There have been a couple of posts somewhat recently asking what can be done to attract new users to the Fediverse. My answer was basically “make it something new people would want to see and stick around for”. The crux of that was basically less news, less politics, less rage and more, well, anything else.
So, I would like to propose a challenge to all: Let’s try that. At least for a week.
Sound good? Here’s how you can participate:
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If you’re one who posts a lot of news/politics…stop or at least slow down. Post literally anything else. Or try to post less rage-inducing news and try to dig up the good news that’s happening. Sorry !upliftingnews@lemmy.world but it’s the regular news communities that are flooding the zone with every single bad thing that happens anywhere in the world, so we may be stealing some of your content with this one.
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Think before posting something. Are you only posting it because you’re mad about it and you think other people should be mad about it too? If so, maybe post something else. Is there already similar coverage of that? Chances are, we don’t need more of it.
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If you’re a lurker, post something. Add your voice.
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Refrain from upvoting / booting all the negativity. Yes, it may feel good to upvote for visibility because “people need to know this” but the end result is the feed turning into a list of things to rage about. If you see good/non-rage news, upvote that for visibility. I’ve seen many posts like that languish with a few tens of upvotes at most while the rage-inducing news gets hundreds of upvotes.
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Post what makes you happy rather than what you’re angry about.
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Avoid dogpiling on people if they express a different opinion. I’m not saying feed the trolls or pat them on the head, just merely “disengage” or avoid the impulse to virtue dump on them and such.
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If you have a hobby, share it! There’s plenty of hobby communities that would greatly benefit from additional contributors. If you’re boring like me, well, there’s !Dullsters@dullsters.net or !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world (the latter welcomes all as the name is just a reference to the original)
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If you’re already doing the above: THANK YOU ❤️. Maybe consider posting a little more unless you think additional contributions would be spammy.
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Anything else you can think of to make the homepage/experience feel more welcoming and less like an angry mob (suggestions in the comments are more than welcome).
I know not everyone will participate, and that’s okay. Simply adding more positivity and posting/boosting less rage can have a positive effect on what shows up on /all which is what potential new users see by default.
So, let’s try this for a week and see what happens. Who knows? Maybe the established userbase will find it refreshing as well.
Who’s with me?
It’s really tough anymore to post positive content here. It feels like spitting on a fire to put it out.
I’m from the US, but I’ve always tried to include everyone in my posts, at the price of looking ignorant every now and then when I get things wrong, but it’s nice when I’ve had people from across the world remark how they’re pleasantly surprised to see something local to them being covered by a non-local. I’ve learned so much in return from just having brief interactions with users from other countries, just by showing some genuine interest in them, their languages, and their home countries. But outside of my own posts, it’s hard to find a place on Lemmy where there doesn’t seem to be things looking to drive a wedge between us.
I used to be able to jump into random posts, even if it was something I wasn’t very familiar with, to try to get conversations going, but so many news/political posts just feel rigged to get people riled up, and I’ll scroll through and not find anything to interact with a lot now.
Plenty of people tell me that I’m doing something important by doing positive stuff here. I really like the small community we’ve got of people that regularly interact. It’s hard to feel like I’m making any kind of difference though. I’m going to show up as long as people are talking to me, but there’s plenty of times I ask myself why I don’t just devote this time back into music or my volunteer work. I’ve dropped all my news and politics podcasts at this point because I’m sick of hearing it all. I censor myself on discussing animal rights issues because I don’t want to add to the pile of negative stuff to worry about. I’ll keep at it the best I can, but a lot of people here are sure making it an exhausting effort some days.
Yeah, to pretty much all that.
My experience here is generally pretty pleasant, but it took a LOT of work blocking untold numbers of communities, users, and instances to get here. Other on-boarding difficulties aside (for less savvy users), it’s just a big ask to expect them to do all that work just to not be hit in the face with all the negativity and raging and dig deep for everything else. Reddit may have numerous flaws, but at least I can go to the front page and it doesn’t feel like I’m walking into the midst of an angry mob.
My two cents is basically this: We did this to ourselves here. Elsewhere, we might have blamed the algorithms for pushing rage-bait front and center, but here it’s 100% organic (unless there’s just a massive bot problem which I don’t have reason to suspect).
I definitely want to see more non-news content, but I don’t think the threadiverse needs less of anything. If you wanna post news and politics, have at it! The rest of us just need to get on their level with all our other hobbies and interests.
Also, it’s discouraging to post in a niche community and always harvest downvotes from people that don’t like that you’re posting at all. I get it, there aren’t other NWSL/MLS fans out here, but could you please stop doing drive-bys and downvoting all my articles?
I only say there needs to be less because that’s all that seems to get pushed to the top. Ever since I saw the few posts asking how to get new users here, I’ve been trying to put myself in their shoes and look at things raw and unfiltered like a brand new user would see. Sadly, now that I’ve looked, I can’t un-see.
The rest of us just need to get on their level with all our other hobbies and interests.
100% agree :) But those don’t seem to get the rage clicks like all the bad news stuff and get buried even on scaled sort.
there aren’t other NWSL/MLS fans out here, but could you please stop doing drive-bys and downvoting all my articles?
I don’t know what either of those are, but I just went and threw some upvotes to some of your stuff because it was non-political / non-news. And one of them was highly downvoted for reasons I cannot possibly fathom.
We are living in a world full of conflicts and political tension that we never seen since the end of world war 2. You can’t expect people to post less negstive contents. If you talk about balance between negative and positive content I can agree
If you have a hobby, share it!
Done! Come check out !micromobility@lemmy.world if you like bikes, e-bikes, scooters, skateboards, motorcycles, e-unis, office chairs you decided to roll down the road on, or other personal transportation options.
I do! Though I’m fully a lurker there and only passively contribute with my upvotes since I haven’t biked or even e-biked in ages.
Thanks for participating. Never too late to start riding again!
Honestly, I’m just trying to scroll less and do other stuff. I’ve started to do a lot more reading instead and it’s helped me a lot.
The world seems so broken right now.
Books has a reading Bingo if you’d like to participate. :)
Oh that’s really cool. Will check it out for sure.
Thanks!
+1 for reading more. I took a break a few weeks ago, but I’ve been deep into the Star Trek books since last summer.
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I started with “A Stitch in Time” but that was only because I just wanted to read it.
Here’s the resource someone shared with me for reading order: https://www.thetrekcollective.com/p/trek-lit-reading-order.html?m=1
I read several before seeing that but thankfully all the ones I read were marked as good starting points.
Thanks for the recommendations! I deleted my original comment because I thought maybe it was too off topic. Silly me
Lol, I guess the reply still shows up in the inbox. Even if I had noticed it was marked deleted, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to recommend something Star Trek related 😆
I’ve been mulling this stuff over.
I think going fedi (and open source) is like hitting rock bottom/finding jesus/starting therapy. All we can do is try and remove the stigma.
Yeah, all the doomerism is pulling me down, too. My best solution so far is to not interact. Not even a downvote. Contrarianism and acute cynisism need feedback to thrive, and the bastards ain’t getting any more of my blood!
I’ve been blocking so many news communities because I go on Lemmy to have a good time. Every second post recently has been politics and I’m so sick of it. I am so for this
Ah, the ostrich approach to life.
I live in a tiny country separated from the US by the largest ocean in the world. If WWIII happens I’m sure I’ll hear about it from somewhere.
Likely due to your Netflix account suddenly not working for some reason and you’re missing the latest episode of Gabby’s Dollhouse
there was an attempt at this on reddit years back where it was only positive stories only.
Then of course it got too big, people complained and then there were two competing, “we’re more positive than that shit hole!” rivalries that brought both down and ended as expected with most folks moving on. as we always do.
it’s difficult to find or make a community of like minded folks where there isn’t an outsider trying to take advantage.
shitty people are gonna shit.
That’s why I subscribe to aww and dad jokes too
Love me some dad jokes lol. They’re about the only kind I’m good at.
More mods and admins on Fedi need to step up and take bolder action, imo. Whether intentional or not, a mods inaction will often set the tone for a given community more than their actions.
Imagine the community you mod meets in person and someone is being obnoxious and disruptive. A new attendee is not going to speak up, they’re going to look to you for guidance. If you allow unwelcoming behavior to persist, then attendees learn that being loud is how to get noticed, and if they don’t want to be loud (as many of us don’t) they’ll just stop going.
Modding on Lemmy is a pain in the ass, especially for larger communities. The mod tools need to be vastly improved (especially resolving multiple reports on the same post and being able to easily ban people who submit spam/troll reports.
The challenge is that a lot of people came to the Fediverse (especially the Threadiverse) because of what they perceived as overactive moderation. Mods here are often discouraged from taking action unless it’s extreme.
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Item #10: Don’t be this person.☝️
Like, wow. None of what I said has anything to do with that. This is the kind of jumping to insane conclusions, putting words in peoples’ mouths shit that turns people away.
