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:

Technology: Features in the software, design choices that foster good behavior.
Moderation: Give toxic people the boot, or delete content that drags down the place. Following: What remains is nice people and not adverse content.
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?

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[–] cabbage@piefed.social 32 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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. :)

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago

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!

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Jimbo@yiffit.net 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 22 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

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?

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I could certainly see a feature like this implemented as a plugin. But it would need someone to volunteer for the programming work.

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[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

One concern is whether this would be too complicated for people to understand or engage with properly.

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?

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] Donut@leminal.space 4 points 3 weeks ago

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.

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[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Nice comment

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Really interesting to read about your experiences - thanks for sharing.

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.

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.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

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!

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

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:

Never forget that there's a human being on the other side!
Read and think before posting
Share something new
Your posts represent you - Be proud of them
Consider your audience
Be careful with humor, irony, and sarcasm!
Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive.
Take your time when writing a post
Make things easy for the recipient.
Don't waste people's time. You should put in a bit more effort and in return save hundreds of people from spending extra time.
People's culture, language, and humor may have different points of reference from your own
Avoid posting "Me Too" messages, (use an up-vote instead)
Consider using Reference sources (Documentation, Newspapers, Google, ...) before posting a question.
Use spoilers when applicable
Don't get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to incendiary material.
Don't feed trolls!
Deal with the issue, don't attack the person
Utilize the moderators. Flag/Report unacceptable content

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago

Posting links with no attached (body) text

We could easily add a community setting to make the body mandatory. I suggest you open an issue for that.

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This, now we have school holidays and my kids are home 24/7. Takes a lot of time and energy to keep them entertained.

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[–] Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

make it immediately and publicly clear that a negative interaction is unwelcome

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.

switch off visibility for posts/comments that have received a certain proportion of downvotes

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.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Comments with a score less than -10 (I think) just collapse.

Neat idea. Would be cool if the threshold could be configured by the user too (though a recommended default value would be wise).

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[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

I feel like some software/platform features that encourage and foster more community-based and discussion could go a long way.

Some quick thoughts:

user-specific multi-communities
Being able to notifications for certain events or activities (incl special notifications from a community or ongoing discussion in a thread)
Opt-in post visibility, such as excluding a post from the All/local feeds (similar to the private communities feature coming to lemmy)
Perhaps controversial ... but expanding into a quasi-blogging direction where people can have their own personal communities into which only they can post, a little like microblogging, but more like an actual blog given the character limit here. Along with multi-communities, it could be quite a nice complement and allow for communities to evolve around people with interesting ideas/thoughts.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 8 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago

Being able to notifications for certain events or activities (incl special notifications from a community or ongoing discussion in a thread)

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.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

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.

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[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Have you interacted with BeeHaw much? Because they do most the things you ask pretty well.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 3 weeks ago

I like that idea.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] IndianaJones@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 weeks ago

Sorry, the best I can do is passive aggressiveness and righteous indignation

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