Tl;dr: I think we have too much "empty" content and noise here and it drags down the place for 2 years now. Does PieFed include an approach to change the situation?
I'm sorry, this is going to be a bit of a rant. And about PieFed's role in the "Lemmy" community and more broadly, what I think the place should be about. Feel free to skip this, unless you have a good amount of time to waste to read my long post and you want to think about the future of the community here.
To preface this: I'm mainly here on the Threadiverse for the comments. To have meaningful conversations with people. That could be the charm of this place. Yet, that's regularly not what happens here.
The high-frequency posters use Lemmy to dump the news of the day and re-post memes. And that's okay if people want that, I myself try to cut down a bit on news shaped by social media, so again it's mainly the comment thread underneath that I deem useful, not the post itself, since we have the news at a bazillion other places and it's not what sets this place apart. (Plus I think following the outcry of the day is corrosive and usually less informative than it seems, so I went further and actively unsubscribed from many of the big communities here.)
And the now more meaningful (to me) part isn't huge by any means. I comment on things and write answers to questions, some communities work very well and it leads to a conversation or I can help someone with their Linux woes. Half the time at least I type something into the void and it feels like I've wasted my time since I don't get any replies, maybe one or two upvotes at best and not even OP engages. So I wonder why they even made the post. Clearly not because they want to talk about something.
I think the interesting part of the Threadiverse needs to grow so I can have meaningful conversations here. When I look at the user count of Lemmy, I see how it stagnates at about 45k users for 2 years now. Sometimes we get an influx of a few thousand users but we're not attractive to them, so we always lose them again. And the place just stays whatever it is. I think not really attracting people and at the same time losing that many people constantly (who actively volunteered to have a look at the place) tells us something.
I think we could do better than that and set the place apart from countless other platforms in many ways. But that seems to a minority opinion in the bigger Threadiverse. The Lemmy devs regularly say it doesn't need to grow and it'll maybe grow organically (which it doesn't). Most users here tell me we need to dump more posts in an desperate attempt to kickstart engagement. I think we've tried that for 2 years now and it clearly doesn't work. On the contrary, it's kind of empty (or fabricated) content and I'll find out once I try to engage, that these are lower quality, less engagement than some other posts. And it actively drowns the few people talking to each other in added noise. I think the idea to address the issue this way is exactly why Lemmy stagnates and why we always lose all the users that come here, sign up to have a look and then leave again, because this isn't what they've been looking for. (And this is a multi-faceted issue, we have some other drama and issues here as well, but this post is long enough, so I'll skip that here, feel free to add your perspective in the comments.)
Now this week I've complained a bit, since I saw piefed.social communities with really high-quality conversation. And then the same people come, determine we need more content, and they dump re-posts of the lemmy.ml equivalent over their heads. And then I've taken tens of minutes out of my day to reply to posts elsewhere (not a piefed community) and give a nuanced perspective, only to find out it's unmarked Reddit re-posts, and I've basically wasted my time. It wasn't a genuine question in need for my answer, I was betrayed, tricked into increasing the number of comments underneath something that wasn't even genuine. When I could have spent that time interacting with high-quality conversations instead, which definitely exist as well. It's just that those people drain that. And I can't even tell which is which.
So it actively takes away from quality content. And I end up with a feeling like with the Reddit content bots, fabricating engagement. Which I dislike and specifically avoid. And it makes the entire place feel kind of empty to me, despite the many posts we have each day.
I think first of all people really need to stop dumping posts in an ill-conveived attempt to help. It's a misconception. We need more comments here, not posts. Yet they do the opposite and their user profiles rarely have comments, just hundreds of posts. If you want to grow and foster the place, add comments.
PieFed
That's my perspective, feel free to tell me how it feels to you. I'm definitely not against posts, just against fabricating them, and focusing on an unfit approach instead of doing the right thing.
Now my question: Does PieFed want to address that issue (if it really is an issue to more people than just me)? Is PieFed just a piece of technology, connecting me to the same community, just with an arguably better approach? Or does it go further? Push towards a certain atmosphere, change the community and behaviour? Do we do higher quality communities on piefed.social or are they basically the same thing as the ones before, just on a different domain? Do we go as far as to kick the re-posters so at least the posts aren't just exactly the same?
That'd be mainly social engineering. And I'd really welcome if we had ideals and a clear vision of where to go. We kind of have that. In contrast to some other Fediverse software where I can't see a clear vision.
And then we have technology. We could devise tools to address it. And PieFed already is about providing better tools to address some things. We have an ambivalent view of concepts like Karma. And algorithms to steer attention. I could try to address this with software. Calculate scores and devalue everyone who dumps posts and doesn't contribute to the conversation. That's likely going to give some advantage to conversation itself and foster genuine engagement. Do we want to do that?
And as a bonus question: What's with the entire voting system? Seems I deem different things interesting than what's popular. And that's all the scores underneath posts and comments tell us. So it's of little use to me. A post with 5 upvotes could be as interesting as one with 250 of them, and that happens each day to me. Once I switch the sorting method from "new" to something else, what it does is make lots of interesting content disappear from my feeds.
References:
- Are some questions here just to simulate activity?
- Please be Advised for Help Farmers
- Content jacking/reposting is a problem on Lemmy. and this comment highlighting how what makes other places "great is the community and not the posts."
- Statistics for Lemmy on the Fediverse Observer
- PieFed features for growing healthy communities and PieFed Features
- Moderation & the design of social platforms
I've "flaired" this "Feature request". Mind this is an opinion piece containing my perspective (and preaching). I'd like to hear your's and request the name PieFed to encompass a clear vision, to be not just technology but a broader approach to shape the nature of the society we want to create. And put in lots of effort to actively lead us towards accomplishing more than we do today.
And I definitely need some good ideas and tools to turn my feeds into something that caters to my own needs and wants. If there's some overlap with other people, we could talk about some specifics.
I do agree with you. But to be fair, I think amongst the flood of the posts you described, there are indeed people who are genuinely posting with the genuine intent of starting meaningful exchanges. And I would say the most easy to spot, are the ones like yours. They tend to have long written opinions, instead of copy pasted text from articles or links or images with a short caption to them. But once again, to be fair, I think some of these are still seeking to start meaningful discussions as well.
What you seek, can't be triggered, it has to happen naturally. One can't artificially generate the genuine. It's quite paradoxical. Even though I completely understand one craving it in its absence.
But I don't want piefed to start having floods of rage bait like any other platform outthere. There's no algorithm to reward it, not that has stopped some from dumping it on Lemmy.
I'm a newcomer on Piefed. I came like many others did recently, from the shutdown of Lemm.ee, and there is a reason why a lot of us jumped ship to piefed, and it has to do with how peaceful it is here. But to some that might translate as boring or empty. Not to me. I see the same complaints towards pixelfed as a platform for a long time now. I quite like it there. I think people who didn't engage with early Internet or have been stuck in algorithmic driven platforms, don't know how to seek their own engagement. One has to seek it and chase it to find it.
I think the people who come to the fediverse, are either a bit older like myself, who seek to see the Internet back on track to its true potential of complete decentralisation, or they're refugees seeking asylum from the derangement that algorithmic driven platforms have created. But a new wave has started to arrive, this year, and it's the people who want to assemble the Leftist Resistance. They generally come from the Boycott US, BuyEuropean, BuyCanadian communities on reddit. I don't have a reddit account anymore. But I still go there from time to time to snoop through the derangement. Anyway, while I support these movements I mentioned, I already see bad news on the horizon. Because we're gonna start seeing more and more of the deranged alt right trolling. And we know how that goes. Lemmy already has the Tankies vs everyone else to contend with. But so far I would say the mods of the larger instances both on Lemmy and here on Piefed have done a good job at the triage level. There's still some reddit level of toxicity that slips through though. But in general I think the control given to both mods and users and the absence of an algorithm to drive it will always keep it somewhat sanitized. Unfortunately, it might also make it harder for you to find what you're looking for.
But not impossible at all. Case in point being your post and the replies that you already got.
The phenomena is called "Eternal September": people enjoy a deeper level of discourse, then a flood of newcomers arrives that disrupts the old patterns, leaving people not so much merely mourning the presence of the new so much as the loss of the old, which gets lost / flooded / drowned out amidst all of the new noise.
And like, the kids really do need a place to play? I for one find it enjoyable to play along with them too - in spaces such as !tenforward@lemmy.world that are designed specifically for such a purpose. So long as communities conducive to more thoughtful discussions exist alongside of that. Each community has its own purpose, and it's cool that they can co-exist (relatively peacefully).
Some of all this relates to technology implementation - for instance if I did not tag @hendrik@palaver.p3x.de , then would OP ever see my reply here, to you, sanity_is_maddening@piefed.social ? (Sadly the answer is not merely yes or no, but rather depends on the method of access: based on usage patterns I would wager that some apps notify someone of such a matter, while the standard webbrowser interface that I use does not, and other apps even go so far as to offer to hide posts that someone has interacted with, meaning like voted or commented on, which further facilitates the "consumption culture" of viewing something at most once and moving on to new posts, rather than revisit a topic that now has more comments that have been added since your last visit)
Most of it relates to a (lack of) willingness to put forth actual true "effort": someone would need to create a community, then do all the work of moderating it, plus often suffer through being the sole poster for a (potentially) VERY long amount of time. It is not easy to blaze new trails, and it is all too comforting a thought that perhaps someone else will do all of that drudge work for us, leaving us free to do only the bare minimum of whatever we actually enjoy? And I perhaps am making this point too strongly: life really does get in the way of such things, especially if someone has family (esp. kids), issues with their job, lives in America or otherwise may suffer from the impending WWIII, and so on. So there are reasons for such, yet the principle is still the same: things do not exist until and unless we create them.
So e.g. I helped create !AskUSA@discuss.online , which ngl I am avoiding posting to right now since it will inevitably turn political, as the dissolution of America happens live in front of all of our eyes (plus I've been worried about my personal job and life as well as stressed due to same). I see many others putting forth much better efforts though, e.g. Lexam@lemmy.world posts nearly daily in !Autism@lemmy.world and those sometimes generate thoughtful discussions. Granted, it's for a specific, you might say "niche" topic, just like AskUSA, but isn't that the point - not merely to "discourse" about nothing at all in particular (hehe, Seinfeld?) but rather to have something specific to talk about?
So my advice is to worry far less about what other people may or may not do, and take matters into your own hands: create a community about a topic that you are passionate about, then promote it (places such as !newcommunities@lemmy.world and !fedigrow@lemmy.zip can help a lot), or perhaps take over a dead community that the original creator has abandoned - or even just help by making posts of your own, to existing communities. If you find the right "match" of people looking for the same thing, then it will happen.
You cannot force interactions though, you can only help create a place wherein such can occur, i.e. that people feel welcomed to do so within. So plant a seed, water it, shelter it, protect it from pests, and it will grow! There are a lot of more niche communities though, and you may simply not have delved deep enough to find one to suit your interests? e.g. there is !philosophy@lemmy.world, !poetry@lemmy.world, !deepthoughts@lemmy.world (only a singular post there - that one could seriously use some love, yet despite that already has 83 subscribers just waiting, patiently or otherwise, for a second one if you want to contribute?).
I am not advocating here for a mere "be positive" type of attitude - rather I am saying that fortune favors the prepared, and you can get what you want... but it will take effort on your part, and if you truly want something then you can make it happen. I hope these links help with your search.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply and all the tags as well.
I do think your comment was far more for the OP than myself as I agree 100% with you and was already arguing somewhat in alignment with what you wrote.
As to the "Eternal September"... it's inevitable. I just came off of Lemm.ee after all. Everything exists within cycles. And I've gone through quite a few, online and in the real world, as I've worked with cultural associations to create events and formimg communities. And the same happens. It is what it is. And I don't feel resentful anymore for the disruption, specially towards the young or the newcomers to a platform or an event or space. If I ever do, is to the people who allow that to ruin what is there that we were enjoying all along. But I can't even say that I haven't been that person either. Because I have. Now I just know that when that is happening inside me is time to move on.
But I completely agree with you that both can co-exist and have their moment or even exist separately alongside one another. There's a place and a time for everything afer all. It's all about one seeking moments and not forcing anything onto anyone, and that includes oneself as well.
And In the case of most of the fediverse I do believe that is relatively easy to manage the distance between what one wants to find and what ones to avoid with the tools that we are given. At least for me it is. And the absence of an algorithm to raise engagement is the only way I accept to join any platform now. I want to see what I choose to see. The user has to be driving the experience.
Although, even with all these tools and the absence of an algorithm, anything regarding the U.S. these days definitely isn't so easy though. Not even for me as an European in Europe.
And I thank you for having the courage to step forward and moderate communities in the first place. I never have. It's one of the most delicate and difficult things to do in the digital world. Even the coders would say so. I've heard them say so. That it is easier to write code and build an app than it is to moderate the user base. I'm not a coder so I can't make that claim. But I've heard it first hand.
And by the way, stay safe over there in the U.S. What is happening there is terrifying to witness from here. I've seen this before in my lifetime, but never seen a descent as fast. It's spiraling at a speed that I've never wittnessed. In the big picture it has been happening for a very long time, but anyone who doesn't thing that what is happening is at the fastest rate now, it's either not paying attention or in denial.
So, stay safe.
Yes, after I tagged their name I started blending the two and then later as you said went more over to that side of things - I am glad that it sounds like it did not totally detract from the totality of what was said even though it would have been better if I had switched over to a desktop computer to type it in rather than remain on mobile (and even on desktop the little window to type replies into is tiny - I would rather see more of what I am writing in one glance, but meh, it is what it is, and social media does not lend itself to such long-form replies, though at least the software allows for it:-).
And thank you for your insight. I hadn't considered the difficulty of moderating but... yeah, for a larger community it can indeed be like herding cats, or wrangling toddlers, with 100 different things going on all at once and you are expected to mediate differences between all of them. So perhaps I should tone down my language, with that in mind. Although starting a community is a lot easier - especially one with like one post per month, or week, or even day - in one sense, even if a bit harder in others because instead of merely keeping an existing ball rolling (inertia, with established posters contributing content so you do have to mediate between them but not necessarily generate it yourself), you have to start it. Each type has its own challenges. Though the converse is true: if nobody does it then it simply will not get done.
As far as the USA... yeah, sigh. WWIII may impact literally everyone though - and Russia will most definitely feel emboldened, possibly with the USA sending weapons towards defending it as opposed to the other way around. It was really a brilliant tactical maneuver, fully on par with Brexit and likely to far greater ultimate effect. There is no greater power than to convert a former foe into an ally, thereby not only denying the other side but enhancing your own as well. I hope that other nations learn from this: it can happen to anybody - those who refuse to learn from history will end up having to repeat it (https://youtu.be/uqsBx58GxYY ). I will add though that it is not happening nearly as quickly as it may seem: the structural cracks have been in place for many decades now (just merely a few), e.g. what was allowed to be called "news" was broadened to become so wide that it lead us to today, whereupon it wraps back around to form a circle where now the dissenting sources are silenced (but on the OTHER side of the divide!). Without a check in place for truth - how then are people supposed to know what even is "true" anymore? And by people I mean voters. Democracy requires EFFORT, which it seems that most Western nations are unwilling to put forth. (And kingdoms are vulnerable to different avenues of... let's just call it "persuasion", on behalf of those who may want to see the fall of their contemporaries, and who have access to tools to make it happen.)