A bit too often taking part in discussions on Reddit was just mentally draining. Initially the topic looks so promising and I would love to discuss it. But too often people were not interested in sharing ideas beyond their own opinion, and many people were obsessed with “winning” the discussion.
Trying so discuss the finer points back and forth in a satisfying way was a rare occasion. Even In not so big subreddits you would think were filled with like minded people this was difficult. and comments were trying to end the discussion instead of coming with an idea and trying to further it.
How can we all promote good discussion on this site or the wider fediverse?
Should the space get bigger and bigger inevitably it will become the way it is on reddit.
What I found most helpful was finding smaller subreddits and sticking to those and blocking keywords and subreddits I found too big and mentally draining from appearing when I went to /r/all. Like way too many popular subs focused on promoting topics that would antagonize people.
So my reddit experience has been positive. But, it was due to great third party tools, so I think the key is going to be more feature rich curation tools whether it’s official lemmy ones integrated into the site or extensions/apps.
I don’t think believing that the community will stay the same should numbers increase is something that can be relied on with how it only takes a small percentage of the userbase to start skewing content as the population grows and grows. Tools I think is the way forward, and why third party apps were invaluable for some for being able to be in a good headspace while browsing reddit instead of being exposed to unfiltered reddit.
That’s a great strategy to stick to. I did realize that I would sometimes lurk around the rage-bait subreddits and find myself in a distasteful mood afterwards. Hopefully, there won’t be a lot of those shaming communities that would be created
/r/all I noticed over the years would have so many subs focusing on highlighting the worst aspects of humanity that you’d be left thinking everyone out there wants to start a fight with you, rob you, or murder you. Reddit had no problems removing nsfw stuff but was happy to let videos with violence be present.
It was interesting seeing so many different variations of amianasshole type subs keep popping up too. People naturally gravitate towards rage since it does invoke deep emotional responses.