In the monthly server updates for lemmy.zip/piefed.zip there’s a mantra that’s repeated every month. I think it’s wonderful and can be applied to the Fediverse as a whole.
If you’re new here - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)
Just one small teeny-tiny request. The greatest gift you can give
the Fediverse(Original: Lemmy.zip and Piefed.zip) isn’t money, praise, or interpretive dance (although we would absolutely accept the last one). Its participation.Upvote the things you like. Start a discussion, debate, or ponder about whether water is wet or merely makes things wet. Make new communities if you don’t see one that fits your oddly specific niche obsession.
(We don’t judge. Well, we try not to judge anyway.)The fediverse naturally ebbs and flows, tides of people come and go. But if you’ve found yourself oddly attached to this strange little corner of the internet? Wonderful. Help it breathe. Help it grow. Help it be just a tiny bit weirder in the best possible way.
So if you’ve gone to the effort of clicking Sign Up and proving you’re not a robot (unless you are, in which case hello and welcome to our new AI overlords), then please, I beg of you:
Stick around. Add your voice. It really does make this place better.
I’m still just figuring out how fediverse / lemmy work, but I do get bored sometimes because of the lack of content, so I guess I’m part of the problem. I’ll try to be more involved.
I’ve been trying to think of a good (for the lack of knowing the correct verbiage) ‘subreddit’ to start, but they all seem too specific for the amount of users on Lemmy. Also I wouldn’t know how to start one. Comment down below any tips. Thanks!
You don’t have to start your own community (lemmy’s subreddit) if you feel it is too niche. Find or start a broder one where your niche content will fit. That way, your content has a home and more lemming will be attracted to it.
If you want to start your own community, you can only do it on your home instance: reddthat.com
I started posting by picking the communuty for the place i live and trying to post local and independent media and special interest groups articles about/in the context of that place.
Its benefits are,
- It creates activity on the fediverse that is unique, and the more interesting for it.
- You’ll be promoting the voices of those less often heard.
- You can also help local and independent media with readers and exposure. Its seen as more of an offline problem of media concentration, but i think theres online solutions for the surviving publications.
If you look through my history you’ll see my posts to c/Perth/WesternAustralia there are ebbs and flows in interest but the key point is when something happens, say a protest, or a pub banning some nazis the community is there ready for the users, active and established.
If you go to the sidebar of that community, and all the communities i moderate i have gathered in each a host of resources for people to refer to for articles and information in regards each of those communities. It also helps me to have easy access to those publishers as i look for something i find interesting.
So i don’t know what city or State you live in, but if theres a place based server, or a generalist server that hosts a community for it, i’d start posting there. If it looks abandoned maybe jump onto that servers c/meta and request to become the moderator. That’ll give you the ability to change things like the sidebar and participate in managing misbehaviour if/when users post things off topic/against the rules for the community.
See you in fediverse ;)
Edit: oh, also posting is a piece of active fun, instead of waiting passivley for something to entertain you. So its fun in a different way to scrolling feeds, or commenting.
Sorting by scaled is pretty nice because its like active but with community size so its not only shitposts, memes and news (still a lot but its still a larger veriety)
My instinct is to lurk even in this thread…
Do you want to talk about it?
I fucking hate the Reddit-ish replies I receive so I will not comment often
I just realized something: When I search for something in Lemmy and get zero results, I sometimes go to Reddit and search there.
It would probably be better to make a new post in Lemmy about the thing I’m searching for. It would add content to Lemmy, and the content would be newer and fresher than the Reddit results that are sometimes 10+ years old.
I enjoy Lemmy because I tend to get a response. Despite the higher pop at Reddit, I often go ignored. It’s not unusual to have a back and forth chat with another commenter in a given thread here.
I find it hard to keep a conversation going, maybe lack of skill on my part but usually idk what to reply and hit a dead end. So most of the time I just upvote in appreciation for taking the time to respond.
If you don’t know what to reply, then don’t. Seek out communities, posts, and comments about stuff you enjoy talking about. Especially when it’s a positive light.
Conversations either continue or they don’t. You shouldn’t be hard on yourself. If someone says something that makes you want to say or ask something else, great. If not, that’s fine too.
I mean, perhaps if you’re lost for content you could just give the back story to your username?
Ooh that’s an easy one, it’s from this comment, credits to OP.
I’ve seen variations of it around here in other comments too, but this was the first one I saw and it cracked me up, so I took it. I’m some bigot’s worst nightmare
And backed it up with a class thumbnail, nice haha.
Well I agree. I post on lemmy or mastodon-like first, then only after on Reddit if I must. Many times I get a few but meaningful replies, that’s good.
Eh, I like being a hydralisk anyway.
Aw what a nice sentiment 🥰 it has inspired my first reply here
can confirm, this user has 0 posts and 1 comment
Can confirm that Gandalf did not lie and the user in question does indeed have 0 posts and 1 comment
I can third this, OP indeed has one comment.
Now I won’t be posting! Hah!.. oh wait…
Gotcha!
All decent advice. Here’s a thought experiment.
Start a discussion, debate, or ponder about [etc]
By the same token it would be bad to stop such a discussion, right? Right.
Make new communities if you don’t see one that fits
Therefore it would be bad to *destroy" such communities, right? Indeed.
Upvote the things you like
So, it would be bad to downvote the things you - personally, subjectively - don’t like - right? It wouldn’t? Why so?
Don’t downvote other people’s good-faith opinions. It’s petty, it’s juvenile, it’s toxic. Even if you don’t see it that way. It’s precisely what will discourage the participation we all want to see.
Because the fediverse is still fairly small, downvotes stick out a lot more. A number of them I think, “How could anybody downvote that?” and just wonder because often they seem to be “I had a shitty day and I particularly don’t like YOU” downvotes.
I often sort a thread by Top, and even the highest voted posts are often +(big number) -1. Because I personally do not downvote without cause, I assume they are sincere, but then it becomes a question of why, and I could never figure it out. Okay, whatever, no biggie.
But recently I had some time on my hands and I am aware of lemvotes.org, so one day I saw this again and decided to just informally start looking up these weird ass loner downvotes. Nothing sustained, just whenever one stuck out to me as being why??? I’d go and look it up. I’ve been doing this for roughly 2-3 months now, no schedule or commitment other than whenever I felt like it, across the board, no attention paid to community or post content (other than anything political pretty much not being worth the trouble, lol).
What I expected was a variety of usernames attached to these single downvotes.
But what I saw was a core handful of users across the board, with the occasional outlier.
Kinda pathetic, honestly.
Interesting. Could you also see a reason for why they downvoted? Do they downvote a specific type of content or do they downvote just about everything?
These single downvotes were never followed up by further commentary, and at least one of them looks like a voting-only account with zero posts, so the more I looked the more they just seemed like fuck you votes.
I really don’t think there’s any link to content at all because I did this across multiple communities (whatever I don’t have actively blocked that crosses my feed) and it was largely the same handful of downvoters throughout, but with outliers here and there. I wasn’t taking notes, but when I started to see the same names over and over in wildly disparate communities it seemed less and less likely it had anything to do with content.
So you’re saying that (you think the data says) most people here are not blanket-downvoting anything that gives them marginally bad vibes, and that the damage is being done by a busy few? Interesting if true. I too basically never downvote, on the principle that it’s toxic and hostile and just not something that has a polite equivalent in person. I had assumed I was a massive outlier.
I think blanket downvoting happens regularly in political communities and discussions, and a lot of time you can see it without even looking up any votes: if every single comment in a six-comment thread has two downvotes and three upvotes, it’s pretty clear. I looked those political ones up a few times but don’t even bother anymore. Everywhere else, by which I mean non-political and/or non-controversial topics, it genuinely seems to be just a core handful of users.
And no, you’re not an outlier, just a decent person. I like to think most of us vote for actual cause, and that it’s only a handful who don’t. But at some point I do think the admins are going to have to deal with it, because downvoting just to downvote IS toxic and does tend to have a stifling effect on the discussion and community as a whole.
Contribtions to the fediverse are unwelcome in most polular spaces.
Unless you are just upvoting things.
If you are new you will be heavily scrutinized, and if the community owners don’t love you instantly then your account goes in the “bot pile”
Makes it hard to want to participate when most relevant posts you make get removed and the mods ban you because they decide they don’t like being embarrased when they’re shitty.
The sheer lack of ability to read tone on Lemmy baffles me, and any time someone tries to bring it up you get these “that hasn’t happened to me” and “maybe you’re an ass” ahh comments. It really snubs any effort to talk about the problem.
If everywhere you go smells like shit, check your shoes.
Thanks.
You don’t have to announce your hekin departure.
Don’t let the airplane hit you on the way out.
This is not my experience at all.
If you are being shitty that may be different. I do not see much of this for people who are engaging, particularly ones engaging like adults or at least good-natured.
Well idk what to tell you.
Being shitty is subjective and if a mod doesn’t like someone using a space for what it’s for then it breeds this environment.
Dismissing and invalidating people with genuine concerns is also not how we get more people to contribute.
Yeah there are also spaces with specific rules, like womenstuff that only lets women comment. Also some places have wildly different moderation philosophy. Or just, highlyOn one hand, it’s fine to make a mistake and learn from it. But on the other, you can accidentally catch a blanket instance ban with no recourse.
Not my experience
Sometimes I debate on making a comment, and sometimes I simply don’t have the energy to complete one. But sometimes, I think, “every comment grows Lemmy a little bit more” and decide, fuck it, I’ll say something. People might like it, people might not like it, but you never know what can grow from such a little spark.
I appreciate Lemmy in this regard. We live in a world with many voices trying to drown out each other for a bit of public attention. It’s enough to make some people think their own thoughts aren’t worthy and to stay silent, discounting their potential contributions. Having a platform that’s low-stakes, where people aren’t chasing internet fame, gives many of us an opportunity to express ourselves for the sake of expressing ourselves. Having this outlet is vital for many of us. I’m glad to be a part of this community, and it is truly a community. I have no idea if anyone recognizes me, but I definitely recognize other frequent commenters. It’s almost like we’re neighbors, not in physical proximity, but with a shared gathering space to meet and share our thoughts.
And I love that.
fuck i’ll lurk and smoke all day
This is not a personal account, it’s one for a site I’m building. I know many won’t like that as it might come as spammy, corporate or whatever, but I have decided to use Lemmy as a place for discussion -in a related community- and Mastodon as the one for news and updates (together with old good RSS) and I have done it because I believe in a federated web.
I’m tired of walled gardens and billionaire-run feuds -and every web loading endless MBs of scripts from a dozen of third-parties (I mean, sometimes it can be justified, like on very complex sites… but not on a damn text blog, come on!)- or not working with my OS/browser of choice… and I want the Fediverse to keep growing and become not only a viable alternative but -and here I’m just daydreaming, I know- the default.
And to this point this post made me realize that it won’t happen on its own -not the way most people are, anyway- and that we/I need to put more effort on it. I’m culprit of just signing up and… well, waiting. And that won’t work. So thank you from bringing this matter to me, and I’ll try to do my part from now on, if not with this account with a personal one.
I see a new post.
I click, I read, I scroll on.
I am the lurker.#haiku (<- test to see how far this propagates in the mastodon / microblogging part of the fediverse)
It doesn’t work well if it is not in the post itself. Here a community where you are free to test it as much as you want !testfediverse@jlai.lu
