tl;dr: Be excellent to each other, do something constructive here?
I'm not sure anymore where the Threadiverse is headed. (The Threadiverse being this threaded part of the Fediverse, i.e. Lemmy, MBin, PieFed, ...)
In my time here, I've met a lot of nice people and had meaningful conversations and learned lots of things. At the same time, it's always been a mixed bag. We've always had quite some argumentative people here, trolls, ... I've seen people hate on and yell at each other, and do all kinds of destructive things. My issue with that is: Negative behavior is disproportionately affecting the atmosphere. And I'd argue we have nowhere enough nice behavior to even that out.
I don't see Lemmy grow for quite some time now. Seems it's now leveling off at a bit less that 50k monthly active users. And I don't see how that'd change. I'm missing some clear vision/idea of where we want to be headed. And I miss an atmosphere that makes people want to join or stay here, of all of the places on the internet. The saying is: "If you don't go forwards you go backwards". I'm not sure if this applies... At least we're not shrinking anymore.
And I'm always unsure if the tone and atmosphere here changes subtly and gradually. I've always disagreed with a few dynamics here. But lately it feels like we're on the decline, at least to me. I occasionally keep an eye on the votes on my comments. And seems I'm getting fewer of them. Sometimes I reply to a post and not a single person interacts. Even OP seems to have abandoned their post moments after writing it. And also for nuanced and longer replies, I regularly don't get more than one or two upvotes. I think that used to be a bit better at some point. And I see the same thing happening with other peoples' comments. So it's not just me writing low-quality comments. What does work is stating simple truths. I regularly get some incoming votes with those. But my vision of this place isn't spreading simple truths, but have proper and meaningful discussions, learn things and new perspectives or just mingle with people or talk. But judging by the votes I observe, that isn't appreciated by the community here.
Another pet peeve of mine is the link aggregator aspect of Lemmy. I'd say at least 80% of Lemmy is about dumping some political (or tech) news articles. Lots of them don't generate any engagement. Lots of them are really low-effort. OP just dumps something somewhere, no body text added, no info about what's interesting about it. And people don't even read those articles. They just read the title and react (emotionally) to that. In the end probably neither OP nor the audience read the article and it's just littering the place. Burying and diminishing other, meaningful content. (With that said: There are also nice (news) discussions going on at the same time. And Lemmy is meant to be a link aggregator. It's just that my perception is: it's skewed towards low quality, low engagement and random noise.)
A few people here also don't really like political debate. And there's no escape from it here on Lemmy since so much revolves around that. And nowadays politics is about strong opinions, emotions and emotional reactions. And often limited to that. The dynamics of Lemmy reinforce the negative aspect of that, because the time when you're most incentivized to reply or react is, when it triggers some strong emotion in you, for example you strongly disagree with a comment and that makes you want to counter it and write your own opinion underneath. If you agree, you don't feel a strong emotion and you don't reply. And the majority of users seems to also forget to upvote in that case, as I lined out earlier. And we also don't write nuanced answers, dissect complex things and examine it from all angles. That's just effort and it's not as rewarding for the brain to do that as it is pointing out that someone is wrong. So it just fosters an atmosphere of being argumentative.
Prospect
I think we have several ways of steering the community:
- Technology: Features in the software, design choices that foster good behavior.
- Moderation: Give toxic people the boot, or delete content that drags down the place. Following: What remains is nice people and not adverse content.
- The community
I'd say 1 and 2 go without saying. (Not that everything is perfect with those...) But it really boils down to 3: The community. This is a fairly participatory place. We are the ones shaping the tone and atmosphere. And it's our place. It's kind of our obligation to care for it if we want to see it go somewhere. Isn't it?
So what's your vision of this place? Do you have some idea on where you'd like it to go? Practical ideas on how to achieve it?
Do you even agree with my perception of the dynamics here, and the implications and conclusions I came up with?
I feel it is pretty stable here. I post every day, and it's been a tad slower lately, much like I believe Blaze said, feels due to people going away for trips. Weekends are a decent bit slower, where usually they have been busy. That's where I notice it the most. My subs are lower than at the start of the year, but they're still going up slow but steady. Interactions are still steady, which is my main concern. As you've mentioned, people want to see that interaction. I don't want to say my content is useless, because people don't need owl pics and animal rescue facts every day, but I typically get 100+ likes per post, and a handful of comments.
The key I feel though, is I have the same people coming in regularly every day, or every other day, and they are also participating. They make the place look alive more than me just throwing things out there. But that is a specific thing I work on, as much as the post content itself. When people come and make comments, I give them my full attention. I talk back to them, I laugh at their jokes and puns, I take time to answer their questions, I pay attention to what content they like or don't like, how I post links. I treat them like they were clients. And now in return, they see that the community is a fun place to hang, and they come back regularly, even though I'm not giving them anything they couldn't find, but I am adding value to their days. I make them smile, I make them feel like their effort commenting matters, I make them feel like they motivate me to keep posting (because they do!), and I teach them about things they never expected to care about.
But it's a lot of hard work! I try not to think about the time I put into this just for fun. Many of us have been here before the API exodus or before and have put in hours posting to nobody or a dozen people until we've built up momentum. Most people won't even upvote, let alone comment or post, so it's going to come in waves building up this place. You're still in the wilderness here. We're still pretty much the first wave of Fediverse settlers. We're here while it is rough, setting the foundations of what will hopefully come, keeping us from fading to nothing. I don't think new people appreciate that point. It's not like 25% of Reddit broke off and came here with all the posters and the audience, we're starting from scratch. I think what we have is amazing for a bunch of nobodies with no corporate cash. We're all volunteers, building the social media we want to have. We should be proud of it, no matter what stage it's at.
Moderation is an area I feel could be stronger. Most threads are pretty good, but some could use a bit more reigning in. Part of the problem I see with that though, is the vocal part of the community is already hating on "heavy handed mods", and you missed all the trashing of Beehaw for doing what I considered to be appropriate moderation. The Fed is full of a pretty diverse group of people. I talk to people from multiple countries, and the amount of LGBT I've gotten to get insight from has been amazing. It's really helped me grow in my understanding of some things just being around all these people. But we need to ensure everyone is treated equally and respectfully, and there are many that want to bring Reddit behavior over here, and it's up to the mods and commenters to decide if that's what we want or not. I don't want it, but many see no issue. I'm glad when people comment on it, because if people just accept it without speaking up, no one will know.
There is a lot of good here, and even with 50k users, there's going to be much more mid and crap than gold, but it's here. Your comments look good, and you seem to stick to things you enjoy and avoid some that drag you down, and it's important to notice your own behavior if you click stuff that is going to annoy you. I hit delete on a lot of comments when I wade into some of these topics. Some stuff I just don't want to get involved in, especially as someone that is at least somewhat "known" around here now and is too lazy to make an alt. But I remind myself I'm here to have fun, and if I want news without the potential drama, I'll leave here and go to AP or whatever. I'd hope posters would make stuff to help you have a good time, but it's our job to cultivate our own experience ultimately.
I could go on forever talking about this stuff, but I'll stop for now. Just give it time and explore more, and since you seem to comment, keep doing that. It's the best thing for this place. Post, comment, give feedback, repeat.
Nice comment
You and the Fedigrow crew helped me get through feeling much like OP a while back. I think that was a really good idea, because it is tough and emotional at times doing what we do. It can be easy to feel alone when you put yourself out there every day and feel like nobody is around or like you're doing something wrong and people are falling off.
I never set out to be anybody here, but I was done with Reddit, and wanted to keep something that made me smile continue on, so I just sucked it up and did what needed to be done. You guys make it worth it, and as long as the people that do show up are having a good time, I'll do my part to keep the party going. I get old, pre commercialized web vibes from Lemmy, so I'm gonna stick it out here as long as I can, because this is the kind of thing you don't just get anywhere anymore.
Thanks for your nuanced comments. I've never moderated any community worth mentioning, so that's quite some additional insight for me. I'm not entirely new to this either, as you might have deducted from my account age. I've moved away from lemmy.ml as my own values don't properly align with theirs. Then I lost an account because the instance I was on died. And recently I switched to PieFed and that's my current account. But all in all I've been here since well before the exodus. Still, I think we have a different perspective. I've attended a bit more to the technical side and using it, while you've been fostering a community, which I didn't do at all.
I'm not sure what to make of your "helped me get through feeling much like OP". I'm not sure if I have to come to terms with how things are. Or if we instead should improve the place to become what I (and other people?) envision it to be. Sure, it's not black and white. And when you're doing critism (as I did), you focus on the negatives. I tried to also mention the other side. But due to the nature of this post, it's not been the focus.
I'll take some more time thinking about what you and all the other people said. I definitely see the potential of this platform. And that's why I'm here. I also see some issues and lack of progress with some things. And that hurts because I like this place. And I kind of refuse to accept it and change my expectations. I don't want it to be perfect. But there's quite some room for improvement (I think) and that made me speak up and post this.
I've talked extensively with Blaze and others on the Fedigrow community about pretty much your exact set of bullet points over the past few months and the shine started to wear off Lemmy for a bit. You're far from alone in feeling how you described in your post, as can be seen in most of the replies here.
I think it's just taking a step back and being able to appreciate what we do have. We haven't turned into some complete right/left hellhole, the top posts everyday add up to thousands of comments, we have some quality content providers, and some really fun commenters. I certainly wouldn't be ashamed to show someone my Lemmy feed.
It's good that you still have the drive to want to keep improving things around here in the ways you feel comfortable contributing to. Many initial hurdles to getting on Lemmy feel resolved, and so many in apps are equal to the Reddit apps for most use cases. Many initial accounts were probably from people trying to figure things out. I know I had like 5 accounts and only really use 1 now.
I think we've just hit a plateau for now. My personal feeling is working on the culture is our best way forward to be different than Reddit and to pick up more people looking to escape the toxicity. The time to set our tolerance levels for certain behaviors is now before we get too big to reign it in. We're a pretty good group now, and I hope it stays this way or gets a little better like last summer.
I'm glad when I see people speak up like this though. It makes us all reflect on the guys and bad we see here and to think about where we stand ourselves in all of it.
Thanks for the clarification. I think we're on the same page. Especially the following resonates with me:
And I'd agree we need to do that in the context of what we have. Have a step back and think before doing something.
I don't want to see that as an excuse to stay inert, though. But at the same time we may not skip it.
I frequently disagree with the Lemmy developers' take on things. But what I give them high credit for, is not to prefer growth above other things. I wrote this post now, because I think the Reddit exodus is far away now. Things have settled. And the argument "let things settle first" is out of the way now. And as you pointed out we might have reached a steady plateau for now. I think that's a comfortable position from where we can decide what to do.
Feel free to join !fedigrow@lemm.ee / https://palaver.p3x.de/c/fedigrow@lemm.ee
We regularly discuss the potential improvements you were suggesting in this post
Thanks for inviting me. I'll see if I have something meaningful to contribute. As of now I'm not really involved in growing communities. Well, at least not as a moderator. Maybe I should try it.
It's also a place for regular posters, or even just people interesting in discussing how to make Lemmy grow, regardless of their posting profile
Really interesting to read about your experiences - thanks for sharing.
No matter what the challenges are currently, this is what makes the Fediverse so brilliant. It flies in the face of the system which is currently ruining almost everything in the world. It's the online social facet of the all-encompassing reclaiming of power that has to happen for us to be a healthy society on a healthy planet. Lemmy (and the rest of the Fediverse as far as I can tell) basically functions in much the same way as the corporate social media it replaces, so it comes with the same downsides e.g trolling, being addictive, potentially misleading and so on. But the fact that it's ours to develop/change/adapt, according to our own shared values, makes it fundamentally diiferent. We're already seeing improvements over what it's replacing and I'm really excited to see where it leads. In the grand scheme of things the mass use of the internet is still quite new and right here is at the cutting edge of navigating how it should work for us.
Totally agree with you. I feel bad for the young people that didn't get to experience the Internet before business started to take it seriously. The Fediverse is a nice taste of those days though!