Actual Discussion @lemmy.ca howrar @lemmy.ca 3 mo. ago

(OTHER) How are we doing?

This community has been around for a few months now. How do we feel about it? Are things working out? Any plans for further growing the community?

This is one of the topics I’ve been thinking a lot about quite a bit for the past few years (i.e. how to set up a community that values discussions with diverse viewpoints), so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts in relation to what I’m seeing here.

I think such a community necessarily needs to be a full self-contained instance, or else you’ll get very little activity. Think about how these discussions usually start. Someone posts an article/meme/question/etc, a few people show up and comment with similar thoughts about it worded in slightly different ways, then another shows up and goes against the grain, everyone dogpiles on them, and that’s when the real discussion starts. Very rarely do people go out of their way to ask “what do you think of X controversial topic?” And even if you do, that only leads to a very high level discussion that very quickly gets stale. If you get discussion in the context of specific events, then these discussions can be grounded in reality and lead to more unique context-dependent takes each time it comes up.
Regarding upvotes/downvotes: as stated in the rules, they should be used to measure whether a post/comment is a positive contribution to the discussion rather than the number of people who agree with your viewpoint. I don’t believe there’s a way to actually enforce this with the voting system we currently have, but I also think a relatively simple change can fix it. It will require a bit of coding.

My proposal is a voting system with two votes: one to say that you agree/disagree, and another to say good/bad contribution. With this system, you can easily see if someone only thinks posts they agree with are good contributions, and you can use that information to calculate a total score that weighs their votes accordingly. It’s also small enough of a change that I think most people won’t have a problem figuring it out.

Thoughts?

Also, thank you Ace for taking the initiative in creating this place. It makes me happy to see that others want to see this change too.

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5 comments

Hey! I wish the damn system would notify me when a post is made in the community, so we can start that as a wishlist feature right now. It makes it hard to engage and grow a Community when you don't even know someone has posted there. When I browse Lemmy, I tend to use All and simply filter out subs I have no interest in. I don't think many people exclusively visit specific subs.

First off, I appreciate the positivity! You have no idea how many aggro messages I get because I had the gall to even broach subjects that some people don't like. I've had PMs from people telling me they're going to kill themselves because of threads I've responded to where I pointed out logic failures, been called every name under the sun, had the sub reported multiple time because of threads questioning a personal moral narrative the user had, and much more. It gets to be a real drag when you see a reply notification and get a twinge of apprehension because you're not sure what you'll get.

I have to head out now (work stuff), unfortunately, but I'll edit this reply in a few hours with thoughts on your proposals above, I just wanted to make sure I replied ASAP so you can see that there's some movement.