from ozoned@piefed.social to fediverse@lemmy.world on 13 May 21:02
https://piefed.social/post/748181
I was just thinking about this, when I’m facing an issue, the first thing I do is go to a search engine and usually there’s a Reddit post. But I don’t want to ask there. And the only way we’re going to build up the info for folks to find us and come here is for us to just start asking here. On the Fediverse. We need to build up that mountain of knowledge that Reddit has and will always have. So we should be championing ANYONE asking questions here. Even if we think it’s obvious and we think you can just Google it. There was a time where you literally couldn’t just Google it. That was built over time. We need to build that here. So start asking your questions here! Find the answers and then post your answer to your own question. Or let someone do it for you. We need to build the knowledge here to be found. It’s not just about people looking for alternatives. We need our knowledge to be more valuable than their knowledge.
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Kagi has a search lens for Fediverse forums like Lemmy. More content in Lemmy will make that even better
Just to save people a rabbithole.
Kagi is pretty cool. But it’s not free. And for most people who don’t have much disposable income it’s not really a justifiable expense to pay for a search engine.
I wish yacy was better. Federated/self hosted search should be awesome.
Would you prefer something limited to searching federated content, or something closer to yacy where it crawls normal websites too?
Of course if one truly can’t afford it, paying for search can seem a luxury.
However I would argue as a counterpoint; If there’s any online service one would consider paying for, it should be search. Search is most literally our “front page to the internet”. It’s our first stop in any quest for information. Even the founders of Google knew early on, that putting adds in search creates a perverse incentive against the best results, favoring instead worse results, so people perform more searches, creating more opportunities to show people adds.
$5 a month isn’t much to know your query will give the results you want, instead of the results advertisers want.
Absolutely. I never imagined I’d pay for search but Kagi is leaps and bounds better than other search engines. I decided to pay when I realized how much I search every day after getting the free trial. Went through 100 searches in four days. If I search that much, paying for an engine that has no ads, uses useful lenses, and lets me block results from sites like Facebook was a no-brainer.
I can sympathize with not having the money to pay for a search engine when others are free. Aside from the great results, I like the idea of paying for a search engine.
“If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product being sold” is true, and I don’t want to use a search engine that is trying to sell me to advertisers. I want the company’s goals to be aligned with mine as a user. I want them to worry about making me happy as a user, not finding ways to show me ads.
Love this. Yes anywhere on the Fediverse. I wonder if Searxng has a Fediverse search.
YUP! Just spoke on the SearxNG Matrix folks: https://matrix.to/#/#searxng:matrix.org
And you CAN do !bangs for the Fediverse they said. !lemmy or !mastodon for instance. I didn't know that! I'll be posting more about this.
your local library is also a great option
For most things is much quicker to just use the Internet
What's quicker: searching bad info sources online or searching better info sources at the library?
Also OP didn't say it had to be quick
I’d be curious if schools still teach kids how to look things up in books, or if writing reports is now a thing they ask chatgpt to do
Anecdotally, from teachers I know, they use chatgpt.
But libraries are not just print books! They have digital collections and online materials too.
Wikipedia is pretty reliable. It’s not perfect but for most things it does the job, and is up to date.
I'll never downplay a library. They're wonderful. But I'm talking more about how we make the Fediverse more and more valuable. Yes go to the library and then share what you find on the Fediverse.
Really solid points that really resonate with me, but are we sure lemmy is the right platform for this? And if so, would we need a separate homeserver with these goals in mind?
I feel like there is monumental opportunity for something to rise up through the ashes of reddit/stack overflow and the ilk that are gettinng AI churned atm. These are things I've been reflecting on for weeks and have not found many answers, but if anyone finds the answers please guide/inform me
sure a server focused on this would be great but at this point, but just asking also works to get the juices flowing
I'm definitely not saying Lemmy is the perfect place for this at all. I'm saying the Fediverse is. Post your questions and answers and thoughts and passions and comments and jokes and ideas to ANY platform on the Fediverse. Your ideal platform doesn't exist? Talk about THAT instead or of you can BUILD IT. we're at a cross roads. The old tech is crumbling and we need to build a new better community. It won't happen over night, but it also won't happen it we depend on the old ways. Christine Weber, cocreator of Activity Pub made a comment recently that revolutions are run by those that show up. I'm here, let's start a revolution. :-). All it takes is us just talking, guiding, learning, putting our egos aside putting our worries and fears aside and rebuilding a new community.
Fediverse to replace stackoverflow would be something I am interested in.
Same here, it'd have to be something AI-hardened, though, still.
Fedi-Overflow?
Stackiverse?
Go for it! WE get to bikd it however WE want! And the Fediverse can sort by boosts. That's your 'this answer solved my problem' or hell even go back and edit your comment to indicate the post that solved your problem.
This is true. 💪
Using a search engine and adding “Lemmy” will, given there is info of course, work similar to adding reddit before.
I’d like to see that happen. Search indexes will have to keep track of the fact, for instance, jlai.lu or infosec.pub are Lemmy instances despite the fact that they might not have “Lemmy” in the url, or even the page title.
It can be done of course, but it’s not like with reddit.com, where anything at that domain is automatically associated with the keyword “Reddit.”
it’d be nice if you could do a site:reddit.com kinda thing for lemmy, maybe there could be a filter added in searxng or something
Kagi has a lens that only searches the Fediverse.
Why isn’t 11 pronounced ‘Onety One’?
Probably a similar reason 22 isn’t pronounced ‘Twoty Two’
Online pregnancy test
Know your meme guy pointing
Still not nearly as annoying as the French refusal to just say huitante or nonante. “93” is “Quadrupletwenty-thirteen?” Êtes-vous foutant défoncé??
It’s a hangover from earlier base 12 counting systems in which things like eggs would be counted in dozens.
You need 12 unique symbols in a base 12 system.
Thirteen through nineteen come from a different language source than eleven and twelve.
That makes enough sense.
Now to figure out why my language (Portuguese) has unique names going up to 15 instead of 10 or 12.
Couldn’t find anything except that Spanish might be similar.
Lol I meant more in starting in other posts or communities or micro blogs across the Fediverse. But I love the question. :-p
We need to seriously AI proof before that happens or the bots will clean us out and eat all our bandwidth. The only thing keep us safe is we are under the radar.
Even if Lemmy grows to a point of being on the radar, theres still no hope for any real IP to lock down for anybody. The whole design is fairly antithetical to being taken over and turned into a cash cow of some kind, despite feeling very much like something centralized in terms of how we interact with it.
I agree with OP, and I think this can even become an even better repository for information than something like Reddit, because it’s more democratized and deters astroturfing or many types of malfeasance by design. Especially as it stands now, early on. Thats why I started a community for billiards. The reddit community for billiards, as well as old forum sites, are great wealths of information that is hard to otherwise find. It would be great to build something like that here over time
Here’s your cupcake receipe ingredients:
Enjoy! 😋
finally, a recipe with a unique killer flavor
New game:
“AI or Putin? You decide!”
You’re right, and it’s infuriating that the AI scrapers are just so lazy/incompetent that they do things like try to scrape every dynamic page of a git repo instead of just cloning it. Similarly, they could just connect over ActivityPub and it wouldn’t have much more overhead than another private instance.
There’s Anubis which uses JavaScript to force browsers to do some work before they can access, but given how unpopular Cloudflare is around here, I imagine there’d be a lot of complaints if it was deployed on every instance.
Instances can close registrations if there are too many bots, and somehow it could be okay. Bots aren’t impossible to fight, the problem is that capitalist platforms support or ignore the issue since for them is somewhat convenient driving engagement… Or whatever ad-revenue system is behind that.
Yeah accounts are needed to post I’m talking just the AIs scraping content and them not respecting robots.txt.
100% agree and I would like to add on to it that it’s worth just posting information, too.
Did you run into a weird error with your Linux install and have a difficult, yet interesting time troubleshooting it? Post the solution! Even if it doesn’t directly address someone else’s problem, often finding pieces of an issue and correlating them with a bigger problem can help.
I don’t run a personal blog and downvotes mean literally nothing here, so have at it!
I went cold turkey on Reddit when they stopped API access and it was rough in the beginning, but I get ever so slightly hints of the old internet here on Lemmy. It’s raw, but it’s fresh and it’s ours. I love it.
And if downvotes bother you, that’s okay. There are plenty of instances that don’t show it, say lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Also, on some UI’s you can disable it even on instances that show it.
I’m happy to see people post about something cool they found, like some new software or whatever. Even if everyone else already knows about it and no one interacts, it’s not useless information.
100% this. SHARE anything and everything. Pretend like the internet doesn't exist and it's day one. Build it.
Reddit took many years to build that reputation. And earned creepy badges along the way. I’m not saying the fediverse doesn’t need to do it, but let’s not be in a rush. We have technical challenges, and a lemmy.world, and a .ml problem before we’re ready for the big leagues
And being niche is fine for now, email was tiny for decades
What’s going on with lemmy.world?
Depending on who you ask, a lot. Or very little.
For me today, though, it was the large downtime earlier. It’s big by Fediverse standards, microscopic by Reddit standards, and as-is it struggles to keep stable uptime some days.
Hi from piefed.social. we have alternatives to Lemmy world. We can literally go anywhere and talk. So let's spread out and talk. Takes the load and responsibility off of one instance.
Power mod problems
It is lemmy essentially. By far most communities, users, and a single point of failure in essence. That makes is quite good for getting it technically correct however, the best kind of correct
Centralization issue. However, it can never be as bad as Reddit.
Transphobes iirc
Idk if others remember, but Reddit had a LOT of technical challenges early on. Twitch was down constantly. YouTube was flaky early on. The technical part can be handled by those building the platforms and supporting the Fediverse. What can WE do RIGHT NOW? My thought is communicate, share, talk, empathize, listen, etc.
I am not sure about “the need to build knowledge” but i am liking the idea of communities of specific interest and expertise with the idea anyone can go discuss things with experts.
Saying knowledge is probably a poor phrase. Build community, building information, sharing likes and fears, sharing anything (within reason obvisouly), but SHARE. One of the reasons those places we consider toxic grow, is because that on standard channels that shit didn't exist. Our stuff does, but it's basically locked away in a matter of speaking. We have to rebuild it. And we do that by sharing and talking and listening and empathizing and trying new things and supporting each other.
I want to create a beat making community and make it live, post pro tips and things I watch and learned but the problem is that I don’t have much time aside from work nowadays and so setting up that routine of making a community live is hard.
I think I should at least try tho
Absolutely! Or start having conversations in a current community and if enough are interested build a new community. I've been adding content to my little communities and even though they're not very active I just keep posting. The founders of Reddit said they had multiple accounts and were acting like it was social until it took off. I'm not saying we got to that length, because I find that creepy, but we need that tenacity.
It’s crazy because I typed beatmaking into Lemmy and found a post I made a while ago :)) (because it’s so empty about this subject)
That's ok! It happens. maybe fokls don't know it exists! Are there other communities that align with beat making? Maybe start there and talk with folks there?
No I meant that positively: Lemmy doesn’t seem to know about music making yet :)) I’ve only found my content when typing into the search bar !
I need to create this :) Let me look how to do it with Voyager
I'll say this, Owncast has quite a few streamers into music as well. A lot of folks looked for alternative music making platforms during Covid, because as Gabe Kangas told me, Twitch was cracking down while everyone was home. Maybe check there as well for a community?
That would be amazing, at the moment I feel a little down because I need to unlearn a lot of beginner things I did to progress and it’s very hard.
I’ve been stuck only making loop and no songs, so I gotta unlearn most of what I know and start again if I want to finish my songs.
So I’ll maybe go there to have some advice ehehe
Best way imo is to talk to folks. Find a mentor. Even folks I never thought would know about X had thoughts or suggestions. Hell my wife just helped me with a thumbnail and she's not an artist, but she's been doing school presentations and had massively useful constructive criticism. :-)
I have my close friends that help and motivate me a lot but… I originally live in France and moved to Canada for a job.
I’m completely uprooted now and don’t know anyone in Toronto. In case you’re wondering why someone would abandon their life to move to Canada, I’m 18 and wanted to explore the world (still do), have a taste of the possibilities.
I’m happy with it, I’m just a little bit lonely since I arrived one month ago ;) so music making is hard alone, you constantly have to reinvent yourself and have lots of self-awarness
Dude, you never need to justify why you do things. Your life is your own, no one fully understands it but you and even YOU might not understand it. I say go for it. Grow your community!
I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing at the moment, I just know I’ve been learning a lot everyday so I guess it’s better than where I was in university :)
I’m doing programming work (back-end) and having a blast but I’m a bit sweaty from all the work !
Never stop learning! Never stop growing! Never stop evolving! We're here for a short time, keep moving forward in whatever that is to you. :-)
I was looking through my old published songs and because I thought they were pretty good I feel reassured in my ability to make stuff: on.soundcloud.com/U4bALULVsNwnqxoW8
I’m currently creating it using the website and I feel so quirky trying to come up with the community title. I think I’m gonna keep it simple lol
EDIT: here it is, (!musicmaking@sh.itjust.works I need to make it look better tho
I personally only ask when I can’t find anything on the internet, but that’s a good idea
Thanks and yeah ask and answer yourself if you must. Create Fedi Value. Share with all of us. Help a of us learn. :-).
I’ve made a conscious effort to start doing this in conversations in general instead of opening up a browser tab. Yeah, “just google it” is a thing, but asking is often enough if you’re not in a hurry, so why not?
Return to being social 🐒
I was thinking of a catching tag line instead of "just google it" I'm an uber nerd and would say "don't search it! FEDIVERSE IT!" :-D
There are some questions I just honestly would like a few opinions on and/or discussion around and I certainly prefer to do those here and here from members of the federation.
Go for it. Don't attempt to rebuild a community from scratch, or do, but you can post anywhere that's relevant and if there's interest build that community.
have already gone for it since I have been here and will continue to. I like the feedback I got on cholesterol medication. thats a good example because I don't need technical info. I have a doctor and pharmacist. I just wanted to see what folks experiences were. I only got one or two real useful ones but hey man that is as good as your going to get from local friends and relatives.
There is one worry I have about Lemmy being the knowledge of anything and it’s what happened on reddit. Many people went through and nuked their comments, essentially making many posts useless. There are already people here on lemmy that delete their profiles, comments and start over every few months. Not really sure what that means for all the federation, but I assume different instances may have different versions of deleted information in the long run?
You can't stop people changing their mind about deleting stuff. That can and should happen for any number of reasons, both good and bad. There are servers that would still have the information, but it feels like there's less incentive to fully delete an account on the Fediverse as you can literally pick up the same conversation with a new account. Maybe I just don't do enough social media use and miss the point. I deleted my stuff from Reddit, because I don't want to help Reddit and it should be my private data. Fediverse we are all public and there is no tracking anyway. So whoever you are here, you're it here, no where else, even with the same name.
We can make a Fedi-Wiki that requires you to agree to the terms that everything you publish is considered public, kinda like a source code under GPL.
Edit: Lol I just remembered it’s called Creative Commons. Its what Wikipedia uses.
One of the lemmy devs is also working on a federated wiki. On mobile, so no link, but i think it’s Ibis?
On the flip side, keeping your personal online footprint small is definitely more secure.
Maybe we need a soft kill switch to disassociate content with an account after x amount of time. Like for me personally, I’ve put zero effort into mopping up old content, and as often as I post, I’m sure someone with the desire could put the pieces together and dox me.
I’ve left it up anyway cuz I don’t want to do to Lemmy what you’re concerned about, but if I could nuke all my content older than a few months into an anonymous version, I’d be all for that. Leave the info up for anyone who might benefit from it, but scrub my username.
That said, for community building sake, I’d hate to see posts go anonymous right out the gate like some 4chan shit; and posts should be associated with an account at least long enough for mods to have a reasonable amount of time to take action against an account that breaks the rules. But again, posts that are months old? The conversation there is over - my personal involvement is moot at that point, it’s just data now.
Disassociating with old comments and posts would be a good way to go, but I’m not really sure that’s an option for the fediverse? In theory couldn’t someone in the future set up an instance whose sole purpose is just back up and collect data? How would someone even go about trying to erase themselves from a situation like that?
You’re absolutely right, somebody totally could do that (instances that don’t respect post/reply deletion requests are already a known issue), and there’s very little you could do about that sort of thing once it’s already happened.
Which is why I think people on lemmy need to get used to the fact that their data isn’t theirs to own on something that is so public facing like this. Instead we should reteach people to be conscious of what information they post. Once upon a time even A/S/L was too much info.
I don’t think there would be any way to protect from that, but you’d have the same issue with full deletion.
the whole point is a living breathing community, not a wiki
when somethings alive things die and go away forever, when everythings perserved it feels like a tomb, a place to record stuff not actively engage, im hella exagerating, I just like that ppl own their own content a bit more than reddit
Which is fine, if that’s what the general consensus ends up being (I generally disagree with deleting knowledge, but that’s my own opinion and not up to me really), but then this should/will never be a place for knowledge and only just casual conversation. A lot of people on lemmy want it to replace reddit in terms of search results, but it may never be that.
I agree.
That needs to be in the form of a question, right?
I don’t know, does it?
Lol brilliant.
Ty! :-)
Ok then.
Why does everyone hate the issi classic in GTA online, everytime I take my little beast out for a drive some massive car or Batmobile comes along and focuses their energy on destroy it.
I just want to do tiny burnouts.
At least four, possibly more.
Finally I get an answer, thank you.
No probalo
Lol I didn't mean in this exact post. But I love the question! Go make a post in a relevant community and get conversations moving. Even if you think only you are interested, I've found lots of folks share similar ideas and dont even realize it.
Nah I’m all good, it’ll get answered here. I believe in the power of Lemmy.
Is it targeted more than anything else? From what I had heard of gta online I would assume that no matter what you do, there’s always someone trying to ruin your fun.
Yeah, I take my other cars and drive for ages, I might get shot but nothing unusual for gtao, it’s the car they attack, one person spent ages chasing me down and attacking me, I jumped out and they took the car out then came and picked me up, so it’s gotta be personal against the car.
It’s made it fun tho, trying to escape in this little car, while this near tank like vehicle comes barreling at you, sending you flying into the air.
I don’t know what the car looks like, but it might be the case that it is just some type of car that people don’t see that often and when they do, it grabs their attention.
What’s the right translation for “pepper” in German? And red pepper, green pepper and so on? I found several words that seem to mean pepper, but not sure if any is better than the others.
Pepper is Pfeffer, red pepper is roter Pfeffer, green pepper is grüner Pfeffer und so weiter. Ich hoffe ich konnte ihnen helfen. Einen schönen Tag noch.
Pepper can also translate to Paprika though when talking about plants. A pepper plant is a paprika in German. Spicy peppers are chillies.
Also, Bell pepper is Paprika in german
Lol well I meant across the Fediverse, but I like you've started immediately. :-D.
Another idea is an asking system that compiles answers from the web while also posting the question here. Gives the benefit of immediate answers while also populating the fediverse.
Love it. As long as we're active IMO. Random people saying there's no content, let's give them that content. Let's be here enjoying ourselves, talking, sharing, and they'll come. But we have to be tenacious. Support each other as well. Less thumbs up and more actual comments. COMMUNICATING is what the internet is for. Sure thumbs up, but make a quick comment on a post. Get interacting
Is there a way to encourage people to post more? Because the main problem seems to be getting actual posts, not replies to them.
For example “nostupidquestions” only has a few questions a day, but there are 40k subscribers and 1500 people or so checking in every day. It has 4.2k posts and 170k comments.
“asklemmy” has more posts, fewers subscribers, and over 2k a day check in. 6k posts and 317k comments.
This is a habit that prevalent everywhere, even on reddit. Only 20 or even 10 % of people produce content and rest just watch/consume. If we can have that kind of split on lemmy, it would be fine.
Indeed, the vast majority on any social media platform does not engage. And when they do it’s mostly just liking content and not even replying. You see it on lemmy as well, with news articles often having few comments. And when they do it’s one or two top comments and a bunch of replies.
Over the years the only thing I can imagine is to add another anonymizing layer, where people can send in questions and the “best ones” are posted by a general/bot account. But that is something people much smarter than me have tried to figure out for years, so I have no idea how it would be implemented.
I remember a social media platform where each user had a thread specific ID “curious rabbit/astonished baboon”, and users can discuss anything without any fear. The moment you created a new thread or participate in a new thread, your ID changed. I think it fizzled out eventually, but the concept was interesting.
This is what I'm getting at. We can only control ourselves, so let's be tenacious in posting more here. Again it doesn't have to be a technical question. It could just be "hey I had this issue I fixed it withblah". Whatever you're passionate in.
But can people find your question on lemmy by googling?
coz thats how i personally found reddit back in the day. And i’m sure it is part of how reddit grew to what it is today.
If google cant find you, you cannot be a success, is my guess. But of course, NOT being found on google has it advantages too.
I can find this topic by searching on lemmy
but i cannot search comments, which limits the usability somewhat
fedi-search.com
i dont know if google shows lemmy results but duckduckgo does
If you can't find your answer on Lemmy or anywhere on the Fediverse, just ask. We need all kinds. No one answered after a few days, ask somewhere else. Use these moments to kick start conversations. It's more work, but it'll be worth it.
I think it shouldn’t be a competition but possibly something with added value. Possibly in the form of structure, ie something that doesn’t create hundreds of same/similar questions but constantly updates the best answers closest to the existing date. (Alphabetically searchable hashtags, etc…, build it communally, ie #NoStupidQuestions , how to best build a free information platform?).
Oh yeah, not a competition really, just post anything and on any Fediverse platform. We need to dog food the Fediverse. Let's stop taking the easy way. Sure, find an answer if you like, but come back here tondhare with all of us. We need to build our own library of Alexandria.
Roo roo roo!
I don’t use reddit results much at all anymore thanks to it constantly trying to force me to use the app, which I don’t have. I do try to force lemmy into search results by adding it to the search terms when appropriate.
Problem is that Lemmy/Fediverse simply doesn’t have the established depth and breadth of information that reddit does yet, and reddit does have it because it sort of killed the internet forums that would have existed foe those subjects. I agree, it’d be great to have more knowledge sources in Lemmy. Growing the community types would be a start, but that needs people and participation, and growth is hard.
That’s the problem OP is asking you to help solve.
Exactly this. We need to start investing in the Fediverse and stop depending on Reddit or any of the big techs. WE all built their content. We can do it again FREELY.
I understand that.
You don’t, or you wouldn’t have asked that. If your excuse to not eat food is that “it’s not digested yet”, that’s the problem eating the food helps solve in the first place.
Or go be a chick of bird. You get pre-digested food for free.
I didn’t ask anything. What’s your problem.
Oh hell no. Lemmy is an extremely specific filter bubble and absolutely not suitable to replace even the worst search engine.
I'm not saying LEMMY specifically. I'm on Piefed Social. I'm saying ANYWHERE on the Fediverse. Find your platform, build your platform.
Agreed. About the only thing I would search Lemmy for is obnoxious Linux snobbery. That, they have on lock.
Deleting them only deletes them visibily. They don't provide Reddit value for customers, but they're still in the system somewhere in backups or in a DB, etc.
But still, I'm saying, having conversations. Start talking more here. Ask and answer, find others with similar interests. Let's dog food this Fediverse!
Fully agree! I just learned about fedi-search.com. I’m going to start using it.
Hmm, this sounds like a really cool idea, but it doesn’t seem to do what I thought it would. For example, I went to fedi-search.com and searched for “stop internet searching” expecting to find this very thread, but alas, no dice.
<img alt="Fedi-Search Home Page" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/e211c1c6-949c-46a6-b70a-bf3d82e8ed4b.png">
<img alt="Fedi-Search Results Page" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/d3af7eb3-470d-4b64-b980-f3df803dbb62.png">
i find that most of the information and recommendations i have seen on Lemmy is about what NOT to do or use. dont use this service, dont use this Linux version
Yeah we need to pivot to being more open. But not even just Lemmy. Post anywhere. Anyone can build anything. The Fediverse isn't Lemmy. I posted on Piefed.social. :-)
All knowledge available for all, should be the goal. Us vs. them train of thought is so old and tiring but still continues to light a fire under some.
I think all knowledge should be shared with everyone. And we have the opportunity to make sure that knowledge we're giving out stays free forever on the Fediverse.
Eh, if the information already exists on the web somewhere, why reiterate it? Seems excessive to insist on asking on the Fediverse unless that information can’t be found on a search engine or through AI.
Why not share it here? WHy not free the information? Someone could delete their Reddit post or Google could change their algorithm again tomorrow to suit their own needs. We're currently accepting the old system that's showing it can't be trusted. I say free the information. I might be naive though, but I have to try at least.
You need to remember first of all what sites like reddit, digg, and now Lemmy actually are. They are link aggregators. The content is anything and every thing. Just link to it. It’s that simple. And if you feel it is in a place that might get removed, screenshot it, archive.org it, copy into an online Google Doc, and post that. There’s no reason we need 500 identical “How do I do X?” posts just to fill content. Do you want 500 posts clogging your feed about how to fix the same printer issue over and over?
I don't want 500, but if I had a choice between finding it on the Fediverse or Reddit, I'd prefer the Fediverse personally.
What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter where the information is. If it’s absolutely crucial information, archive it, but if it disappears from Reddit or wherever, it’s not like someone else will be incapable of asking again, here or elsewhere.
fediverse bringing back bulletin boards would be a great thing.
the internet became a worse place when we lost bulletin boards and forums and got reddit and ai.
Let's DO IT! :-)
I think about Reddit-style platforms being the centralized bulletin boards and forums of these days, and Lemmy is closest we have to a DIY kind of thing which is controlled by the community.
Back in the day only a sufficiently tech savvy person could set up and run a forum software. Now everyone can do it, and with the Fediverse it’s all nicely interconnected, interoperable and truly free and open.
In general the Fediverse is the best shot we got right now to get back to the non-corporate Internet of my childhood and youth, I really hope it will succeed. And succeeding does not mean that it must grow and outcompete the commercial offerings, I think success is if enough motivated and interesting people join and participate. Quality > quantity.
Thats what I’ve been doing…I say yes do it! We need more humanity nowadays too, when everything’s bots.
100% more humanity!
Yes, or if you find a solution you can post it here for preservation. I’ve posted some guides and info that i pulled from Reddit onto here because the way things are going, I can’t guarantee that information will still be available in a years time.
Preservation is so MASSIVELY important imo atm. With Internet Archive under fire, Reddit and Twitter closing APIs, Google shutting down fucking everything, we need OUR internet, not theirs and we need to protect that which is precious to us.
Exactly. While Lemmy isn’t exactly like the Internet archive, at least its self hosted so you could preserve anything you want for as long as you wanted on here
Agreed. And even if 1 instance goes down, if another instance is following, it's still there. It's potentially the strongest off site backup ever.
Suppose I wanted to discuss, say, typewriter repair. How could I find the appropriate community? How do I avoid having my questions deleted because they are “off topic”? How do I find posts/comments/answers related to my interests?
One of my biggest gripes about the fediverse (and honestly any online community) is people making increasingly niche places to discuss things before there is a need to split things due to size. I’d post that to something like a general hobbies group. I’d also say mods need to be less strict about what is and isn’t on-topic while there isn’t much traffic in their communities.
I’d say having those groups isn’t bad in itself, but they should crosspost posts to and from the small groups.
I personally think that the main problem is bad search optimization. There quite a lot of good answers on Fediverse (Lemmy) but it is nearly impossible to find them via Google or any other regular search engine. And making things worse since Lemmy is Federated it is not easy to implement correct indexing for it. So it makes a lot of questions(Should each instance index only local posts to prevent duplicated search results? What about small instances? Or use some central instance like Lemmy.World? What about different frontends for same instance like Photon or Alexandrite?).
It would be cool if there was an operator that would force the search into Lemmy content. Are they called bangs? Like starting with !r
Kagi (paid search engine, haven’t tried it myself) has a fediverse forums (lemmy, piefed, mbin) lens.
Oh wow, you’re right!
I wonder how they set that up? DDG has thousands of bangs but not one for Lemmy - probably because it is not at one single URL?
Kagi’s lens are the equivalent of custom feeds for searching (i think, I haven’t used kagi).
But yeah, ddg bangs basically just jump you to a search page on a website.
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/d6f4bb68-f2ca-475c-84c0-4ac923def9c4.png">
It also makes it easy to remove reddit from search results entirely.
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/22006864-f649-4bd0-bca0-f433739d2672.png">
I ask chatgpt first. It usually gives me decent ideas to test out.
E: the downvotes are interesting. I wonder why.
Downvotes are because a lot of folks are against ChatGPT and LLMs. We're going through MANY information transitions in the last 40 years and yet another holy grail is difficult to swallow. If you want to ask ChatGPT that's fine, but I'm trying to get folks to foster the Fediverse and make it more welcoming, more valuable, and heck just help people find us. Use the tools you want, absolutely. But we also need to find ways to help promote the Fediverse.
I try to ask questions here instead of reddit in the hopes that lemmy will pop up in google for someone.
And I think that's what we should do. Or even ask the question, search it on Google, and answer your own post! :-) We need to foster the Fediverse by existing in the Fediverse and stop depending on Big Tech or using them to help build OUR internet. :-)
This is what I do when I want to search Lemmy. I put Lemmy: “search for this” into the search box and see what comes up. It works better than Lemmy’s internal search function a lot of the time.
Kagi search has a function to specifically search the fediverse.
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/692e430c-ab77-4b52-81ff-f1fa3ea4bc37.png">
OH! LOVE THIS! Thank you KAGI!
Thats fucking stupid
Maybe, instead of Reddit and Lemmy and other forums, how about you just host a Wiki? Its gonna take more time, but it will be way better for readability.
Hey thanks! Just a point of advice starting a conversation with "that's fucking stupid" isn't exactly seen as useful or helpful information. I'm just attempting to start conversations and help promote the fediverse so that it continues to grow. If you want to offer any helpful advice instead of being negative, that's be great.
Good idea, I try to do it, but niche stuff is rough here, if you are a part of an active discord, suggest making and hosting a lemmy community to them, I’m gonna try to get some 3d discords to post more art here.
Every little bit counts.
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I have been trying to do that since I came here because you are precisely right google has become at best broken at worst an agent actively trying to manipulate you and reddit is entirely untrustable, keep doing what you are doing and don’t forget to have fun while you are doing the right thing!
Thank you so much! It's nice to know others agree. I've been so concerned with all of this, thinking I'm the only one thinking this, but I'm not. We're ALL thinking this. And I've been having an absolute BLAST. Not just for myself, but doing my Fireside Fedi show and even working towards setting up my nonprofit BT Free. We'll see where it all goes. Maybe it just us, but at least we have each other. :-) Thank you for the kind words of support. <3