Since my favorite reddit app came to Lemmy I’m really keen on getting more people into the fediverse to pump up the volume of content around here. Are there any initiatives that we can assist to get folks onboard?
I had my wife join, and she likes it, but laments the slow pace of new material in the communities.
But please pump up good content. not just low effort re-posts.
Post things relevant to a hobby or interest that isn’t Lemmy itself or something closely related.
- Publish useful content on lemmy. Link to that content on other social media sites
- Anytime you see a negative article about reddit particularly on reddit, remind users this will continue to get worse, link them to lemmy and explain what it is/how to join.
- Donate to lemmy development to improve UX.
-
We need to cut back the bot traffic a touch. All new people coming and see are a million posts with no participation. It’s good to have the content but we’re kind of lacking in curation and a lot of what’s coming over is not stuff we’re interested in commenting on. As long as we just keep carbon copying Reddit and Twitter and the Verge and hundreds of other places, we’re going to have a lot of empty post sitting around.
-
Actual discourse and discussion needs to happen. We’re fairly low on trolls currently, which is a fantastic thing. But we also don’t have a lot of spicy takes either.
-
More moderation, administration tools, better filters, easier ways to shut out bad actors. Right now the best we can do is defederate when somebody can’t manage their clientele. And we’re still way too bot-able.
-
More migration tools something I can to what mastodon does if you need to move instances.
I just block the bots, I want to see what real people care enough to post.
That’s what I’m doing too. But trying to bring people in and saying oh just block all the bots as the default is not optimal.
Welcome to the new web. Nothing is optimal, it’s a good intro for people. The setting is there and that’s what matters.
You can also turn off the Lemmy option to see bot posts, and then just manage bot-like humans.
That’s what I meant, but appreciate the clarification.
#1: Absolutely.
#2: I’ve seen some spicy takes, at least in the politics communities. Others, people are generally just more chill. I consider that a feature.
#3: The upcoming 0.19.0 will let users block instances as well as users/communities. Filters are unfortunately a client-specific feature right now, but fortunately there are a lot of clients to choose from now.
#4: 0.19.0 has this. Users can export their profile settings data (including subscriptions and blocklists) and import those elsewhere.
The upcoming 0.19.0 will let users block instances as well as users/communities
Oh hell yeah! Finally!
Where do you see bot traffic? From my observations, Lemmy has the opposite problem than what you describe in your point 1: all threads I see do get plenty of comments (not as many as reddit, but still plenty), but we get relatively few new threads. Or does that only happen in specific communities? I don’t look at communities I’m not subscribed to, maybe that is why.
‘New’ is a bot orgy, which is a real shame because quality posts get lost in it and it’s harder for them to gain visibility and traction in the wider instance. If you stick to subscribed communities you won’t notice, but for new users who haven’t curated their communities yet (or people like me who just like discovering stuff I wouldn’t think to seek out specifically), browsing the general aggregate can be a great way to discover content and communities to follow.
Or it would be, if it wasn’t bot bot bot bot bot bot thread, bot bot bot bot bot bot thread, bot bot thread, bot bot thread, bot bot bot bot bot bot bot bot bot bot bot bot bot, wait a minute, thread!
Go hit up lemmyworld, hit all hit new.
Every sport, every team, every game as a post. Every verge article ends up on every copy of technology on every service.
wow ok I hadn’t realised. I only ever see the lemmit.online bot posts which kinda make me rage.
If there’s multiple bots posting this spam then it’s not really a single-bot problem.
-
Growing naturally is the best way. No advertising is necessary, not if you like it how it is.
When a platform grows too fast it loses it’s identity. If I had to bet I’d guess the recent migration has already stretched what identity Lemmy had before.
I’m still confused how it works. I subscribe to a channel, but all it is is updates about the channel, no content. Looks like I need to go to their website to see the content (which doesn’t seem right)
Have you taken a look at your instance’s FAQ here? Other than that, there are numerous guides to getting set up with Lemmy and how to subscribe to communities on other instances. It’s slightly different than Reddit, but apart from some technical details, everything works like Reddit once you’re set up.
Because of the decentralized structure, there can be communities on the same topic on different instances (with different subscribers, moderation guidelines, etc.). Use the search to find communities you’re interested in and post questions e.g. on the FAQ thread of your instance. Or right here of course.
This sounds like you have subscribed to a community where a bot just reposts Reddit content. Does that sound right? All the posts are by a bot that take you to Reddit?
Post noodz
We’ve got those condensed over at lemmynsfw.com, and I believe they are actively looking for more mods
I’m not sure if that would be fun or not, I’d assume not because people would probably try to post some disturbing stuff
Copying this from another post of mine:
The thing that kind of sucks about lemmy is there isn’t really any protection against fascists on the site. One of the reasons it took me so long to get off reddit is because there you have access to tools that let you see if someone you’re interacting with is an overt and open fascist, but nothing like that really exists here. In fact, it’s even worse here because the fascists will aggressively downvote to the point where anything directly calling out white supremacy gets absolutely slammed. Now you have a bunch of reddit frogs coming over here and the only real hint that they’re going to cause trouble is if their username ends in @lemmy.world or @feddit.de
The domain block is a bare minimum, I never want the displeasure of having to deal with a feddit,de poster ever again. Another thing they need to do is make votes public so I can clean house of people upvoting blatantly abusive comments or partaking in downvote harassment. Third they need to add tagging and user-level vote counts so you can identify known trolls without needing to commit their usernames to memory. Those three changes would go a long way in fixing a lot of the biggest problems with lemmy as a whole.
EDIT: And blocking a user shouldn’t delete them completely from your client but rather hide them. That way you can follow their comment streams looking for people supporting them and wipe them out in the process. The current system gives every comment below the original carte blanche to say whatever and there’s fuck all you can do about it because as far as you know, they don’t even exist.
I moved to Beehaw; you don’t get to see lemmy.world and you don’t get to see downvotes and I think both is an improvement to be honest.
lemmy.world is such a cesspool I don’t understand it
Go to redditors and say “it’s like reddit but with actual free speech” and that’s why lemmy world is how it is.
It was good at attracting Reddit users who still had the Reddit mindset. If we go with the idea (as some have) to push a “simple default instance that we can point everyone to” that’s what we’d end up with.
Sure, but it ends up being extreme even for Reddit. There’s no discourse, it’s just everyone nodding along and agreeing.
I’m not praising it, there’s a critical mass that communities can grow before it becomes like that and it’s interesting that lemmy.world is already hitting it.
Do we have to have more people though?
Pretty much none of the communities that I used to browse on Reddit are active here, so I wouldn’t mind more people here.
I agree. Some communities are missing. But I fear to see the toxicity of reddit replicated here. I wish we can avoid this.
I agree, but in my experience the focused communities that I liked to browse on Reddit were almost never toxic. The difference may be that I deliberately went to the specific communities that I was interested in; I generally never just browsed Popular, where I’m sure the bulk of the toxicity was.
Unfortunately the communities that I’m interested in have next to no activity here, so I would definitely like to see more users.
CW: Unpopular opinion?
I’ve looked back at a few reddit threads, and I’m thankful most of those users aren’t coming here. I’m alright with the current level of content and participation. What little there is here is still better than most of what’s on r/all, and it’s not like we want to attract advertisers and self-promoting accounts.
I agree with you, I like that it feels more cozy and there are way fewer trolls/devil’s advocate types that I’ve run into here. And that’s from my multiple different accounts that I’ve test drived on different instances. I personally think that lemmy is too confusing for people to settle into due to the nature of federation and such so its only gonna be people really committed to getting away from mainstream social media that will come over long term.
The discourse I’ve observed thus far has felt more honest, less pugnacious than on Reddit. Obviously I’ve seen a drop in the bucket, but anyway, it’s good so far.
For the most part, yeah. I feel like it’s much better overall.
I sort by all and new when I want fresh content, and there’s plenty, although it depends on how much your instance members are subbed to.
There’s also https://lemmyverse.net/
Well yes, but do you want to maintain that ambience or attract more users? IMO these objectives are in conflict.
You’re probably right, but ultimately I think the vast amount of niche content around so many different hobbies is the most valuable thing, even if it comes with a bit of… human toxicity.
Sadly, I just can’t imagine how you get the former while really effectively suppressing the latter.
Yes. I already see too much semblance of Reddit and i read this post and facepalmed.
In general, I agree with you, where the quality of posts and comments on Lenny appear to be of much higher quality than Reddit used to be. At the same time though, I miss even some of the not-so-niche big communities that were engaging and kept me addicted to Reddit - like r/formula1. The community is too small here too sustain that interest
Yeah, I understand why you feel that way. I’m finding that how I interact with Lemmy is much different than reddit. On reddit, I often felt compelled to browse and post. Here, it feels more like a conscious choice, something I do because I see it as a good use of my time.
Need to find a new gallowboob. Better if it’s an actual group of users sharing the same id and pumping out quality content
I’ve got good news for you
This guy right here, officer
Give it time. The platform exploded in popularity in a few months, let us [current users] let the last batch of newcomers to settle in before calling more folks in. Plus we don’t even have much control over it, at the end of the day Lemmy grows as Reddit does stupid shit that makes it lose trust with its userbase.
deleted by creator
Unfortunately it’s just a waiting game really, we grow slowly. Bringing people over is good, but they’ll follow the content. As people come, posters will come too, and commenters, and then that’s what ultimately brings over the rest.
If we could stop pretending we’re superior to other social media that might be a start. The number of posts talking shit about the “average redditor” or suggesting that we need more “high quality content than reddit”, or that everything needs to have a meaningful discussion is exhausting. We as a group seem to want to dictate who can comment, who can post, what kind of post is acceptable, and are fairly mean to newer people. You won’t keep new people if you’re rude to them or they see post after post trashing them.
Engagement comes at the price of low effort sometimes. So does content. Not every post or comment will be a shining beacon of perfection. Sometimes people just want to talk. Some of them are starved for human interaction.
Stop trash talking the lurkers. They may be sharing what content there is here and driving people to Lemmy instances. They’re an important part of the ecosystem.
Ask what caliber of people you want here. Because it is very apparent to me that the loudest members only want a specific type of community member here. And they are very outspoken about that fact. But are they actively extending a hand to those people when they encounter them on any other platform? Word of mouth (or keyboard) works. It’s slow but it works.
