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:

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.
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.
If you're a lurker, post something. Add your voice.
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.
Post what makes you happy rather than what you're angry about.
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.
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)
If you're already doing the above: THANK YOU ❤️. Maybe consider posting a little more unless you think additional contributions would be spammy.
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?

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 2 points 8 hours ago

Great ideas and well articulated

[–] Disillusionist@piefed.world 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

The Fediverse is one of the precious few bastions where real talk can happen without algorithmic shaping and interference. News and politics are a fundamental part of society, and inseparable from real discussion. I disagree with the idea that to make the Fediverse better, we have to sacrifice these forms of discussion in favor of "anything else".

Your call for stopping, slowing down, or posting literally anything else is inadvertently also a call for self-censorship in service of your personal ideal. You saying that this is the answer to the problem of attracting new membership is you expressing your own preferences and applying them broadly, and isn't borne out by fact. People are not avoiding any of the major social media platforms due to these things, and it seems unlikely they are avoiding the Fediverse for this reason either.

The Fediverse's lower membership is likely more of a complicated problem involving things like a broad lack of awareness of it, and the average person being put off by the technical-seeming complexity of it, which makes it appear less accessible. They are also reluctant to step outside of their existing communities, which is exacerbated by the fact that those communities tend to settle into those platforms that appear easier and more familiar.

Bottom line is, I respect your right to your opinions and your right to engage with the Fediverse according to your own needs, wants, and perspectives. I however strongly disagree with your call for community-wide self censorship in the name of filling the Fediverse with positivity at the expense of real talk under the premise of attracting new membership.

You're more than welcome to spread as much positivity as you want wherever you want, and to distance yourself from anything you don't personally favor. By all means start a community, encourage others to start communities based on your preferences. But calls for self-censorship on the Fediverse are problematic at best, especially given the circumstances we are currently living in.

[–] FrostyTrichs@crazypeople.online 4 points 2 days ago

💚

[–] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 31 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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?

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I would love to not be bombarded with US news in communities where it has no business showing up.

[–] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think there’s a lot of communities where the mods have gone inactive and no-one’s noticed yet, so when you get stuff in the wrong community there’s no-one to clean it up. Iirc, there’s a process for getting added as a mod for those communities — maybe it’s something we could help with?

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe. On the other hand, I can see a mod being reticent about nuking a post that has a high upvote ratio and a healthy discussion going.

[–] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lemmy’s mod tools allow for much more nuanced responses than just nuking a post. For instance, I think locking the post and adding a comment pointing folks to the same post in a more relevant community is something most people would react positively to. And, it’s definitely okay to have some communities be for very small groups of people with a very restrictive mod policy — there’s always a bigger, more permissive community available for people that want to discuss whatever.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

it’s definitely okay to have some communities be for very small groups of people with a very restrictive mod policy

I'd say that's not only ok but desirable. I forgot about locking posts, that would indeed be effective.

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, there is the economy community that only post politics on it

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

To be fair, politics shape a lot of the economy. But it pops up everywhere, TV show communities, hobbies, everything.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 7 points 3 days ago

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.

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[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 34 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The worse things get the more important positivity becomes, mrdown. You can at least try.

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The worse things get the most vocal people should so we find solutions. Hiding your face in the sand do not help

[–] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Panicked screaming doesn't exactly help either man. Good luck out there :)

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Acknowledging the reality and be vocal about it is not panicked screaming

[–] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And keeping a light in the darkness isn't sticking your 'face' in the sand. Whatever you try, I hope it works for you :)

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I talked about balance in my first comment. I talked about finding solutions aka keeping light in the darkness. I don't know why people are always selectively reading my comments

[–] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Communication can be tricky. I always wonder what motivates someone to downvote the other half of a conversation like this. Hope you feel better understood next time and have a nice day :)

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

An advice for you. Hide downvotes and upvotes in setting . It is good for people well being including me

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

lemmy and doomerism are synonymous at this point

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

What I said is factual

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 23 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

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).

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

rage drives engagement.

it's just how the internet works. angry people post and reply a lot more than non-angry people.

and angry posts tend to be shorter, easier to comprehend, and induce more angry responses.

thoughtful and non-rage takes don't drive engagement from people. it mostly bores them.

people come to be entertained, more than anything else.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

(unless there’s just a massive bot problem which I don’t have reason to suspect)

Actually those are known to exist - see e.g. https://lemmy.ca/post/58955248 - though as evidenced by that same post, the admins tend to be pretty on top of shutting them down.

Below that though, at the level of communities, Lemmy has a moderation problem. Reports from one instance to anther do not federate (well, on PieFed they do, but on Lemmy they don't) - although like everything else this is promised to be fixed "soon" (same as last year iirc, and to a lesser degree the year before that too, though probably more in the sense of just having put it onto the roadmap), which allows toxicity to thrive. Ironically it also encourages having toxic mods as well, seeing as they are the only ones willing to put up with the majority of the negative flood pushed at them.

And don't even get me started on the lack of notification to someone that their content was removed by a mod - people tend to find out days/weeks/years later/if at all, meaning that they continue unabated, not even aware at all (or at least, at first) that they have been so censured.

Lemmy also is lacking is so many other ways, e.g. content discovery is often primarily achieved by browsing All, rather than lets say by browsing Topic areas (I am not discouraging the existence of the All Feed, just bemoaning the lack of many alternatives to it). So communities get "stumbled upon" much more readily by people not actively searching for something anywhere close to that content type, who might tend to emotionally vomit upon people rather than be genuinely interested in constructive dialog.

Reddit is a multimillion dollar company and even though the vast majority of the features rolled out over the last decade either ignored or actively went against what the userbase wanted, it nonetheless was a fully feature-complete product. e.g. it triggered notifications upon removal of your content, it had a modmail allowing you to communicate with the team to ask why, and posts removed from a community remained active to anyone possessing the URL, allowing people to continue discussions already begun, which personally as a mod of a small gaming community I used to explain to the OP why I felt their post had to be removed, and we could talk about it back and forth. None of that can be done here (although PieFed now retains deleted posts, rendering them inactive/locked but preserving their content to be read, so that e.g. a Q&A would preserve the A part even if the OP deleted their Q).

The Threadiverse is great for FOSS, not so much great as in overall terms. We make sacrifices to be here, and the benefits tend to be more abstract and harder to explain in few words (at least without needing all kinds of MAJOR caveats about what does not work). Even Linux took decades to arrive at where it is at today, and until then it was primarily a CLI tool for all that time (gfx options often did not work as well or even properly at all, earlier in its development).

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I guess what you're calling "toxicity" is something I've dealt with more-or-less successfully by just blocking and switching instances. In fact, those are so far out of my mind I forgot to include them in my "see things through the eyes of a new user" experiment (I only unblocked communities/instances for that). But yeah, considering how many people, communities, and lemmy.ml + dbzer0 I've had to block and how much work that was and continues to be, I guess that does speak to a bigger problem that could be solved by better modding. I would hope some of the more egregious bad behavior only gets a pass because this place is so relatively small, but I fear that's just me being naive.

Topic areas would be amazing and a much better onboarding experience than dumping you into the community list or /all. Topics you want to see, topics you never want to see, and maybe have it build a default subscription and/or default block list for those. And maybe a better "duplicate" detection system where there's like 5 posts for the same non-story about a rich person farting and the Fediverse breaking out the torches and pitchforks over it. At least then you could slow-boil you way to the angry stuff that currently dominates the feed and give you a chance to turn those off rather than turning you away from the platform.

I would love to try Piefed because I keep hearing that it's basically adding all the features Lemmy has needed forever, but TBH, my instance would have to migrate to Piefed or stand up a copy. I was on .world before I moved to startrek.website and the "feel" is just so much better here (general negativity of the overall Threadiverse notwithstanding). As you said, that's primarily due to modding and giving the perma boot to the ones who don't play well with others (as large as my block list is here, it's significantly smaller than the blocklist I had on .world before I just gave up it as an instance).

Even Linux took decades to arrive at where it is at today

True. I'll admit I'm impatient (my major remaining rough edge therapy has not yet conquered lol) but every time I see a brand new account coming in with their first post bitching about getting banned from Reddit it's just a reminder that we're not attracting the best and brightest here but rather the ones who have nowhere else to go. And they bring that behavior here and it just seems like it takes us further away from becoming a real alternative people actually want to go to. I'm going off on a tangent, I know, so I'll stop here.

[–] Disillusionist@piefed.world 1 points 17 hours ago

Your suggestions about topic areas and default subscriptions sound great actually. I could see something like that being helpful.

we're not attracting the best and brightest here but rather the ones who have nowhere else to go

I find this statement troubling. Such negative generalizations don't seem accurate, helpful, or fair.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

we’re not attracting the best and brightest here but rather the ones who have nowhere else to go. And they bring that behavior here and it just seems like it takes us further away from becoming a real alternative people actually want to go to.

This right here. There's a famous adage that goes "why would I want to be a member of a club that would accept me as a member?", which encourages us to look within, but it's undeniably true as well (however much we may want to deny it) that we are influenced by the actions of those who we choose to spend our time with. Echo chambers that act to funnel misinformation (or worse, active disinformation) are so incredibly dangerous. Yet it seems nearly impossible to escape from such - though we do get to choose our favorite flavoring of it.

I will note that making an account on PieFed does not represent any kind of "commitment" at all, and in fact has ancillary benefits such as reserving your username in advance in case you ever do decide to switch. Simply make an account on PieFed.social and you'll get to see first-hand what all it offers! Do beware though bc most likely one glance at that sign-up wizard will make you fall in love 💕, and then more and more often you'll find yourself using your PieFed rather than STW alt account. But is that a bad thing, to have options to choose from?! 😋

For a new member coming to Lemmy, my advice would be to:

Block instances
Block communities
Subscribe to communities (traditionally by scrolling through All)
Block users
Comment and Post

We need to move past these bare-bones basics. Which I don't see much activity happening there on the Lemmy side to improve any of that, though I do see much happening in PieFed, hence I am placing my hopes for the future into it.

[–] Jimbo@pawb.social 18 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago

i'm from the US and I agree. Lemmy has really gone downhill the past few months and its FULL of ragebait posting of craptastic 'news' articles.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago

I presume that people already know about the older communities like !wholesome@reddthat.com and all the communities listed in its side-bar, but also check out the newer !nonpolitical_comics@piefed.social.

[–] Mantzy81@aussie.zone 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ah, the ostrich approach to life.

[–] Jimbo@pawb.social 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For a successful community, this one (which I also lurk in) is oddly topic-specific. They must be doing something right. Copy them!

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah, the fediverse could definitely use more niche stuff.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 4 points 3 days ago

Thanks for participating. Never too late to start riding again!

[–] mintiefresh@piefed.social 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 7 points 3 days ago (4 children)

+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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[–] fujiwood@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Books has a reading Bingo if you'd like to participate. :)

https://lemmy.world/post/38545766

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[–] dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 days ago

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!

[–] crazycraw@crazypeople.online 8 points 3 days ago

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.

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