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Lemmy engage with you in meaningful conversation (palaver.p3x.de)
submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) by hendrik@palaver.p3x.de to c/piefed_meta@piefed.social
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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:

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.

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[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 3 points 12 hours ago

jlai.lu was formed of a group of exile from /r/france during the API drama. We basically tend to recreate what we like on /r/france and that we think is going to be threatened at one point. We have interesting discussion with 200-500 active users. There are some reports from reddit, there is original content, discussion happening on both, far less comments than on /r/france but it still does feel like a small community.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

There are so many different factors that go into the size and vibe of a community. Some of those we can influence by making certain software features but there are so many things that are up to admin, mods, and everyone else. Teasing out all those things and deciding what to do about each would be a monumental task and I'm not equipped to tackle that. So what follows is just a few scattered thoughts about my piece of the elephant

One of the factors, for sure, is a lack of posts. Not a lack of comments, a lack of posts. I'm glad we don't have that problem. Comments can't exist in isolation, they ride on the back of posts. Posts come first and there's just no way around that without becoming Mastodon. The high-volume posters don't always hit the mark but overall I think their contribution is positive.

We have a mechanism for making low quality posts go away, and that's downvotes. There is a taboo against using them but IMO people need to be more liberal with dishing those out. Think of a downvote on something as a weak upvote on everything else. Downvoting is just curation, it is not a moral condemnation.

It would be interesting to see an instance that banned the flooders and then found out if that is an attractive environment to others. But that can't be a big instance - if you think about it systematically, there needs to be a relatively free-for-all 'marketplace' or clearing-house for all kinds of content by all kinds of people, which more specialised instances can provide a filtered lens of. We can't have a consistently high standard everywhere all the time because it'll choke the life out of the ecosystem.

Many communities have a 'must link to a recent news article' rule which I feel does limit the scope of discussion quite a bit. I intentionally did NOT have that rule in !technology@piefed.social for that reason.

On a hopeful note - it is so wonderful that we are in a position to try to build the kind of communities we want, with human values underpinning them rather than commercial interests. It does mean a certain amount of groping our way forwards in the dark because there are less examples to copy but I'm glad to be here with you all on this journey.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

I think singular instances are a bit limited in what they can do. They're always embedded in the network and it often makes sense to make an collective effort towards things. I mean they could cut down on the federated aspect and start their own thing (or start the Nth technology community with a slightly different spin) but that's not my objective here. And not what the Fediverse is about.

I think they (the individual instances) should provide the filter lens. But that somehow has to apply to the flood of content that comes in from other parts of the federated network. They want that content coming in and the shared userbase from other instances. But I'd argue there is no working filter. Other than the vote score (which measures overall popularity), we don't have any filter that measures by quality, or how well aligned something is with what an instance wants to be.

Btw, do you think PieFed as a project includes questions like these and a vision towards atmosphere and quality? Or is it more agnostic? Feel free not to answer the question. But I really wonder if I should try to implement some algorithms to detect "quality" or what I would like to skip and somehow enable users (and instances) to filter more. But that might be out of scope. (Or problematic for other reasons.)

[–] rimu@piefed.social 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

a vision towards atmosphere and quality

Yes, it does, that's why I've put the emphasis I have on blocking and moderation features. Some of my ideas, like filtering out comments that just say "This", later proved to be kinda oppressive in some people's eyes so there's a difficult balancing act there when we start to do social engineering. As if the technical engineering wasn't hard enough already.

It might be interesting to tweak the 'Hot' algo to boost posts where the OP is involved in the discussion on the post...

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

It might be interesting to tweak the 'Hot' algo to boost posts where the OP was involved in the discussion on the post...

It's giving to ne an arms race, OPs could just start automatically posting in their posts to bypass that

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

We could address that by counting replies to other people's replies only, and not if they're downvoted.

I'll add it to my list of things to think about, there have been multiple good ideas in this discussion.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

It would still be trivial to code a bot that would answer a variant of "thank you for your comment" to every comment posted

Also not every comment requires an answer. Most of the time when I get a comment on ! lego@piefed.social , it's usually something along the lines of "nice idea!" or "well done!", there really isn't much to answer to that

Having metrics tracking comments can be counterproductive to having meaningful conversations

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I think what they're supposed to do it upvote the comments. At least that's what I often do (unless I forget) when I'm the OP to show people their comment is appreciated and someone read it. Writing just "thanks", or "100% that" or other two word replies tends to be viewed as Reddit behaviour here.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 1 points 12 hours ago

Upvoting the comments would be even easier.

That's probably the limit of trying to identify "good OP behaviour" using rules and metrics. Those are going to be public due to the open source nature of the platform, or reverse engineered fast enough by people interested in bypassing the controls

[–] sanity_is_maddening@piefed.social 7 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 5 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] sanity_is_maddening@piefed.social 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

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.)

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Sure, I would have paid attention to your comment even if you hadn't tagged me.

You're correct. Entire social media and modern platforms feel a bit like Eternal September to me. It's a bit different in some niches, especially if it requires background knowledge and/or a good amount of dedication. Since those topics aren't open to the broad public.

I'm not sure what to make of this and I have to think about it. I wasn't really looking for communities to subscribe to. But we really have nice ones. Maybe I should unsubscribe from a bunch of stuff (more) so they fill more space in my feed.

Though I might be a better fit to mess a bit with the software and maybe tweak some of the tools, and less so to moderate communities. I do that but on a small scale and balance my time with other activities.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 4 points 13 hours ago

Yes that is a good thought as well: someone has to put forth that effort, but it does not have to be you... or if it is, it could be like an implementation of a different voting scheme rather than community moderation.

PieFed has a feature that will trigger a notification event upon every new post within a community. I use it sparingly, but it is helpful to aid lifting posts from those pre-defined (by me) sources above the general noise.

The PieFed "feeds" though are much more helpful in allowing the normal sort options to sift through the posts that you want at any given time - e.g. you could unsubscribe from all politics communities yet still see politics anytime you want by going to that specific Feed.

A place for everything and everything in its place: it is not the presence of poor-quality content that is so bad but rather the need to label or otherwise distinguish what constitutes "poor-quality" (in some context) from high-quality, and the Feeds help a great deal with that.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks for the very nuanced view. We agree 95% here, with the 5% difference that I think change won't happen naturally. Odds are a bit against us these days with online discussions. Yet demand for this might be higher than ever. And I've waited for about one and a half years now and Lemmy didn't ever change substancially. So I'd speculate it needs a push or it won't happen.

My post is a bit negative, due to it's nature. Some day I have to learn how to say the same thing in a more balanced way. But I definitely see the positive posts. The ones with nested comment trees underneath and great perspectives and/or things to learn for me. I mainly wish they were the norm or I had some tool to dig them out of the haystack.

[–] sanity_is_maddening@piefed.social 3 points 12 hours ago

I'm afraid you won't find it to be the norm anywhere, unfortunately. Online or offline.

I take what I can find.

But I do understand your frustration. Oh, how I do...

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

We banned all image-only posts on /r/StarTrek on Reddit a long time ago, not because we didn't like memes or because they can't spur good discussion, but because any place that allows memes and images to be posted tends to become overrun with them and it's hard for more intentional human-human discussion to stand out.

That decision pissed a lot of people off, but we mods felt bad for all the people earnestly engaging with thoughtful high-effort content only to be ignored because their posts were never seen. I think on the Fediverse we have an opportunity to start fresh and focus on human-human. There's no karma here anyway!

EDIT: more to your point I would like to see more "slow" instances pop up but I think that's going to take some time.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

PieFed has a "Hide all the memes" checkbox. It's pretty great.

Go to https://piefed.social/user/settings/filters and tick the "Hide posts in low quality communities" checkbox then browse https://piefed.social/home/hot/all

Game changer.

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 2 points 13 hours ago

Oh wow, now that's very interesting.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

How did it work out for r/StarTrek after things settled down? I guess in a positive way? And are there any side-effects which are nice to know if we were to take inspiration from that?

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I think it was extremely positive though obviously the people who were excluded by the decision might say otherwise. That said, I think it's preferable for online communities to have a clear picture of what they're supposed to be (as opposed to just chasing popularity), with a mission statement (public or not) and for mods/admins to have the strength to enforce boundaries. Trying to please everyone leads to banality, and tolerating too much bad behavior pushes out the people who give a shit.

I liked to use the metaphor that internet mods are best when they behave as "party hosts": provide the space, make sure everyone is having a good time, kick out anyone who's bringing down the vibe, but other than that let people be messy and do their messy human things.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Well said, thanks. I'm going to steal your metaphor next time I need it. If I combine a clear vision and mission statement with being a party host, that ends me up with a theme party. 😎

[–] mintiefresh@piefed.ca 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Comments is what used to make Reddit so great. And that's definitely lacking a bit over here. I'm trying to comment more as opposed to lurking these days.

I definitely do appreciate all the work people are putting in creating posts over here. Even if sometimes it's a bit much. And now I'm trying to engage with them more.

One step at a time I guess.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 4 points 19 hours ago

Feel free to join !fedigrow@lemmy.zip to see the weekly thread with posters trying to keep communities active

[–] Tiger@sh.itjust.works 9 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Just commenting to say I empathize with your passion for the place and also want to see it survive and thrive. Sorry if my comment lacks depth, but for me my Lemmy use is the last Internet activity of the day and I’m tired.

For me I like seeing the crap secondhand memes and stuff. I’m no haughty connoisseur of the genre and it’s funny enough.

I’d also like deeper conversations about how to save the world, but like many others is something more than nothing to just hear others bitching into the void exasperated like me to help know I’m not crazy.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I appreciate your perspective and sleep well if this comment has also been your last internet activity of the day. I think most there is to it is: We need to find a way that simultaneously addresses what you get out of it, and what I want. Maybe there is. I watch Youtube videos before I go to sleep and that's my guilty pleasure, so I guess it's a bit different for us.

[–] Tiger@sh.itjust.works 7 points 22 hours ago

Ha, I watch YouTube videos in the day while working, so the yin and yang opposite from you. I’ll give you one idea: seek to improve Lemmy’s traction in search engines when people are looking for real world human info on topics. Many people come across Reddit via info in search, I imagine. If very good and useful posts in Lemmy could do the same it might help.

Could also try and be mindful about which kinds of posts are the most useful and likely to have good medium term relevance and try to cultivate them. Ones that come to mind for me are ones where people ask about and share their favorite but maybe not well known open source or niche software, or life hacks and similar. These kinds of posts can generate a lot of gem info and discussion.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 7 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (15 children)

Flooding a community with news/journalistic/article type content, if you're willing to keep doing it genuinely does work (topic of the community depending). If you run a community where there is a constant stream of news and articles coming out that can be posted to it, people will naturally click in and comment. Some will subscribe, increasing the glass ceiling each day.

The worst thing you can do is have periods of non-activity because you can't think of anything original to post, and no-one else is going to do it because the community has dropped off all trending metrics. Fake it until you make it.

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[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 6 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

I already made my point in that other thread last week (https://piefed.social/post/985547/comment/6823954), so I'll probably copy paste the more interesting points

As a starter, however

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.)

Not all. @ladybutterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone , @roserose56@lemmy.ca for football posts, @TheImpressiveX@piefed.social for movie posts, all care about their interest fields.

Probably the common point is that none of those people are active on the news/memes sites of the platform.

Shouting into the void

(for context, this was about the !ask@piefed.social community)

We can't expect a single poster (LadyButterFly) to keep this community active by herself. I understand that cm0002 posts aren't ideal, but at the same time they allow to relieve a bit of the pressure that a single poster has.

I am the only poster on !lego@piefed.social . It makes me question regularly if it's still worth it to post there, as it seems I'm the only person on the whole platform bothered enough to post about that topic. "Shouting in the void" is a regular issue for single poster on a community (https://lemmy.zip/post/14347368 ), and I would prefer to avoid that to LadyButterFly.

I am personally against removing "repost questions" until we found another regular poster. I asked whether you could be that regular poster, you said you don't have the time, which is completely fine, but that also shows that while everyone wishes for only genuine and well thought questions, there aren't that many people ready to put the effort every day to make the community active and grow. Which leads us to the next point.

Grow is happening, maybe just not as fast as we would like

To have genuine conversations on a certain topic, there need to be at least a minimum userbase interested in that topic.
With 45k MAU, we can talk about generic topics. The more userbase we get, the more niche topics we can have.

When I talk about Lemmy on Reddit to try to get those additional users we need, the first issues they have with the platform is the political stances of the devs, and the fact that a lot of communities are still hosted on the hosted instance (you've read cm0002 comment, so you're aware).

Lemmy has a bad reputation due to this, and while this will remain true, this will prevent us from getting more people. That's also why Piefed raises a lot of hopes.

Interestingly enough, if you look a bit back there was actually an influx, from 45k to 55k, from March to April, mostly when people were looking for non-US alternatives

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=120

Since then, we've been back to the 45k numbers. If we ask people why they left the platform (I've did it a few people who were announcing they were leaving), the main issue they have is not even the lack or saturation of content, but the duplication. With many communities being the same, but on different servers, it's difficult for a new comer to know where to find posts and content to read, without even talking about replying.

On the other hand, Db0 had a large influx of users (625) following a post on Reddit about their instance: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37167077

!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com is mostly reposts with news about piracy, not a lot of OC content, but it being out of Reddit is enough for people to use it.

So yes, we are experiencing growth, but yes, it's limited, because we are fighting the network effect against Reddit, and also because text-based forums aren't that popular anymore

The text-based forum sphere isn't that large anymore

Most people nowadays are used to consume short videos for entertainment. Reading comments on a forum isn't that common, especially among the younger generations.

Reddit numbers are always overestimated, but even they suffer from the same issue.

Discuit has a nicer atmosphere, but it only has 174 weekly commenters: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/FHtQTJYj

https://tildes.net/ is a very slow pace platform, a few posts on the front page have less than 10 comments. There might not be that many users interested in this type of format.

Would a !curatedtechnology community help?

As it seems you were having issues with "commenting into the void" with tech articles, you can try to post on !fedigrow@lemmy.zip to see if other people would like to start a "curated technology" community with you, and see if there is interest?

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Sorry, I intentionally left most of that specific discussion out to not bias the replies here and get a fresh perspective from whatever other (random) users are faced with when they don't think about it like me (or you) and are faced with their view on Lemmy, whatever that is, less so with my specific issues.

You made good points there and I'm aware of them. Thanks.

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[–] INeedMana@piefed.zip 7 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

I'm from the other side. I like the fact that I can use Fediverse as one big river of news from multiple sources. PieFed's feeds are a great feature for those. While I value comments, I use them on a rather shallow level. To me, those are rather opinion points, same as the articles. Personally I don't believe a discussion can change someone's POV. It's rather exposition to other POVs that does the job in the long term. We can agree to disagree on that point. And in my opinion, exchanges on the internet rarely are a real discussion in the first place. To me, discussion is when both sides come to the table with "my mind can be changed" attitude.

I'm not against having "discussion only" spaces on Fediverse. I just want to signal that there are here those for whom a community with a lot of posts and minimal comment exchange is not a failure

As to voting, IMO those are exactly what those are - meaningless internet points. In my headcanon a post receives vote up if it matches what particular community is about. If we didn't have them, there would soon be request to have them. Once we have them, there's no way to globally enforce their meaning

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 7 points 21 hours ago (9 children)

Thanks! I think we might be very different. Your perspective is very valid, it just doesn't do anything for me. I'm somehow (some of the time, not always) exempt from this. I don't go to the internet to convince other people or tell them about my opinion. I want to receive something. Idk learn something, broaden my perspective or just talk. What you said: "It's rather exposition to other POVs". But please spare me the river of news. I want to see some nice electronics projects, whatever someone who lives in LA thinks minus(!) the common politics spin on it. Or have them talk about their hobbies and discover a great recipe or whatever hardware to buy for my smarthome that's recommended by word of mouth.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 6 points 21 hours ago

As you pointed out, there are other sources for the actual (raw) "news", so the comments are what makes the content in the Threadiverse "distinctive".

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[–] roserose56@lemmy.ca 4 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I agree with what blaze said.
also I want to say that we have too much political communities, which leads to a mass spam and nothing more. Users here do nothing but post and comment politics, and if you say something they get angry.
Users are saying"I won't post in this community, because in this instance and they are input something political, and they ban people. If we for once, leave politics outside of niche and hobbies communities, this place would be way way better.

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

More instances need to be aggressive with bans, IMO. There's no reason the average user should put up with someone being deliberately obtuse, especially when it comes to politics.

If we for once, leave politics outside of niche and hobbies communities, this place would be way way better.

I think rather than asking users to behave a certain way (impossible) or asking mods to work with increasingly long meandering rulesets, we just accept than any topic can be political and it's in how users discuss it that makes a place tolerable. And people have different ways they like to debate. Some people do really enjoy the bickering and fighting.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

I advocate for good moderation as well. If users of an instance want to have a civilized discussion, or leisure time after a long and hard day, or whatever, it's warranted to be aggressive with bans and keep the argumentative people, trolls etc out. They can gather at a different place.

If we get the technology and society here right, we might be able to do both at the same time. (Or at least that's what I like to believe.)

And yeah, it's not super healthy, but I can empathize with the "enjoy the bickering and fighting". I can understand how even a tame person sometimes feels angry and agitated. And then I go online and randomly yell at people for a while to vent. It mainly needs to happen consensually, or it's a shit thing to do. And then we have some people who always talk like that and they are a problem. At least for other (regular) people.

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 2 points 13 hours ago

Yes very well said all around and I agree, especially about consent. I also have to assume that a statistically significant portion of Lemmy users have been banned by multiple reddit communities.

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