You know one Christmas I would like the family to just quietly enjoy a good Christian Star Trek meme without someone mentioning Doctor Who!

Absolutely

That user was literally banned from StarTrek.website instance for harassment of it’s users, this is a textbook example of the problem with “call out” communities you are advocating for. They are more about creating drama than any kind of fact finding, let alone justice.

Well said!

Calling out mods for what? Not allowing your brand of freeze peach? Personally I think Lemmy needs more strong moderators because right now most instance’s “all” feeds are just another stale parade of “memes”. There is a lot of junk filler, and very few unique communities that make the Lemmyverse something that stands apart from Reddit.

I would also encourage instance admins to de-federate instances that host your idea of a “community” purpose built to publicly “call out” users. It’s toxic.

I have had similar thoughts, I think the answer ultimately lies in active mods that can really get to know a community and it’s users and identify when users are pushing a narrative even if they can’t confirm if they are a bot or not.

Also as @[email protected] pointed out, user registrations. On startrek.website we have a question that is easy for a star trek fan to answer but not easy for a bot (although getting back to your concern, chatGPT probably would have no problem)

It is yours.

I hate to be that guy, but “they” (the people with power to change course) have absolutely listened and understood. They don’t care.

Ah I got you, yes I totally agree. And I also do think gifs and shitposts etc can be shared and engaged with in an organic way that doesn’t force out slower content, which is also partly why active moderation is so important.

Clickbait is a push-away factor for me. I’m not here for outrage.

I think most users here would agree with you (I certainly do). There are dozens of apps out there that scroll the same memes endlessly and trying to make Lemmy competitive in the marketplace for attention by imitating that format will fail. I think the best strategy for Lemmy-growers is to lean into the strengths of the Fediverse by hosting discussions and communities that the Reddit algorithm suppresses.

This is a good thought provoking post, but I think most of the methods you describe here actually work against the Fediverse, both in terms of desired outcomes and actual growth.

• If a user comes to Lemmy (for example) and sees the same stale meme feed and engagement bait they see on Reddit, what’s the incentive to switch? What makes Lemmy unique?

• Of the users who are here and understand the reasons for not using commercial social media, most are probably trying to avoid the bulk of the sort of content made by the suggestions you give.

• Growth-for-growth’s-sake puts more burden on instance admins for reasons that don’t involve growing a sense of community (presumably the reason they are investing time in the first place).

My point is that Lemmy can never compete with Reddit in terms of attention and distractability and trying to build “community” around that here will always fail. We should lean into Lemmy’s strengths, focus on growing communities and discussions and the kind of thing the Reddit algorithm suppresses.

startrek.website/c/risafterdark

10/10

I’m from Acameria, I only work in outer space.

Q: What’s the difference between Lemmy MAGAs and Lemmy Leftists?

A: Nothing! All they ever post is fantasies about “liberal tears”.

This is not what you want to hear, but even in Star Trek Earth had to go through a third world war, and in the devastation it was really the Vulcans who had to step in and basically played nanny for a generation after they were like “oh fuck no those rednecks have a warp drive?”

Blazin Bev spinoff when

Fun fact, Odo’s deputies wear the exact same uniform as Odo meaning it’s literally made of Odo.

How does it work self hosting? Is it querying other search engines or just maintaining a database on your server?

A “reply guy” (wikipedia) is someone who responds to posts/comments in an annoying (usually smug/condescending) way, like what you think of when you think of a “redditor”. Big platforms like Reddit like reply-guys because they generate engagement (often someone telling the reply-guy to f-off) it’s also not a behavior that an algorithm can recognize, so human mods/admins are needed to curb it.

Over time, if Reply-guys are not banned they tend to make the overall ecosystem too exhausting to participate in, and (authentic, desireable) engagement declines.