from hendrik@palaver.p3x.de to fediverse@lemmy.world on 19 Aug 2024 13:53
https://palaver.p3x.de/post/24053
tl;dr: Be excellent to each other, do something constructive here?
I'm not sure anymore where the Threadiverse is headed. (The Threadiverse being this threaded part of the Fediverse, i.e. Lemmy, MBin, PieFed, ...)
In my time here, I've met a lot of nice people and had meaningful conversations and learned lots of things. At the same time, it's always been a mixed bag. We've always had quite some argumentative people here, trolls, ... I've seen people hate on and yell at each other, and do all kinds of destructive things. My issue with that is: Negative behavior is disproportionately affecting the atmosphere. And I'd argue we have nowhere enough nice behavior to even that out.
I don't see Lemmy grow for quite some time now. Seems it's now leveling off at a bit less that 50k monthly active users. And I don't see how that'd change. I'm missing some clear vision/idea of where we want to be headed. And I miss an atmosphere that makes people want to join or stay here, of all of the places on the internet. The saying is: "If you don't go forwards you go backwards". I'm not sure if this applies... At least we're not shrinking anymore.
And I'm always unsure if the tone and atmosphere here changes subtly and gradually. I've always disagreed with a few dynamics here. But lately it feels like we're on the decline, at least to me. I occasionally keep an eye on the votes on my comments. And seems I'm getting fewer of them. Sometimes I reply to a post and not a single person interacts. Even OP seems to have abandoned their post moments after writing it. And also for nuanced and longer replies, I regularly don't get more than one or two upvotes. I think that used to be a bit better at some point. And I see the same thing happening with other peoples' comments. So it's not just me writing low-quality comments. What does work is stating simple truths. I regularly get some incoming votes with those. But my vision of this place isn't spreading simple truths, but have proper and meaningful discussions, learn things and new perspectives or just mingle with people or talk. But judging by the votes I observe, that isn't appreciated by the community here.
Another pet peeve of mine is the link aggregator aspect of Lemmy. I'd say at least 80% of Lemmy is about dumping some political (or tech) news articles. Lots of them don't generate any engagement. Lots of them are really low-effort. OP just dumps something somewhere, no body text added, no info about what's interesting about it. And people don't even read those articles. They just read the title and react (emotionally) to that. In the end probably neither OP nor the audience read the article and it's just littering the place. Burying and diminishing other, meaningful content. (With that said: There are also nice (news) discussions going on at the same time. And Lemmy is meant to be a link aggregator. It's just that my perception is: it's skewed towards low quality, low engagement and random noise.)
A few people here also don't really like political debate. And there's no escape from it here on Lemmy since so much revolves around that. And nowadays politics is about strong opinions, emotions and emotional reactions. And often limited to that. The dynamics of Lemmy reinforce the negative aspect of that, because the time when you're most incentivized to reply or react is, when it triggers some strong emotion in you, for example you strongly disagree with a comment and that makes you want to counter it and write your own opinion underneath. If you agree, you don't feel a strong emotion and you don't reply. And the majority of users seems to also forget to upvote in that case, as I lined out earlier. And we also don't write nuanced answers, dissect complex things and examine it from all angles. That's just effort and it's not as rewarding for the brain to do that as it is pointing out that someone is wrong. So it just fosters an atmosphere of being argumentative.
Prospect
I think we have several ways of steering the community:
1. Technology: Features in the software, design choices that foster good behavior.
2. Moderation: Give toxic people the boot, or delete content that drags down the place. Following: What remains is nice people and not adverse content.
3. The community
I'd say 1 and 2 go without saying. (Not that everything is perfect with those...) But it really boils down to 3: The community. This is a fairly participatory place. We are the ones shaping the tone and atmosphere. And it's our place. It's kind of our obligation to care for it if we want to see it go somewhere. Isn't it?
So what's your vision of this place? Do you have some idea on where you'd like it to go? Practical ideas on how to achieve it?
Do you even agree with my perception of the dynamics here, and the implications and conclusions I came up with?
threaded - newest
Continuing my post here due to the character limit:
What can we do?
Votes
I think we all know votes are broken. They just show the agreement level of the mob. Not necessarily connected with quality or if something is interesting to read. I think ultimately that's unfixable. But I'd like to invite you all to vote more. People who write posts or comments need to see it's worth typing it. There has to be some interaction or we're just wearing out people who contribute. And remember to vote on comments, too. Be generous.
Posting the news
I'd say don't do it too much since we already have RSS readers and news sites. But I'm willing to yield with my personal opinion. But(!) Please only post articles that you've read yourself. If it's too boring for you to read, it's probably also too boring for the other people to read any you're just contributing to make this place be littered with random noise.
Posting links with no attached (body) text
Connected to my previous point: Ask yourself: "Why am I posting this?" Is it because you want to discuss something? If yes: Put in a minimum of effort and contribute something yourself. At least write one or two sentences in your post and don't just dump a single link. IMO you should also write a short summary for your audience so they know if they want to click on the link. If you respect them and their time.
Reacting emotionally
We all do that. Just take a step back every now and then and see if your reactions are balanced in a way that you're comfortable with. Remember you can always down-vote someone and be done with it and not start an argument. But you don't need to keep silent. Especially if you're reading a text like this and making an effort, you're probably on the good side, so I don't want you to surrender this place to the people with less approvable behavior.
Be nice
I'd say everyone of us shapes this place by their behavior. If you want it to become a nice place, be nice yourself. We all know that's easier said than done, but we can make an effort.
Diversity
I think diversity is baked in to the Fediverse. We can have different instances with different focus, different moderation policies and a different tone of conversation. The technology isn't there yet to give everyone what they want, but I think we should embrace our diversity. And do something constructive with it. That's not easy. Some people like to have "free speech" and no moderation. Some like to have civil discussions without trolls and people who are constantly wrong, yet very aggressive and argumentative. Some are meme-lords or whatever and everyone is here for their individual reasons. I don't think we need to completely unite or agree on things. But we have to find a way to get along... Be liberal with other people who might be using this place differently. But don't tolerate unacceptable behavior.
Moderators and developers
You have quite some impact here. Use it wisely. Be fair, open-minded and make this a nice place for us.
Netiquette
People figured out in the 1990s, communicating over the internet is slightly different from communicating in the offline world. They wrote an unofficial code of policies that encourage good behavior on the Internet. Used to regulate respect and polite behavior online. It's called the Netiquette (If anyone has a better link, feel free to provide it to me.) It's a bit outdated so let me copy some guidelines and paraphrase:
Don't get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to incendiary material.
Don't feed trolls!
Excellent summary overall.
One thing though, regarding feeding trolls. This was excellent advice in the earlier days of the internet, back when anyone trolling was doing it simply as a recreational activity, to have fun.
We no longer live in that world though. People have realized that there’s real power here, where one guy on Twitter can start riots through an entire western European country with a single tweet. Where an online campaign can change the political makeup of your country.
Now, in this day, we have a civic responsibility to treat trolls as we would if we encountered these behaviors in real life, because there is no difference anymore. It would be unrealistic to set some utopian standard for our online interactions when the digital sphere has simply become an extension of the physical world, with all the same problems and issues, and thus a responsibility to engage as one’s conscience demands.
As a side note, one idea I saw recently that I liked, I think it was mozz’s, that people receive temporary bans for any examples of using a classic strawman argument. I think this would be fairly easy to enforce and quite productive. It’s almost impossible to troll effectively if you can’t strawman, it’s probably one of the most common features.
You're probably right. The world has changed substantially since the 1990s. I mean all of the text is more or less the opinion of a random dude (me) who'd like to make Lemmy a better place. But I don't claim absolute truth with any of that. Thanks for your input. I appreciate your pespective.
We could easily add a community setting to make the body mandatory. I suggest you open an issue for that.
I think one of the best things we have are users like @craftyindividual@lemm.ee and @anon6789@lemmy.world who almost single-handedly curate fantastic communities of content they're passionate about.
It's a huge job, and not something one could easily ask of anyone. So I don't have a quick fix how to attract more people like them or anything like that. But I think people doing these kinds of efforts deserve a shout-out.
I'm not very worried personally. I like it here, and it seems healthy enough in my eyes. I see people ask quite specific questions about many diverse topics and get incredibly helpeful answers, and I've been in that position myself as well. That doesn't mean it's not worth discussing the state of the community though, and I'm curious what people have on their minds. :)
Appreciate the shout out as always! We have a great set of people here, and we should all be happy with this place we’ve built together, even if it’s still a humble, cozy place. I feel we have organic growth, and it will come in waves as Lemmy builds and improves. Just keep doing what we’re doing and we’ll be good!
I feel if as much power is put at the user level it will be good. let users block and subscribe to anything at all and if we could bring in trust cafes mechanic where you can reduce or increase view as a semi subscribe/block kind of thing. For subscribe I want to subscribe to someones content but also like their block lists. Basically we need a way for it to be a cesspool yet the user can make it great. I have this view because I have kinda seen in in practice. MMO were chat was a cesspool but after blocking like 12 folks it was a delight. I would absolutely love a symetric block to where block wins. IE blocking someone also acts like them blocking you.
Agree. I think there is much to gain with a few new software features. I didn't really address that. But I think there is no way around that. Lots of things can be addressed with good design decisions. And it affects things. Even a small bias in the platform foundation will push things in a direction. And we need to use that to our advantage. Or it'll be working against the platform. I'd like some more power over my own experience, too.
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Defederating from threads seems like the best way to make it nice. That way there's less influence from psychopathic billionaires who happily stoke genocide for clicks.
Threads doesn't really communicate with what's referred to as the Threadiverse anyway. Sometimes to mbin I guess, but only profiles that are actively invited by being followed by users on an instance. So I'm not sure this would change all that much.
Yeah, it wouldn't. I've never interacted with a threads user. And none of my lengthy ramblings involves any of them. So it wouldn't change anything which I addressed.
The existence of threads makes threadiverse an inappropriate name for fediverse content aggregators, is the point I was being overly sarcastic about.
Ah. Part of me agrees, another part of me thinks we've been calling threaded messages threads for decades and I don't feel comfortable letting meta ruin it.
Threaded messages seems fine to me, as you said that usage is more well understood than threadiverse which risks conceptually-centering a billionaire controlled platform.
Have you interacted with BeeHaw much? Because they do most the things you ask pretty well.
Yes. That's a good call. In fact, I've been subscribing to a few more beehaw communities lately. I think I'm not completely aligned with their vision. I think they're a bit too restrictive and trigger-happy with the defederation. But... The atmosphere there seems nice. So they seem to be doing it right. And I have to revise my prejudices.
But I don't want them to be out there by their own. I definitely want this to be a federated place. So... Maybe we should form some alliance? Some instances that agree on some expected behavior from their users? And these instances then collaborate more closely than with the rest of the network?
I like that idea.
Ban ‘moderators’ who don’t even follow their own rules, like being civil, on large ‘default’ communities.
What I don't want to do is pointing at people and distributing blame. We maybe need to do that, too. But that shouldn't take away from each and everyone of us asking »What can I, *myself*, do to make this a better place.«. That's what I'd like to focus on with this post. So I'm not saying you're right or wrong. But I consider that out of scope for this discussion.
Start new communities to replace large ‘default’ ones and follow our own rules when moderating them.
Make platform and protocol changes to further decentralise power.
I’d like to note that while to you it may seem there is little interaction on lemmy, ie. votes and comments. I can assure you the median engagement on posts is far higher than reddit. The bottification of reddit has made it so that the few bot/troll posts get lots of engagement, and anything organic gets pretty much none.
Absolutely, given the pretty low active users (compared to large social medias anyway) there’s a lot going on here. There’s certainly not infinite new content like Reddit, but that may not be a bad thing.
There might not be infinite content, but there is enough content that I’ve had to unsubscribe from a few communities in order to keep up with my main feed. That seems like a promising sign as far as growth goes.
I think something which would benefit the tone or ‘culture’ here would be to make it immediately and publicly clear that a negative interaction is unwelcome. Rather than get into a pointless debate with a troll, simply reply “This is a rude and/or low-effort comment which nobody wants here.” It might not make much difference to the troll but for anyone else who reads it it creates and reinforces expectations about behaviour. The same thing goes for positive contributions; make sure to comment letting people know when you value their contribution.
I wouldn’t mind if moderation was more heavyhanded too. If someone is rude and abusive, block them from posting on the community, regardless of the point they may be trying to make. In that respect I would like to see more moderators from the community
I’m sure technical things could be done to help too. Perhaps letting users switch off visibility for posts/comments that have received a certain proportion of downvotes for example.
I couldn't agree more strongly... I mean we kind of have that already. Everytime I see something that has a score of like -40 because of all of the downvotes, I think they got their just punishment and it's clear that no one likes what they wrote. I think it's superior to replying because it doesn't give that person any reply to start an argument. Just silence and downvotes. But however we decide to do it, i think we should be very open and upfront with what's expected behavior. And I'd like to see that happen more often.
PieFed has that feature. Comments with a score less than -10 (I think) just collapse. I think we need more of those features in Lemmy and the respective apps.
Neat idea. Would be cool if the threshold could be configured by the user too (though a recommended default value would be wise).
I think it should be proportion and not net score. Ie. If after atleast 8 votes have been cast >70% are downvotes, comment is collapsed.
Oh, forget what I said. I was going to write a lenthy reply... But in fact it is configurable in the user profile. -10 is just the default value.
Being able to do this in Lemmy and configure it would be amazing. In Piefed’s implementation does it leave ‘orphaned’ responses to the hidden comment visible or does it hide those as well?
They collapse as well. But PieFed is pretty open to new ideas. If someone likes it differently and decides to address it, it can probably be changed.
I think no one ever opened an issue for such a feature, so please go ahead and do that.
How do I do that? Thanks
You'll need a GitHub account, unfortunately. (ActivityPub support in GitLab will be amazing for fediverse projects)
I think if you want Mods/Devs/Admins to have better impact, they actually need to have funding. People focus on funding hosting costs, but everyone seems to be assuming that Mods/Devs should be volunteers.
If you're not donating in some way to the instances/software you use...please start.
As an example, lemmy.world is run by https://fedihosting.foundation, who also run mastodon.world and many other instances. AFAICT the whole group takes in a little over $1000 a month through Patreon/ko-fi. That's barely enough to cover hosting costs for so many huge instances, much less compensate the several dozen volunteers.
I'm a bit the wrong receiver for that kind of information. I'm not on lemmy.world but run my own instance. I've donated days worth of developer hours already, and I'm planning to do more... But I can't speak for other people.
And I dislike money being involved. That leads to obligations, envy, and people stop doing it for the fun and because it's a nice platform. I think that shifts things and I'm not sure if in a good way. We'd get closer to commercial interests and we already have enough commercial platforms. I liked the old way how Free Software worked. Some random people doing it out of their own motivation. Coming up with all kinds of interesting software that'd help them. And they'd generously share it and invite everyone to participate. And it'd stop there. No ulterior motives involved.
But with that said, yeah. Someone has to do the development, pay for the servers and do the community work. That's not optional. And we have a broader issue with money in the Free and Open Source ecosystem.
I feel like some software/platform features that encourage and foster more community-based and discussion could go a long way.
Some quick thoughts:
All good suggestions. Multi-communities has been requested for a long time and would help combat the userbase split across for example gaming communities @lemmy.world and @sh.itjust.works.
Subscribing to individual threads would make following ongoing discussion much less tedious than it is now.
Yeah, the ability to follow posts and comments to be notified of new comments and replies would help boost discussion. I hope they implement this soon.
As a random observation, it’s August at the moment, a lot of people in Europe are on vacation/holidays, so that might explain the fewer comments.
Overall, very nice thread, I might crosspost it to !fedigrow@lemm.ee
This, now we have school holidays and my kids are home 24/7. Takes a lot of time and energy to keep them entertained.
Sounds like you've got your priorities in other - enjoy it for all it's worth! :)
Reddit has been declining for years as well and basically just lives on momentum from earlier days when forums or forum-likes had their heyday.
Lemmy is trying to get a cut of a shrinking user base and is doing so by being a very close copy of Reddit. It’s not exactly surprising that it only “grows” when there is a wave of people annoyed with Reddit for some reason.
Your suggestions are fine, but the internet as a whole is moving to semi-private communities and Lemmy is not going to stop that overall trend.
I don't know. I halfway agree and halfway disagree. We've always had things change. I always found a comfortable niche. Lots of Free Software exists, despite the odds being against them. I almost exclusively use software that respects my freedom. At least in private. The important thing is we pick up the fight. And concerning the services I use, we regularly succeed.
I don't really care for Reddit, or all the people moving to Discord. And their millions of users. All I want is a nice niche with an atmosphere I like. And enough users who are aligned with my interests so I can talk about what I like.
And I think you're right and Lemmy -as is- isn't stopping any trend. Because we can see it's stagnating. It'd have to change to do that. Provide anything meaningful to users that they don't have some place else. Whatever that is, great software functionality, nice people, good content... (Ideally all of that.)
I am planning to implement private communities soon, hopefully it can help with that. Then maybe Lemmy can become an alternative for Discord and other platforms too.
A lot of people on Lemmy are also on matrix, which is an FOSS alternative to discord.
what do you mean by private communities?
Users need to be approved by a mod before they can follow, browse or post in the community.
I feel it is pretty stable here. I post every day, and it’s been a tad slower lately, much like I believe Blaze said, feels due to people going away for trips. Weekends are a decent bit slower, where usually they have been busy. That’s where I notice it the most. My subs are lower than at the start of the year, but they’re still going up slow but steady. Interactions are still steady, which is my main concern. As you’ve mentioned, people want to see that interaction. I don’t want to say my content is useless, because people don’t need owl pics and animal rescue facts every day, but I typically get 100+ likes per post, and a handful of comments.
The key I feel though, is I have the same people coming in regularly every day, or every other day, and they are also participating. They make the place look alive more than me just throwing things out there. But that is a specific thing I work on, as much as the post content itself. When people come and make comments, I give them my full attention. I talk back to them, I laugh at their jokes and puns, I take time to answer their questions, I pay attention to what content they like or don’t like, how I post links. I treat them like they were clients. And now in return, they see that the community is a fun place to hang, and they come back regularly, even though I’m not giving them anything they couldn’t find, but I am adding value to their days. I make them smile, I make them feel like their effort commenting matters, I make them feel like they motivate me to keep posting (because they do!), and I teach them about things they never expected to care about.
But it’s a lot of hard work! I try not to think about the time I put into this just for fun. Many of us have been here before the API exodus or before and have put in hours posting to nobody or a dozen people until we’ve built up momentum. Most people won’t even upvote, let alone comment or post, so it’s going to come in waves building up this place. You’re still in the wilderness here. We’re still pretty much the first wave of Fediverse settlers. We’re here while it is rough, setting the foundations of what will hopefully come, keeping us from fading to nothing. I don’t think new people appreciate that point. It’s not like 25% of Reddit broke off and came here with all the posters and the audience, we’re starting from scratch. I think what we have is amazing for a bunch of nobodies with no corporate cash. We’re all volunteers, building the social media we want to have. We should be proud of it, no matter what stage it’s at.
Moderation is an area I feel could be stronger. Most threads are pretty good, but some could use a bit more reigning in. Part of the problem I see with that though, is the vocal part of the community is already hating on “heavy handed mods”, and you missed all the trashing of Beehaw for doing what I considered to be appropriate moderation. The Fed is full of a pretty diverse group of people. I talk to people from multiple countries, and the amount of LGBT I’ve gotten to get insight from has been amazing. It’s really helped me grow in my understanding of some things just being around all these people. But we need to ensure everyone is treated equally and respectfully, and there are many that want to bring Reddit behavior over here, and it’s up to the mods and commenters to decide if that’s what we want or not. I don’t want it, but many see no issue. I’m glad when people comment on it, because if people just accept it without speaking up, no one will know.
There is a lot of good here, and even with 50k users, there’s going to be much more mid and crap than gold, but it’s here. Your comments look good, and you seem to stick to things you enjoy and avoid some that drag you down, and it’s important to notice your own behavior if you click stuff that is going to annoy you. I hit delete on a lot of comments when I wade into some of these topics. Some stuff I just don’t want to get involved in, especially as someone that is at least somewhat “known” around here now and is too lazy to make an alt. But I remind myself I’m here to have fun, and if I want news without the potential drama, I’ll leave here and go to AP or whatever. I’d hope posters would make stuff to help you have a good time, but it’s our job to cultivate our own experience ultimately.
I could go on forever talking about this stuff, but I’ll stop for now. Just give it time and explore more, and since you seem to comment, keep doing that. It’s the best thing for this place. Post, comment, give feedback, repeat.
Nice comment
You and the Fedigrow crew helped me get through feeling much like OP a while back. I think that was a really good idea, because it is tough and emotional at times doing what we do. It can be easy to feel alone when you put yourself out there every day and feel like nobody is around or like you’re doing something wrong and people are falling off.
I never set out to be anybody here, but I was done with Reddit, and wanted to keep something that made me smile continue on, so I just sucked it up and did what needed to be done. You guys make it worth it, and as long as the people that do show up are having a good time, I’ll do my part to keep the party going. I get old, pre commercialized web vibes from Lemmy, so I’m gonna stick it out here as long as I can, because this is the kind of thing you don’t just get anywhere anymore.
Thanks for your nuanced comments. I've never moderated any community worth mentioning, so that's quite some additional insight for me. I'm not entirely new to this either, as you might have deducted from my account age. I've moved away from lemmy.ml as my own values don't properly align with theirs. Then I lost an account because the instance I was on died. And recently I switched to PieFed and that's my current account. But all in all I've been here since well before the exodus. Still, I think we have a different perspective. I've attended a bit more to the technical side and using it, while you've been fostering a community, which I didn't do at all.
I'm not sure what to make of your "helped me get through feeling much like OP". I'm not sure if I have to come to terms with how things are. Or if we instead should improve the place to become what I (and other people?) envision it to be. Sure, it's not black and white. And when you're doing critism (as I did), you focus on the negatives. I tried to also mention the other side. But due to the nature of this post, it's not been the focus.
I'll take some more time thinking about what you and all the other people said. I definitely see the potential of this platform. And that's why I'm here. I also see some issues and lack of progress with some things. And that hurts because I like this place. And I kind of refuse to accept it and change my expectations. I don't want it to be perfect. But there's quite some room for improvement (I think) and that made me speak up and post this.
I’ve talked extensively with Blaze and others on the Fedigrow community about pretty much your exact set of bullet points over the past few months and the shine started to wear off Lemmy for a bit. You’re far from alone in feeling how you described in your post, as can be seen in most of the replies here.
I think it’s just taking a step back and being able to appreciate what we do have. We haven’t turned into some complete right/left hellhole, the top posts everyday add up to thousands of comments, we have some quality content providers, and some really fun commenters. I certainly wouldn’t be ashamed to show someone my Lemmy feed.
It’s good that you still have the drive to want to keep improving things around here in the ways you feel comfortable contributing to. Many initial hurdles to getting on Lemmy feel resolved, and so many in apps are equal to the Reddit apps for most use cases. Many initial accounts were probably from people trying to figure things out. I know I had like 5 accounts and only really use 1 now.
I think we’ve just hit a plateau for now. My personal feeling is working on the culture is our best way forward to be different than Reddit and to pick up more people looking to escape the toxicity. The time to set our tolerance levels for certain behaviors is now before we get too big to reign it in. We’re a pretty good group now, and I hope it stays this way or gets a little better like last summer.
I’m glad when I see people speak up like this though. It makes us all reflect on the guys and bad we see here and to think about where we stand ourselves in all of it.
Thanks for the clarification. I think we're on the same page. Especially the following resonates with me:
And I'd agree we need to do that in the context of what we have. Have a step back and think before doing something.
I don't want to see that as an excuse to stay inert, though. But at the same time we may not skip it.
I frequently disagree with the Lemmy developers' take on things. But what I give them high credit for, is not to prefer growth above other things. I wrote this post now, because I think the Reddit exodus is far away now. Things have settled. And the argument "let things settle first" is out of the way now. And as you pointed out we might have reached a steady plateau for now. I think that's a comfortable position from where we can decide what to do.
Feel free to join !fedigrow@lemm.ee / palaver.p3x.de/c/fedigrow@lemm.ee
We regularly discuss the potential improvements you were suggesting in this post
Thanks for inviting me. I'll see if I have something meaningful to contribute. As of now I'm not really involved in growing communities. Well, at least not as a moderator. Maybe I should try it.
It’s also a place for regular posters, or even just people interesting in discussing how to make Lemmy grow, regardless of their posting profile
Really interesting to read about your experiences - thanks for sharing.
No matter what the challenges are currently, this is what makes the Fediverse so brilliant. It flies in the face of the system which is currently ruining almost everything in the world. It’s the online social facet of the all-encompassing reclaiming of power that has to happen for us to be a healthy society on a healthy planet. Lemmy (and the rest of the Fediverse as far as I can tell) basically functions in much the same way as the corporate social media it replaces, so it comes with the same downsides e.g trolling, being addictive, potentially misleading and so on. But the fact that it’s ours to develop/change/adapt, according to our own shared values, makes it fundamentally diiferent. We’re already seeing improvements over what it’s replacing and I’m really excited to see where it leads. In the grand scheme of things the mass use of the internet is still quite new and right here is at the cutting edge of navigating how it should work for us.
Totally agree with you. I feel bad for the young people that didn’t get to experience the Internet before business started to take it seriously. The Fediverse is a nice taste of those days though!
Comments help. I feel like there are a lot of lurkers who’d engage more but a lot of posts never get any sort of comments so people are less likely to read/participate and it makes the place feel more empty than it actually is.
But I think back to posting on web forums and whatnot and it was always a fairly familiar set if folks and that’s not a bad thing so long as people are engaging.
When I first joined Lemmy, I made a really big effort to make my interactions more positive than they were on Reddit. But the problem is that this required effort, and I am afraid over time my resolve might have eroded as the fediverse became just another online space instead of something new and distinct. This is a good reminder, but I wonder if this solution of just trying to be better is really sustainable for me or others? I’ll keep trying but we may need a more concrete change to get where we want to go.
I am curious if it’s time to evolve user engagement beyond up and downvotes. While they were relatively innovative at the time they were introduced, it’s been some years and we’re still here using the same system.
The biggest problem with voting as content curation is that people vote to communicate very different ideas and reactions in different circumstances. So people are sending the same signal to a well-researched, respectful but dissident perspective and to content that is rude, violent, hateful, incorrect etc.
This could be solved by allowing more diverse reactions. People will always want an agree or disagree button, so give them that. But we could also vote on how factual a post is, how polite a post is, how uplifting a post is, etc. We could then build algorithms that prioritize quality content instead of just the current popularity contest. Ideally I’d like multiple transparent algorithms that the user can choose from (or leave a default chosen by their instance) so that users can choose what kind of content is most valuable to them.
One concern is whether this would be too complicated for people to understand or engage with properly. I’d be curious to hear what others think: would this just devolve into upvotes and downvotes again or could this be a better system?
Grandmas nowadays already spam emoji conversations happily. I wouldn’t be any worried that this system looks “complicated”. Did we forget that we were once children who loved to tinker with things, be they the concrete such as the bathroom lock or the abstract such as mom’s rules on if we can keep a pet?
Interesting that you say that, because I was imagining that each type of vote could be represented by a different emoji. I think people would get it if we picked the right ones. But care would be needed to avoid those that could have multiple meanings.
Maybe something like this:
Agree - 👍
Disagree - 👎
Friendly/kind (not sure the best word) - 🫂
Hostile/rude - 🤬
Factual or insightful -💡
Incorrect - ❌
You could add others but those seem like the most common and useful signals I would want to send while voting.
Another idea would be to just open it up and let people use any emoji to react. Some platforms already do this but it can get more confusing in terms of how to interpret and incorporate all of that information into ranking algorithms.
Please no! XD We already have enough emoji as it is, not to mention they are comboable in non-portable ways or they change meaning according to the provider / renderer (GUN becoming WATER GUN is a good example).
But I do think there are valid “reaction sets” that could be interpreted with emoji, and pretty much all of them happen to match the examples you have provided:
Ofc I prefer the reactions are biased towards promoting good interaction; I really don’t see much use for reactions like “hostile / rude”, “faggot”, “kys” or stuff like that. Downvote and, depending on the case, Factually Incorrect and Unfun deal with most of that.
The reason I included the negative reactions is to help distinguish between unpopular but constructive content, which I believe is very valuable in disrupting the echo-chamber effect, and content that is actually just bad, rude, insulting etc. and not contributing to anything.
Often, when there are guidelines on how to vote in platforms or communities they instruct people not to downvote for mere disagreement but people do it anyway. So by separating the disagree downvote from the “this is just objectively bad” vote, I think this can help curate a more positive environment. The goal is that if a comment or post is getting more than a few of those reactions, it should be hidden or maybe even flagged for moderation. But posts that are merely unpopular can stay as long as they are factual and polite.
I don’t think there’s a big problem by using upvotes, downvotes and comments as systems that can show the popularity or controversy of a post.
Imo the bigger problem is in the comments using the same voting system. For starters, everyone the system in a different way. Most notably example is downvoting to disagree.
Secondly, because we are evolutionary wired to try and fit in, you either consciously or subconsciously try to create a comment that will give you the best chances at seeing the numbers go up and receive validation from your peers.
Personally I think the system is fine to keep running under the hood to keep the sorting algorithms available and maybe for moderation purposes, but it would be great if we wouldn’t be able to see them at all as to not be influenced by the connections we make between votes and post content.
Votes are needed to sort the posts and decide which ones are shown at the top of your frontpage. If we add different reaction types, it’s not at all clear how each of them should affect the score. We might come up with some arbitrary numbers, but then the system will get a lot less intuitive and more complex.
Yes, the complexity is certainly one of the downsides to what I’m proposing, which is one reason why I was curious if people thought the complexity would be manageable. Sounds like you think not?
Just to clarify, my thought is to leave this up to users/admins to choose their own algorithm, which would transparently describe how things are weighted. For me, I would like to weigh factual information most highly, then kindness, with raw popularity at the bottom. But others might feel differently, especially if there were even more types of reactions than the three main categories I described.
For new users or those who don’t understand the system, it would be fine to have a default sort, maybe configurable by your instance. It could be as simple as just adding up the positive and negative votes, which would make it identical to the current system, or we could just guess at some different weights. Let me people try them out—not everyone will engage but I hope enough would to help iron out the wrinkles and see what works best.
I could certainly see a feature like this implemented as a plugin. But it would need someone to volunteer for the programming work.
Not a bad idea. I lack the skills myself but if anyone is interested in such a thing, let me know. I’d be happy to support in any way I can.
You're hitting the nail on the head with saying that. I mean the Fediverse is what it is. But I envision it to be something distinct, with added value and not just an average online space. If i didn't care, I could just use Facebook/Reddit/Discord. But I do and I'd like this to be the nice alternative to that. Maybe way smaller and with its own problems, but at least more friendly and enjoyable....
With the emoji reactions: I agree with what nutomic pointed out. It'd also be difficult for the users to understand and use properly. And it's a bit vague how that translates to a simple score for the ranking. I don't think there is any technological issue, though. And we have platforms that use emoji reactions successfully. Notably Github and Discord. It works well for linear conversations.
I don’t have time to respond everything, but just about the growth part: Before the Reddit blackout happened, Lemmy was stuck with around 1000 monthly users for at least a year. It was quite boring compared to now, in 15 or 30 minutes you could read all new posts and comments for a day. It was also easy to recognize the handful of regular posters (cheers). At that time you could easily think the same, that Lemmy will never grow and people will leave. But then the Reddit migration happened and we got completely overwhelmed with a 70x increase in active users.
It seems to me that growth on the internet always happens with short spurts and long quiet periods. There will probably be a time when people come to Lemmy again and we reach hundreds of thousands or millions of active users. Then we will fondly remember the time when it was so small.
poVoq and anon6789 pointed out similar things with the growth happening in waves. I'm not sure if it's healthy, though. It puts additional strain on the platform, devs and mods and everyone. And there are (long) dry spells in between. I'd rather have it grow constantly and slowly. And I believe quite some other Free Software projects do. It's a bit of a different story with social media platforms as we have some unique circumstances like the network effect...
And I think the correct way to do it is to provide something to the people, so they want to join. Idk... be useful to them, a delight to spend time here. And offer something distinct or unique. That'd make the platform attractive all around the year. If we don't have a superior product, we just rely on the other platforms becoming worse and that's where our new users come from. Kind of accepting the role to be (and stay) an inferior Reddit clone. But that's not how I see Lemmy or the Fediverse. I want to attract people who've never used Reddit before. Tech enthusiasts, ... join because it's a great platform to discuss their matters. Linux forums switch to Lemmy because it offers them interoperability. And sure, also Reddit users. But not just because they're pushed out, but because they're positively motivated to join this place.
The software is one thing. I think we've come a long way and both Lemmy and the network feel pretty stable now. It's part of the equation. But I think the thing that really makes a difference is the community and the atmosphere. That's why people would want to join. I've started this discussion now, because i think after the Reddit exodus, things had to settle down for a bit. And as other people pointed out it seems we've reached a plateau now. I think that's a comfortable position to take a step back and think about the way forward. I'd like to take this as an opportunity to not just wait for incoming waves shape us, but now decide where we want to go and actively steer in that direction.
I think Lemmy is attractive enough, but that only matters when people actually want to join something new. Thats currently not the case, so for better or for worse we have to wait for another wave.
I’m not 100% sure, maybe someone can correct me but the fediverse and Threadiverse, unlike Reddit, don’t show up in search results. Nowadays when you Google something you get to see Reddit posts and comments talking about your issue which generates traffic for Reddit and also makes users sign up for an account and contribute.
Sorry, the best I can do is passive aggressiveness and righteous indignation
I don’t think the timing is quite right.
I don’t really have anything meaningful to contribute to the feeds and most of the discussions are a bit pointless. They’re not really changing anything. So, in part those other platforms are fueled by outrage culture. Which I know is bad, so not having it is good, but then we also don’t have the growth from it.
The technology is there and that should help. Apparently people aren’t going to mass migrate from reddit quite yet, even though the push last year probably helped a lot.
It is a network problem. I think the slow growth will / should happen eventually, because the fediverse is an objectively good place to start a community. It’s just not going to be fast and other platforms adding push factors would help obviously. We’ll see where reddit goes with their paid subs.
I don’t think the low effort posts are a problem, there is hardly motivation to interact with an empty page and there is slightly more if there are “boring topics”. At least it’s a place.
I think we have to actively provide something to the people to attract them. Something better than other platforms so they'll want to be here. Not just because the other places become worse and this is the only alternative... But both is part of the equation.
What makes you think that? Because I think it's a good time now, but I'd like to hear different perspectives.
I think the timing isn’t quite right, because the other social media places aren’t figuratively totally on fire.
There isn’t “the great social media collapse of 20XX” happening, because of some security issue or servers being super expensive or ads being actually 99% of the content. The forces that be are managing things well enough that things aren’t collapsing right now.
There is no single actually big celebrity that has picked a fediverse platform as the place to be, follow and discuss news.
And there is no killer feature that you can only get here.
The bonfire is stacked nicely, but there is no spark. For now. That could change at any moment, but it could also take a while.
Fair enough. From the other perspective, I think it's a good thing. When the Reddit API thing happened, people were complaining, too. And focused to hold things together. So there wasn't any time to purpusefully take a step back and guide things. Everyone was busy with admin stuff. That makes me believe when a wave hits us, also isn't a good time to actively shape this place.
I would question your focus on growth. Yes, we all want this place to succeed. But do we really want this unlimited growth like Facebook, Reddit and all those other companies? Small communities are great, they give you a connection between users, they spark friendships and great discourse. Those are great. Yes, they are smaller than those multimillion user subreddits, but we’ve all seen those big subreddits slowly burning down. Dying to bots, to marketing spam, to low effort, popular comments, to reposts, to karma farming, to US politics. We’ve seen subreddit after subreddit dying to moderator burnout - because big subs are really hard to moderate, people will burn out. They are sacrificing their free time to deal with trolls, shills, putins guys and receive no compensation for that.
So maybe … let’s don’t replicate Reddit? Let’s focus on creating small, helpful communities and people will come.
I agree. I must admit my title was a bit clickbaity. Growth - meaning growing in user count - wasn't my intention. I think it'll be a result, sure. But I agree with you (and the Lemmy developers) in that growing (above all) isn't what Lemmy is about. And it's not healty anyways. And I think I didn't include any reasoning or suggestions in my text that'd propose doing it.
What we'd need is the communities be at a healty (and useful) engagement level to allow having a conversation in the first place. Well, and I occasionally keep an eye at such metrics, because for example seeing something stagnate or decline could mean there is an issue, somewhere. I think I mentioned that in the post. But it doesn't necessarily mean we have to push that metric. It's tackling the underlying issue (if there's any) that's the important thing to do (in my opinion).
Points that could improve the 1. point “Technology”: