OpenStars

I contribute, quite a lot actually (possibly too much for the tastes of some?:-P no seriously, I do halfway mean that) - but usually as comments rather than posts.

I try to liven up the Fediverse by including graphics, to make scrolling through comments more fun and less just walls of dry text. Though I also add long walls of dry text myself from time to time as well - we gotta have variety!:-)

I tend to not judge well when to actually do a post though. Btw, do you know why I am able to see both up- and down-vote counts from a mobile webpage view, but not from a desktop one? That is so odd...

Anyway, here is one example, where the video literally received critical acclaim (as being in the top 50 videos fighting against misinformation on the internet), yet that community gave it only 7 upvotes and 5 downvotes total. I also crossposted it to a larger community, which gave it 15 upvotes and 9 downvotes. In both cases, the only comments were negative. Mind you, I actually appreciated the feedback - and thanked the people who offered it, even when saying "...title is garbage, and so I have to downvote", b/c at least it offered an explanation as to why people were downvoting, and I genuinely enjoyed being corrected by them (rather than merely wondering internally what happened).

Similarly I offered some videos from Adam Connover criticizing Trump - I remember he had some cool stuff in the past, like explaining the broken system of tax software in the US, so I don't know if he's still considered "good", but I offered. It got 3 downvotes... and zero upvotes (beyond my own added by the Lemmy software by default, so one total).

I offered another video on viruses, which got 7 upvotes and 4 downvotes. Oopsie someone else had just posted it like an hour before me, but that does not explain the poor reception b/c theirs received the same treatment.

I offered another one that I saw on imgur which I thought was REALLY cool, someone offering an explanation on indigenous peoples' belief structures surrounding dancing, it was short (<1 minute), and had nice calming music in the background. Though I was not sure how to link to it directly, so people would have to scroll down past 4 other images/videos to find it using the link. It got 5 upvotes and 2 downvotes.

Mind you, there is no point in me "complaining" (whinging) here - that's not what this is about. When someone continually offers what is not desired to be received, words like "insensitive" or even "stalker" come to mind. Sorting the posts to those communities by popularity, most seem to relate to Technology especially Linux. While in contrast, Adam Connover seems to not be popular.:-) In fact, if I sort by Controversial, most of my absolute favorite content appears there, having been HEAVILY down-voted - e.g. Innuendo Studios' Alt-Right Playbook.

From this I can conclude that there are some slight technical barriers to posting - and to assessing after-the-fact how posts are received - but mainly people need to offer posts that MATCH what the community desires. And some, like !poetry@lemmy.world, barely get any posts (that one ~1 per day, the vast majority of the time from a single poster, BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world), but that can be okay b/c a small, niche community is not necessarily "bad"... HOWEVER, small communities are SIGNIFICANTLY harder to find. You personally have been doing heroic efforts to both get the word out about those, and create them in the first place, and guide people to where they are. But there are limitations in the software that are difficult to get around.

Like... what is this "eye" icon that I see in 0.19.5? Was it there in 0.19.3? When I click it, it doesn't seem to do anything? Except on a desktop it takes me to the top of the page, thus hindering (slightly) my efforts to figure it out. I do recall somewhere an announcement that Lemmy would offer an option to only show posts that I haven't seen before - but if that is what this is supposed to do, then it is buggy as hell b/c it definitely shows things (either way) that I have visited before, not only by expanding the image but the title is literally greyed out so the browser knows that I've seen it, it's just Lemmy that seems to not know. And as we both know, documentation for how to use Lemmy - especially the web UI rather than an app - is virtually nonexistent, despite both of our efforts asking various instance admins to put e.g. !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca into the right-hand sidebar or mention it in the welcoming posts for an instance meta/admin community. Btw this eye icon thing would be a fantastic post to put into !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca, except I for one have no clue what this feature is even about, and anyway the right-hand bar says that there's only 2 visitors per week (which I suspect are both me, from here + from my alt on startrek.website).

This is long, but I did not want you think that I was ignoring you. "Just post" is far too simple a solution - there are reason why I, and by extension others (though surely for other reasons - well, some are likely shared in common while others are likely to be distinct) do not do it more often than we do currently. Most notably: it is simply not fun, if people do not wish to hear what we have to say. Though I tend to do better in comments - often I am literally the only person to have offered a comment at all, or perhaps one of like 3-5, and I am glad to (try to) help make the Fediverse a moar welcoming place for people to post to!:-)

!justpost@lemmy.world does not seem to federate well for me - all of the posts seem to have no up (or down) votes or any comments. Then again, Discuss.Online just updated to 0.19.5 yesterday (from .3) so perhaps it's related to that. Usually when nobody from an instance has yet subscribed to a community, the posts themselves are not visible. This is the first time I've seen something like this where I can see posts, but the content in them (votes and comments) are missing.

Oh, also I see none of the posts that are more recent than a month ago (28 days). Though looking at it from a different instance reveals that there are new posts.

I just subscribed so hopefully that will help this instance federate the content in a few hours from now.

My normal process, if it helps to know, is to browse All, often by New, and if I see content that I like I will subscribe, or conversely if I dislike it (like a location-specific community) then I will block it. It seems that in this case, since nobody from my instance had subscribed before (or even weirder, someone did but then somehow that was dropped, 28 days ago), that was not working, since posts from it were not showing up even in "All".

It looks to be a very nice community - I will enjoy checking it out when it's ready, and will recommend it to others, thank you very much for sharing:-).

I don't think that Lemmy will "die" - e.g. technically Reddit still exists (as too do those older things that predated it - they have only the tiniest fraction of their former userbase, but they do still exist... technically) - but neither is it a sign of health that growth has plateaued and even probably shrunk a bit.

Worse yet, the Rexodus may have been the biggest & best chance for influx of "content creators", as in even if there is a second exodus from Reddit, it won't be the same type of people, and instead will be those who enjoyed the AI content for the last several months to year. Or maybe I am wrong, b/c a second opportunity is people fleeing from X, b/c of its toxicity (and in that case, them seeing the likes of hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml will likely halt them from coming). But people coming from Reddit will more likely be one way (more technically minded, though also defensive and snarky) while mainstream from X will more likely be another (just normal people??? e.g. less likely to go into the Settings menu and find a way to get something to work, even before deciding that they want to remain here - we aren't all Arch users btw:-D).

But there is a third source of influx: people who come from those, or perhaps are already here, but who mostly lurk rather than post. This is where reducing the overall level of toxicity here will offer dividends in making this place seem more lively.

I very much want to respond to your thought about conservatives b/c I find that highly interesting, but I also need food atm so if you don't mind I will separate out these thoughts spatiotemporally:-).

Same - and also Lemmygrad.ml, both of which I replied to someone and then had to endure WEEKS and WEEKS (each) of replies of a ridiculous nature. Like who would send someone tens and tens and tens of replies, WEEKS later, who is acting in good faith? Obviously that is a "dunking", done for their emotional benefit, rather than an attempt to actually change my mind. Well they did manage to change my mind though... about them.:-)

And that started me thinking that if Lemmy was going to be just exactly like Reddit, then I wanted no part of it... and I too came within a hairsbreadth of quitting it, before I realized that I could just block the worst of it and then the rest of the content here is actually pretty great.

So now I don't blame new people who don't know that - how would/could they? If we allow each new person to be hazed like that as they enter, then we have no basis for complaining later on when nobody wants to come back.

That's why I never had an account there:-)

Fwiw, a lot of people here call it Xhitter. Bc it sounds like Shitter, which is what the site has become (I wouldn't know personally, I didn't have an account there even before the Musk took it over:-).

Meh, I'm not worried about myself, so much as whether the Fediverse itself will survive. Every single person that I've recommended it to irl comes back in our next encounter with how much politically extremist - and violent - rhetoric is used. Chapotraphouse is the least of the Fediverse's troubles, though it too is one of them.

Overall though they seem connected: not wanting to defederate from either lemmy.ml with its constant calls for guillotines (I mean... not that I don't understand the reason for such:-) or from hexbear.net, mainstream users are being turned away.

And since like 90% of Fediverse content is made by a couple handfuls of people, I do worry about our long-term sustainability. Oh well.

Hehe, they dunked on me when I first joined Lemmy, and accidentally responded to a comment in ChapoTrapHouse, while browsing on All. Never having heard of it, I had no idea what it was.

I said something to the effect that at least Biden was keeping gas prices down, and they DID NOT LIKE THAT ONE BIT!!! It was weird to keep opening my notifications and continue to get replies for WEEKS and WEEKS after I stopped responding (I forget if I deleted the comment even - normally I never do such, especially if I am wrong b/c it helps to preserve a record for posterity, so at most I would put text in strikethrough format and add an Edit statement).

And that's on me, for going into their space and not even posting but still commenting in a post. Although... we do not control others only ourselves, and isn't it a bit on us if we federate ChapoTrapHouse, thereby feeding users across the entire Fediverse this content? Like literally, if an instance offers CSAM, then even though hosted elsewhere we would be the ones in trouble for feeding their data to our users.

Anyway, whether their dunks are successful or not is besides the point - they at least like to talk about people in a negative manner, as they themselves claim is their purpose for existing.

Thanks for the credit, but as usual you are the real rock star here, and we love it!:-) 💓

Lurkers need to subscribe for the content to appear in their Subscribed feed. Kicking them out may simply result in them rejoining again. It would be a constant struggle against that.

Plus, if such purges occur routinely, then what about a major poster who takes a break, even if for like a year (let's say they have a baby)? Actively getting rid of lurkers sends a signal that they are not welcomed. Especially if in the future Lemmy adds the ability for mods to have to approve join requests.

Whereas simply using "monthly active users" avoids all of that. Do as you please with any of your communities - in which case it would be helpful for the sake of transparency to literally add it to the rules (those who don't participate will eventually get purged) - but I thought I would list out some of these issues, in case it helped!:-)

You literally just made up a strawman argument, which you then immediately cited as "evidence"?

Mods are busy. If this is what you tend to do, I don't blame them one bit for not wanting to volunteer their unpaid time to deal with it - for the same reason I now understand better why some women would prefer the bear.

Now, please downvote me, you know you want to... just this once, I want you to know what it's like to do something with the recipient's consent.

That's not true! There are also useful idiots as well as actors (only the latter of which realize that a game is even being played). So the number of "people" is lower than apparent, yet nonzero.