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I’ve diversified in raw community output across the past ~4-5 months, but also slowed way down on my own community the past month. A recent, very unpleasant posting experience in another community was sort of the catalyst for altering how I feel about the Fediverse, and I’m not sure what the future holds in terms of my outlook.
I guess the negative experience specifically cemented something that hadn’t bothered me so much before-- that there’s a lot of ‘tourism’ in the FV feeds, and only a certain amount of commenting, especially the more niche a community is. But much more serious (to my mind) is that one can put loads of work in to dozens of posts, and the tourists will evidently barely remember you. A few upvotes as thanks is cool and all, but it’s like you’re not a person to them but a content-creator. Furthermore, if you make an unpopular mistake in terms of content, they’ll turn on you like a pack of merciless wolves. This only happens rarely for me personally, but when it does it really does kill my motivation to contribute. As if most audiences here are a pack of juvenile, vulturous assholes, only wanting to take, rarely being willing to give or remember who fed them.
This would mostly be okay if I was getting paid, in which case generating product for consumption would be a perfectly acceptable concept. But this to me kind of gets to something that has bothered me about the FV for a long time-- that it seems like there’s a shockingly low amount of community spirit and willingness to help and support each other. Unlike Reddit, many of us run in to each other here frequently, and yet that doesn’t seem to be enough. Friendship and true community is pretty common IME on the now out-of-style webforums, but then there was a critical difference there-- the content there isn’t feed-oriented, but activity-oriented. People can keep a topic going for months on a webforums, and yet this feed-style format seems to promote a doom-scrolling, dopamine-oriented hunger to keep moving from topic to topic, rarely lingering. I can’t help but think that brings out some of the mindset and behaviors I was kvetching about above.
So yeah, I don’t know where things lead from here. I’m hanging on for my part, still invested, still posting a trickle to half-a-dozen communities, but something kind of broke for me. Some inherent level of trust, innocence and general goodwill about the ActivityPub and FV projects.
That said, I still greatly admire (and am amazed and a bit mystified by) the high-output posters here. Without them… foof. And of course, we recently lost one such legend (PugJesus) over a major quibble upon how PieFed works. It’s fucking sad, man.
What help and support would you like?
I 'd quite like a threadiverse client that looked more like web forums than doomscrolling. Does anyone know of one?
What help and support would you like?
Personally, the more effort I put in to a post, the more I’d appreciate any kind of constructive comment, even if on the bland side. More engagement than the current level of tourism, essentially.
Overall, I think the content consumers here would do well to err on the side of gratitude. Just in general I believe it’s a healthy kind of mindset to cultivate, and specifically, it would be a more pleasant kind of energy for the FV software writers, instance runners, volunteer staff and content creators to reap. Maybe not full-blown validation but a bit more sense of appreciation.
Another point is that most of us are sort of refugees from Reddit and other toxic social media sources. Why don’t we naturally have more of a sense of community?
I’m sorry to hear that happened for you. It’s hard work trying to build up a community, and keep it going when no one else ever does.
With the loss of quokk.au’s most prolific user a few months ago I’m stuck keeping so many communities alive, with barely a comment in them.
Edit: Oh you’re on .social and are never going to see this reply, oops.
Hello,
Sorry to hear you experienced this. Are the most of the community where it happened active? And if it’s on your own community, I wouldn’t hesitate too much to ban toxic users, that’s usually better for the community as a whole.
The two communities in question are both active, yes. And TBF, one incident of the two is my own darn fault, because I posted what turned out to be an AI-made comic strip. It was actually a really good, topical cartoon, but it simply aped the original one, and I didn’t notice that in my fatigue-state at the time.
Unfortunately, it didn’t help in the slightest when I apologised and explained the above. A bunch of commenters didn’t seem to care in the slightest in their mania to trash anything AI-related, no matter the nuance or context.
If you can, I would still ban them. Nobody’s perfect, you apologised, if they can’t understand that it’s on them.
Well, neither one of those communities were mine. I was just trying to help them out by adding a little content. In my own community I feel like I’m pretty clear about practicing good netiquette, as listed on the sidebar, and I don’t accept much boorish behavior. So yeah, I’ve indeed banned maybe 3-4 accts at my place, not including bots.
One thing I did like about Reddit was that you ignored usernames unless someone frequently did something good or unpleasant (I remember poem_for_your_sprog for their poems. I remember a user that shall remain unnamed for their terse, grammatically-incorrect comments that often didn’t understand the post they were replying to). I wanted to be anonymous, not An Online Personality; I went to discuss topics of interest, not to make friends or be judged for liking apples instead of oranges and remembered and dismissed for that with each interaction. So I appreciate that it’s mostly the same here. I remember prolific posters, mostly, like you, and people I interacted with multiple times in a pleasant or unpleasant manner.
I absolutely get your negativity otherwise, though. I feel like the meanness and snarkiness is inescapable no matter how much I try to stick to just Subscribed in small niches. Nothing gets substantial commentary or discussion unless it is tangentially related to real-world hot-button issues, in which case someone will comment under “I wore a shirt today” with “your shirt has BUTTONS, of course it’s another disgusting example of HOT BUTTON ISSUE” and start a fight resulting in ad hominems everywhere. Or if it is explicitly a hot-button issue post that generally stays up because it’s relevant (think tech controversies in !Technology). As a person whose political views make me fit right into the Lemmy hivemind, for whom I agree with all these complaints, it’s exhausting to have it everywhere and in everything all the time; and things that aren’t that just getting crickets chirping for feedback. It makes a person want to stop trying to help out here.
I think maybe I getcha upon all that.
Also (and not trying to sound pedantic or whatever), I suspect that wading through that kind of shite builds upon a skillset that is ever-growing, at least for fairly aware, intelligent folks, and based upon what I’ve seen so far, I’d tend to shade you that way. :D
One thing I did like about Reddit was that you ignored usernames unless someone frequently did something good or unpleasant … So I appreciate that it’s mostly the same here.
Funnily enough, that’s kind of the opposite of my experience here, and actually I think it just might be better to get to know people here a bit better, whether from a positive or negative space.
I mean, getting back to Reddit, the RES suite was a very effective way of handling that, but we have little analogue in the FV, far as I know. On my PF.S account I can indeed add short notes, and that’s helpful, but no idea about Lemmy, Mastodon, and the rest of the FV…
The second paragraph could be from any game dev POV reading reviews of their game. I think it’s the nature of the beast.
IDK how some can take it, the onslaught that the internet dishes out. I think it’s a complex issue, and anonymity is probably a big part of the disconnect from community, as a consequence.
Do what you enjoy most, staying comfy, fostering your corner of the world/internet, and try not to fight every battle/combative poster, as it wears you down more than just reading the awful things.
I think the posters, that mean well and try to do something good, all wish they could do more, to have more positive impact, especially in this downward spiral of the present social-economical world. But that’s not as easy as a back hand negative comment, and it is a lot easier to dish out negativity.
But I’m not an expert, just someone that trys to understand and sees trends everywhere. I’m also a tourist, as you said, not having a particular community I routinely visit or maintain.
I thought about making one, but never done so before, and don’t know if I could handle seeing all the responses, plus the community I make would probably be too niche, and I wouldn’t want to step on toes of other similar and small communities, and I wouldn’t want to be on .world, because it’s too big, and Lemmy has that tankie Dev problem, and it might be too much work than foreseen… All sorts of hills/walls to overcome for me.
Like I said, IDK how some posters do it, and I’m grateful for them, even though I never outwardly said that before, probably because it hasn’t come up organically.
Interesting comments.
The second paragraph could be from any game dev POV reading reviews of their game. I think it’s the nature of the beast.
Actually I’d love that. Paying for the product and then reviewing it would be a massive upgrade from what I’m talking about, which is like the opposite-- paying nothing, demonstrating entitlement about the whole thing, and barely commenting. Almost like they believe CC’s are robo-humans posting content because of some internal programming, and don’t need any feedback or appreciation. Hell, a critical or bitchy review would mean someone was paying attention!
I’m also a tourist, as you said, not having a particular community I routinely visit or maintain.
The fact that you took the trouble to thoughtfully write all that suggests to me that you’re not a tourist in this case. And really, tourism itself isn’t bad. Readers and upvoters are always needed, and commenters outside of various obvious situations (like an “AskLemmy” post) are something of a luxury. My complaint(s) is moreso about more toxic situations. I’ll give you an example:
Maybe 6mos ago I created some kind of scratch post that included backstory on the content, some extra research, and included a couple links where people could find more. One of those happened to be a focused, cleaned-up google link that would specifically fetch image content. Some commenter then weighed in with ‘hur, hur, so now we’re including google searches? (as if we didn’t know how to do those already?)’
I replied that the link was handier that it might first appear (for example, some searches can take several tries to perfect), and that I wrote the whole post by hand and didn’t really need that kind of comment. They seemed shocked and offended by my reply, as if it was their gosh-given right to dump on whatever they felt like on, and the convo turned negative. Which I think touches on what you said above.
Politeness for me is part of good netiquette, and I (used to) expect a certain positivity when it comes to the general FV, but I do think there’s a major swath of users here who’ve normalised being obnoxious content-gobblers, essentially. That it just doesn’t occur to them to be any other way, even when an author / maintainer / etc is directly involved in wherever they might be being toxic users.
That said, I think a big part of the whole equation stems from the internet being like a giant, diverse box of free content everywhere, which arguably encourages a spoiled, entitled mindset for some. Now I don’t want to overstate all that, and I agree that the state of the world isn’t helping, but I can’t just ignore this stuff, either. So I kvetch…
You can cross-post your posts to established communities. I do it every time I post in my community and it allows my posts to actually get seen. After all, posting should be FUN.
A recent, very unpleasant posting experience in another community was sort of the catalyst for altering how I feel about the Fediverse, and I’m not sure what the future holds in terms of my outlook.
Block mean people and take a break from Fedi if you need to. Bad stuff happens from time to time and some people on Lemmy really deserve the block.
there’s a lot of ‘tourism’ in the FV feeds, and only a certain amount of commenting, especially the more niche a community is. But much more serious (to my mind) is that one can put loads of work in to dozens of posts, and the tourists will evidently barely remember you.
These ‘tourists’ are those who default to /all, I’d guess. For them, your posts are just a short distraction from doomscrolling. On the other hand, people who subscribe to communities probably never heard of your community as discoverability on Lemmy sucks.
Unlike Reddit, many of us run in to each other here frequently, and yet that doesn’t seem to be enough. Friendship and true community is pretty common IME on the now out-of-style webforums
A lot of users on here ignore user handles and even hide profile pictures from UI. I am not sure how common it is but given some mobile apps do it by default it should be common enough to influence the feeling of this place.
You can cross-post your posts to established communities. I do it every time I post in my community and it allows my posts to actually get seen.
My posts are seen pretty well because I’m going to specific communities to share their preferred content. In other words, I have a lot of different interests, so I basically custom-make posts for various places.
That said, I don’t really share posts from my own /c to other places, so that might be an idea. I do feel a little weird about it, because it kinda feels like I’d be spamming, but maybe that’s a feeling that would go away with time. I’ll think about it, tho!
For them, your posts are just a short distraction from doomscrolling.
Yeah, I think that’s right. And my guess is that a lot of people prefer to just view a lead picture or read a headline, get a small reaction from those things, and then keep scrolling. For them to actually open up the post and engage with what’s inside seems like it would take a much stronger reaction, hence it happens much less.
A lot of users on here ignore user handles and even hide profile pictures from UI. I am not sure how common it is but given some mobile apps do it by default it should be common enough to influence the feeling of this place.
Again, I think that’s pretty much it. Since I’m on desktop, I have this artificial bias that most people browse and see the Fediverse sort of like me, but in reality I think most users here access by mobile and have a much different UI experience.
And yeah, they rarely seem to really notice my name, my avatar, and my popup details for one reason or another. I’m always checking out other people’s info to try to better understand them, but increasingly I feel like I’m almost a weirdo in that, lol.
Decided to take your advice about the reposting thing.
Just posted this to my own community:
https://piefed.social/c/eurographicnovels@piefed.social/p/2263112/what-is-a-cataract-alix-let-s-take-a-lookAnd then reposted it as a link to HistoryArt:
https://piefed.social/c/historyart@piefed.social/p/2263121/what-is-a-cataract-alix-let-s-take-a-lookI guess the one thing I can’t predict is how the repost might appear from various instances, different apps, and from the Lemmy side of things. :S
That’s how it looks to me in Piefed:
Although I noticed that you didn’t use cross-post feature. It’s the rightmost button here:
It should hide duplicate posts, at least in Piefed. It’s much better than manually copying over your posts!
For me, using latest PF software, those ellipses appear all the way on the right side:
When I click on them, I get offered a whopping 17 different options, but not a “crosspost” ability. Closest option seems to be ‘Move to Another Community,’ but I thought that was more a case where the original community is abandoned, and you’re trying to salvaging content to a more current or related community?
That’s strange! Does it appear on posts with a link? If not then it’s probably some bug. If you still have a Lemmy account, you can cross-post from it and then enable notifications on the second post in Piefed. At least, that’s what I used to do back when Piefed couldn’t cross-post pictures.
Does it appear on posts with a link?
Like what, for example?
If you still have a Lemmy account
Ah no, that got nuked when Lemm.ee crashed (over a year ago). Not saying I doubt you, Lucy (pleased to meet you), but I’m guessing cross-posting is fully working via Lemmy, but not quite so on PF?
Like what, for example?
https://piefed.social/post/2263975
I’m guessing cross-posting is fully working via Lemmy, but not quite so on PF?
It used to be limited to posts with a link on PieFed until some versions ago when the functionality was extended to posts with an image. It still works perfectly fine on my instance that runs an older version of PF.
Lemmy, on the other hand, supports cross-posting any kind of post, including those without links and images.
pleased to meet you
Hello!
Yes the distrust and hate is weird. And the entitlement.
One thing that may apply is that a certain % of people who have problems behaving on other sites wind up landing here. In a sense, the exact opposites of what this place is built and run for, at least in my hippie-infused vision, haha. Not to mention the whole tankie-Lemmy angle, which of course bleeds in to other areas.
But again, especially as a long-time webforums user, I’m not convinced that the nature of info-feeds brings out the best in a userbase.
!fedilytics@piefed.zip (alt. link: Fedilytics) got its first non-me poster this week and it looks like the user is going to post to the community again, in the future. Also, talked to someone, who’s posts I cross-post into the community, and they offered to post the content to the community themselves, so that’s a nice gain.
So, potentially gained 2 non-me posters in a week. I’m happy with that growth :)
Edit: added alt. link.
It’s a nifty community! I linked to it in !fediverse@quokk.au’s sidebar.
That’s very kind. Thank you :)
Consider me a new subscriber. Good job!
Happy to have you. Let me know if you have any suggests to improve the community :)
Congrats!
Finally got the !nolawns@slrpnk.net wiki to be identical to the Reddit wiki! Or, at least all the info is the same. I think the way it’s linked is a bit different but that has more to do with reddits limitations. My Reddit mod team and I are discussing an overhaul on the wiki so I’m sure I’ll have more work to do in the future 🤣
This past week !nba@nba.space started to see some frequent activity: more people posting and even threads with conversation between the members. It’s funny that is happening during the off-season, but I hope that is a sign that things will pick up even more in October.
