you feel it's a solid option?
• Are there any changes that you'd think would benefit consumers and aid with adoption?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Capitalism / Economic Systems. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology. If your argument does not use that definition, we ask that you reframe so that it does so that everyone can work within the same framework.

Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:

• Is capitalism effective? Is it good, or as evil as some Lemmy instances will have you believe?
• Are there better alternatives, and why are they better?
• How could we realistically move toward those alternatives?
• Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about Capitalism / Economic Systems?

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I dislike this article. It's a little old now, but there are several things blisteringly wrong with this idea at its heart.

Purely for example, if you read a book on dragonflies and take offence because you see racial similarities between whatever race a person is and dragonflies, that's an issue with you, not the source. You are relying on your opinion on what the source says. Since opinion varies per person, you should not dictate policy based on opinion. It's an insurmountable hill to cater to whatever opinions are since opinion will always change - it's an unsound basis for any form of logic.

Let's do a thought experiment:

If a trailer-dwelling white person in the USA reads about the Vistani, and takes offence because they also live in a trailer, sees that as a negative, and assumes the Vistani are a potshot at him, is he right to be offended and call for a ban?

If a nimble Canadian POC (which is also a terrible term as it literally applies to everyone on the planet) reads about Elves and assumes they're talking about him because he also happens to know how to use a bow and is skinny with a lithe frame, is he correct in calling for a ban? What if he sees being nimble as a negative for some reason (because positive / negative characteristics are opinions and what people see as negative is not objective)? What if he sees it as being racist by saying the source is calling ALL Elves nimble and therefore good at sports? "But they stereotypically have a different skin colour!" I hear you saying. So do Orcs. That argument applies here and if you can't square that circle, then the logic falls apart utterly.

Personal identification with aspects of characters in a source material are not cause for alteration. You are an individual; you are not a group. Grouping people into camps based on visible traits or histories is a disgusting habit.

Treat people as individuals and racism dies. Treat people as groups and call out the differences constantly and you'll have people fencing themselves in while calling themselves inclusive.

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week's Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Gender. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology.

Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:

• Why do you feel it started entering public consciousness in regards to humans about 15 years ago?

• Was it needed?

• Did it do what it was intended to do?

• Are things better or worse now in that specific area?

• Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about the idea of gender?

A bit of a lighter topic today: What is fun?

This seems like a simple question that would be tempting to hand-wave away as a "Well you know..." but the more I think about it the less cut and dry it seems.

Some prompts to get you thinking

• What are the merits and purposes of fun?

• What makes something fun? Though different people find different things fun, is there a common thread that makes those things fun?

• Is it easier for some kinds of people to have fun than others? What kinds of situations lend themselves to fun experiences, which make them difficult?

• Are there ways for people who have forgotten how to have fun to "get back in touch with fun?"

• Do you think you have enough fun? Too much?

• How much fun is the right, or a good amount?

When it comes to decision-making, perception and so on, what are your beliefs about the role and merits of feelings/emotions vs reasoning?

Some common positions:

• Emotions tend to get in the way of reasoning - we should primarily rely on our logic and rationality to guide us. When feeling strongly about anything we should block it out and try to think purely in a rational way.

• Reasoning can distract us when the right answer is to empathize or trust our gut feelings; it's easy to be misled by a convincing argument but gut feelings can see through that.

• Emotions and logic each play a role in observation and judgment. If both didn't have a use, why would we have evolved to have them?

A lot of people probably don't go all the way one way or the other. Even if you don't have a particularly strong reason for why you feel one way or the other, feel free to express what you believe.

So now that we've been around for a week or so and have tried to populate things with some controversial topics, how would you like to see this Community grow and change?

Should I add post guidelines? Maybe adjust the pinned thead?

Should I change the rules at all?

Our disclaimer is currently:

Remember: Up / Downvoting in this community is not an agree / disagree button. We upvote good or constructive conversation and downvote off-topic posts or badly-voiced opinions. If you disagree, you respond like a human in good faith and prove out your position.

Should the disclaimer be changed? It's primarily for people wandering in from viewing All threads (instead of just their subscribed ones), or for people on phones who never read the sidebar. It is there to show, in point form, how we operate to people who don't come to us purposefully.

Are there any topic you'd really like to see covered?

Are there any other Communities we should do a link swap with that have a similar ethos with?

Are there types of threads you want to see less or more of? More descriptors?

I'm open to any and all good ideas!

I was originally going to post this as a response to a different thread and realized it would make a better post by itself.

One of my favourte expressions:

When America sneezes, Canada gets a cold.

When I was growing up and American and Canadian media were still relatively separate, it was widespread Canadian opinion that America was a political shitshow at the best of times and we were grateful that we weren't like it. I would even go as far as to say there was widespread cultural anti-Americanism.

Fast-forward to 2024 where most people are getting news/entertainment from almost exclusively American-dominated sources like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on, and increasingly our political culture has become blended in with theirs, and frankly, we have begun to inherit what I feel to be their distasteful way of doing politics.

An example: The sheer amount of hyperventilation I saw among my left-leaning Canadian friends over the Trump election victory in 2016 was unbelievable. I'm rarely shocked by things, but some of my friends were genuinely insisting that a second Holocaust was unironically about to unfold. I mean they were fully committed to the idea that minorities were actually going to be rounded up and put into death camps. Totally bonkers stuff. (Nevermind any of the economic or political context that lead to pre-WW2 Germany).

What's more, this election had felt extremely personal to Canadians in a way American politics had rarely if ever been before. And there was a certain point where I stopped and said "Huh, this is weird. How did we get here?"

I felt for perhaps the first time that politically my fellow Canadians had completely lost their minds in ways that felt previously reserved for the Americans. And increasingly I see Canadians wrapped up in American political slogans and battles that largely don't apply to the Canadian context.

Ex: People seem to think Canada's got some similar lines to Democrats vs Republicans but in the past mock elections I've seen the Democrats would win in Canada with something crazy like 80% of the vote. Trying to impose those dichotomies onto the Canadian political context (Conservatives vs Liberals) just doesn't make sense, but people still do it because it's what they're being shown.

I would say the government itself has been largely ineffective in ensuring that the Canadian voice doesn't get completely drowned out by the American perspective. (Canadian content laws have largely not worked with the internet, and it's been difficult to make tech giants like Facebook comply, as we've already seen).

So, am I the only person who's seen this and feels this way? Americans, if you're here, what's it like from your angle? Interested to hear people's thoughts.

Remember: Up / Downvoting in this community is not an agree / disagree button. We upvote good or constructive conversation and downvote off-topic posts or badly-voiced opinions. If you disagree, you respond like a human in good faith and prove out your position.

The amount of "left-right" entrenchment seems to be at an all-time high and increasing.

No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, what would it take to get you to vote for a new party?

Would implementing a better electoral system that would eliminate the two-party see-saw and allowing for more granularity in candidates help (See Single Transferable Vote or STAR depending on the type of election)?

Do you have other solutions to this issue?