Ask Lemmy is a place to ask thought provoking questions. The mods have been lenient with some of the recent posts on the basis that they must provoke thought for some people, but after seeing two posts essentially saying "what do you think of my stick?", I believe we can raise the bar a bit on what kind of thoughts we want to provoke here.
Repetitive meme posts can get annoying, and mods should intervene in some cases, but I'd prefer if the rules were more open. It's hard to determine what is "low effort" and "thought-provoking", and Lemmy is small so further limiting content isn't that productive
I think people using this community are looking for something similar to AskReddit, and it's totally ok if you want to be different from that since the Fediverse allows for more communities to be made.
Personally, (and you don't need to run the community like this), I'm looking for a community for open-ended and discussion provoking questions, not necessarily thought-provoking questions. The stick one was fun and lead to fun discussion
I sort of agree, mainly with the lower population of Lemmy concern, albeit I've also seen other questions that, while not low effort necessarily, have made me wonder, "Wouldn't this perhaps be better in a more specific community, or in a different style, like NoStupidQuestions?"
However, low population, not a moderator, so the mixed thoughts have left me refraining from asking or saying anything as I kinda think we already have an abundance of communities sparsely populated as-is and I'm not into backseat moderating. Still, the thoughts have been there and this thread's given a nice opportunity to voice them.
I’ve also seen other questions that, while not low effort necessarily, have made me wonder, “Wouldn’t this perhaps be better in a more specific community, or in a different style, like NoStupidQuestions?”
Yea I've seen a few of those too. Questions that are too specific to a particular app/program or a specific personal problem. Those don't really belong here
"How do I do X on program Y" (bad) vs. "What's your favourite program that does Z" (good)
The most fun part of the early internet was the feeling that it was the Wild West. Lawlessness and fun. Obviously, rules are needed to keep things under control, but I agree that erring on the side of having fun isn’t a bad thing. It’s more inclusive and it lets people express themselves.
One of my favorite things to see on Lemmy is people who lurked on Reddit but feel free to talk here. Being too heavy-handed with rules might discourage those people from contributing.
Both should be welcome. Especially with the current state of Lemmy (low user base), over moderation can be a real thing.
More narrowly tailored communities have narrower appeal and Q&A communities function off of their number of users.
This is one reason why on Reddit r/AskReddit (44M) has more users than r/AskMen (5.8M). And why r/AskMen has more users than r/AskMenOverThirty (458K).
At this point there should probably be a generic "just ask random questions for other Lemmy users" community to direct those people to. People don't seem to get that this one is similar to AskReddit in purpose, but Lemmy is small so there's no immediately obvious general communities.
Oh. To be fair, the 'stick' thing has been a running meme for a couple weeks now in some subs.
I... Apologize for my part in the stick fiasco. My 8 year old REALLY wanted me to post about it a few weeks ago.
Might've been in reddit. I honestly don't notice the difference until I go try to use any of the short cuts that spez refused to implement in his shit app
There’s tons of dumbass stick posts on a community that was recently created for the purpose of sharing pictures of sticks. It’s essentially the new beans meme for all the kids to rally around.
Well, you got what you asked for. As one is not allowed to ask real questions here, you get the "thought provoking questions" you wanted. No sympathy or pity from my side for wasting a good community name for a socio-psychological experiment.
Look at the charter. This group is not for asking real questions, as in "Does anyone know..." or "How do I...", but for "though provoking" discussion starters. A bit like r/showerthoughts on reddit was. For that, a name like "asklemmy" is wasted.
What if that stick is one of the most important sticks in history, and OP is just waiting to reveal the truth? What if it was there when Hitler died? Maybe it killed Hitler. You don't know.
No it isn't. They're trying to make it a place to ask genuine question not to just goof off with silly things. They're just defining it a little more which is absolutely necessary.