To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks
Resources:
"default subreddits" worked well for Reddit as it was growing, I would expect it to work here as well if curated well.
Granted, it did not work out well for atheism, which was a default sub and wreaked havoc on the cultural implications of openly identifying as an atheist.
Maybe keep religion out of it this time.
I think that having a "newcomers" instance is a great idea. The main things that need to be ironed out are:
(1) The limits of what is/isn't allowed within that instance. Instead of focusing on what is/isn't political, let's focus on what shuns your typical user away:
(2) Behaviour rules. I feel like people saying "eeew Lemmy is nasty" don't do that just because of the content here, but also because of how users behave.
(3) If users should be encouraged to migrate to other instances once they feel comfortable with the Fediverse.
Additionally: we need multi-communities ("mutireddits") or something similar. Having a list of communities that you can link once, and get other people to follow, would be a godsend.
we need multi-communities (“mutireddits”) or something similar.
Piefed is on it: https://feddit.org/post/6709189?scrollToComments=true
Thank you for your comment, I agree with most of it
I know that when I first arrived here I was grateful for "how federation works" guides. I don't know how I found [email protected] but was happy I did, and I think pointing newbies at that would be helpful too.
Because I was already used to Reddit and learned magazines/communities were like that, and I moved over when lists of magazines/communities that were equivalent to subreddits were still a thriving thing, I duplicated my Reddit habits and looked for communities with my interests, completely ignoring anything outside that (aka, always shunning All/Popular) because of how much of it would turn out to be in those four bullet points you outlined.
I think that's a good idea. We already have lots of news, world news and articles about politics here. And I always like to see this platform being used for other kinds of conversation. And not just the link aggregator part of it.
In order to avoid this, what would you think of having a “new joiners” instance, where
- hexbear, lemmygrad and ml would be defederated
- politics and news communities would be blocked at the instance level
I could see the first point being almost the default for topic-specific instances (along with not allowing NSFW material). Who wants to join a D&D, MTG, Star Wars, instance only to run headfirst into a Stalinist troll? With the caveat that I don't see them that much unless Russia gets a mention in [email protected].
I am unsure if the latter is needed - give people the option to subscribe or block politics, shitposts and memes. Perhaps start with the default to "Local" and have an introduction thread about it. However, I may be a statistical outlier as I default to "Local" and rarely use "All" and so don't run into things I am not signed up for.
"Please introduce me to Marxism (and Marxist Lemmy)", but get this, from this URL: https://startrek.website/post/18021528.
That's the thing about how "federation" works -> it's their content, but unless a place is specifically added to a defederation list by name, it's also our content as well - in this case, Star.Trek.Website's content.
Here's another interesting proof of concept: the farewell message from a server that died 10 months ago, but their message is preserved on the internet forever for others to read, if you know how and where to look (this particular one took more than a little bit of digging to find).
You don't use All, but especially if you did just prior to an election - of pretty much any Western nation I would guess - oh the things that you would see....... yes, even from the Star Trek instance (Garak voice: especially from the Star Trek instance?:-P)
Like bOtH sIdEs SaMe
Important context here: the USA and Israel do genocide to Palestinians, whereas Russia does not do that to Ukrainians, China does not do that to Uyghurs, North Korea does not do that to its own people, etc. - just so you know. Ofc if you disagree, you will be banned from every community located on Lemmy.ml including those you've never even heard of, and in some cases reportedly without ever even interacting with that instance in the first place somehow, but based on a conversation elsewhere. Oh, but these rules aren't like, written down or anything helpful like that, no...
“Please introduce me to Marxism (and Marxist Lemmy)”, but get this, from this URL: https://startrek.website/post/18021528.
That’s the thing about how “federation” works -> it’s their content, but unless a place is specifically added to a defederation list by name, it’s also our content as well - in this case, Star.Trek.Website’s content.
Indeed, but: a) defederating the Three Big Bads would have stopped that coming through and b) that wouldn't appear in "Local" or "Subscribed" even if it is technically on your home instance.
Sorry, I must be too tired and focused on the "caveat" rather than the fact that we are in agreement on everything, so ofc in true Reddit style I had to write it as it I disagreed, I suppose? 🤡
I think I'm now obliged to disagree with you and my own previous stance. 🤪
Unfortunately everything is inherently political, but I can see the value of an instance that favors mainstream low controversial content.
I think there are two issues:
We can go back to watching the world falling down around us some other time.
Seems like a nice conclusion.
Thank you for your comment!
If you removed political content from Lemmy there would be nothing left. All the other communities are dead.
I see lots of at-least-weekly-active communities that aren't politics but also don't garner hundreds of upvotes. I'm not sure what the "dead" threshold for you is. Admittedly I also avoid political content like the plague and hide out in my little Subscribed-sometimes-Local hole, but the fact I can do this at all and come back to new posts every day means all the other communities are not dead. They just don't critical mass. Even without algorithms specifically tuned to push people to outrage bait, engagement bait, people still just naturally interact more with the outraging things.
Unless you are joking and I just ruined it.
They are not, as mentioned in the OP: https://feddit.org/post/6554534
20 active communities which are not politics, news, memes or tech
They are indeed drown in the political content, but that's what this suggestion is trying to solve
There would be Linux, Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, and soooo much anime. Why is there so much anime!?!
ani.social user, hi!
I'm honestly not sure where people get these images from. Yes, they do often post the source, but I wonder. Is someone specifically searching for art to post on all those communities? Does the art just turn up in their usual browsing and they pass it onto us here?
Something something people visual content engagement blah blah idk?
At least it's all on one instance
My instance already blocks hex, grad, and ml, so I'm halfway there lol.
The politics/news communities here, though, are present but highly curated since many of them do not meet our standards for preventing misinformation. Seriously, our rules are very strict after I first got started with Lemmy and saw what a complete shit show worldnews at .ml was.
Defederating from the big 3 "extreme" instances is one thing and very doable. The problem with running a dedicated "no news/politics" instance would be preventing users from subscribing to any. The admin would have to on top of every news community that shows up and then administratively remove/hide those. That's going to be a chore.
I think themed social sites are the way to go for the fediverse, almost to the point where the theme doesn't matter. Any theme. Any raison d'etre beyond "to be a general interest clone of what already exists". So yeah, I think this is a good idea.
I think the suggestion also highlights some moderation/administration features that were missing when I first tinkered with self-hosting Lemmy a year ago. Are there tools to allow users to access these types of communities while keeping them hidden from the 'All' feed? There wasn't last year. It would be ideal to designate sites and communities that are A) totally blocked/banned, B) accessible/subscribable but only via direct url search, C) searchable, but not available in All (or even local, for hidden local communities), D) accessible via All. Or even having different discovery vectors selectable via binary selection. The fine grained filtering to do such a thing would be a real boon in general, especially for sites that want to remain thematically focused, while not handcuffing users who want to be able to view stuff that's off-topic.