Yesterday me and Blaze had a bit of a back and forth and upon review I had some thoughts.
Let me state first and foremost, I adore Blaze and his contributions to the threadiverse. I think he makes the threadiverse a better place with his presence alone.
That said, when we were arguing I had a few problems. But the biggest and most pertinent was that I felt he was chasing Redditors.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I chose Lemmy. Since I got here, I have put my fair share into making this place everything I want it to be. Whether that’s conducting myself properly or whether it’s trying to engage or provide a platform for engagement.
One thing I really don’t want Lemmy to be is Reddit. I engage on here far more than I ever did on Reddit. I have a perfectly curated timeline which is the perfect mix of news, entertainment, enlightenment and conversation. I want Lemmy to remain Lemmy.
Lemmy works for me and my mental health. The way Lemmy is set-up, I relish the fact that I can discuss popular topics away from the general populus. In general, I have zero interest in participating in the biggest communities with, what is inevitably the bottom of the barrel posters. So for my peace of mind, I stick to strongly moderated instances and away from the catch-all communities.
That’s not to say those communities don’t have their place. They do! In fact they have a special place in my heart because they filter the bad actors away from me.
And ultimately that’s what makes Lemmy beautiful. That there’s different instances, different crowds and different discussions.
One thing that Blaze said yesterday was that, “people from Reddit say it’s a ghost town.” and I said that doesn’t matter. He felt that we need to rectify that to ensure growth, but at what cost? Becoming Reddit? I don’t want to be Reddit. Even at the software level, Lemmy has tried hard to not be Reddit, hence no karma.
I don’t want Lemmy to sell its soul to attract the very people I don’t want to be around. I’m not saying there’s not room to grow or improve, I’m just saying we have to grow and improve while holding on to our values and having some integrity about it.
It is coming. https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/
As much as karma was a flawed metric on Reddit, especially due to karma farming, it can still be useful to identify bad faith or toxic users.
Let’s not forget that the lemm.ee admins shut down due to user moderation burnout, not infrastructure or cost issues.
I would love to believe that. And PieFed is picking up pace right now. But I’m a bit cautious. The userbase is still the same. Lemmy has long settled in into what it is now, how things are done and how the users treat each other and which popular topics they like. It’s going to prove difficult to change it substancially. And I think that’s what I propose. We really can’t have entire teams of admins burn out, people stir up drama constantly and try to make the place about having strong opinions… I’m painting a bleak picture here. In total, Lemmy isn’t like this. But it happens. And I’m also with PieFed for having somewhat of a vision on what we should strive for. I just think technical means aren’t even half of the equation.
As everyone knows, I’m on Lemmy/Piefed a lot.
I mostly stick to communities like !casualconversation@piefed.social, !lego@piefed.social, !football@sopuli.xyz . Not politics, no news, no memes.
Atmosphere in the casual communities is always nice and pleasant. From time to time someone tries to get uncivil or negative, but then they get banned, and that’s it.
I learned about a very important piece of news in another country on !pics@lemmy.world the other day, because I am completely avoiding those communities. People who browse All were probably aware of it for a week.
Just saying that it is possible to stay in the “casual/positive” side of Lemmy.
I know, and we definitely share some of those communities. But that’s because we know our way around here. It is not the default experience. And new users at least on Lemmy have to work kind of hard to get there. And be motivated to do it right away and then also accumulate all the knowledge on which community with the same name to subscribe to and which to avoid… And even I have to put in some work at times, not to get annoyed. I think that’s far from perfect as of now. It is a nice platform, though. And there is quite some potential.
Piefed has a much better onboarding experience. You can choose what topics interest you, and you’re subscribed to them from the start. You can also choose to mute Musk and Elon keywords. That’s already quite better