A bit too often taking part in discussions on Reddit was just mentally draining. Initially the topic looks so promising and I would love to discuss it. But too often people were not interested in sharing ideas beyond their own opinion, and many people were obsessed with “winning” the discussion.
Trying so discuss the finer points back and forth in a satisfying way was a rare occasion. Even In not so big subreddits you would think were filled with like minded people this was difficult. and comments were trying to end the discussion instead of coming with an idea and trying to further it.
How can we all promote good discussion on this site or the wider fediverse?
So far, I’ve found conversation here to be rather civil. I imagine it’s due to good moderation, a small user base, and no bots. Enjoy the peace and quiet for the time being, but be sure to report any of that stuff to the mods.
be sure to report any of that stuff to the mods
Please do, yes! It’s definitely going to be better to get some reports that end up not requiring any action than to not get reports about behavior which should have action taken (especially with the relatively low volume of reports at the moment)
This may seem very petty, but I wonder how much the lack of permanent user karma has an effect. I doubt many people here even cared about it, but on Reddit it seemed to drive a lot of the lazy hanger-on comments that were cheap karma boosts.
My understanding is that the fake internet points were once a motivator, but with enough karma, an account could be auctioned off and used to post bot content while ranking high in the Reddit algorithms.
I think that once people see Lemmy as a means to have genuine conversations, that’s what’s going to stick. Heck, this is the most active I’ve even been across any platform. I’ve fired up a few communities and I’m engaging after almost 15 years lurking.
It’s a small enough community that I feel I’m making an impact. That’s why I’m sticking around and ditching my Reddit account.
There was certainly a profit motive. That’s a reason for the kinds of bots that would repost popular posts in an attempt to build up karma.
There was also just good old fashioned psychological addiction to having a bigger number tied to an account. Over the years I’ve seen plenty of huffs about account or post karma by real people who were really riled up.
I mean, if those points could buy marshmallows or something, that’s worth gloating. Otherwise, it’s an odd pursuit and use of time. I suppose it could be a form of primal resource hoarding, in a way.
I don’t disagree that it is irrational. This is exactly my point: The kinds of people who value meaningless points tied to their account create a lower standard of discussion. When the goal is more points at all costs, it conflicts with quality. The lack of account total points on Lemmy doesn’t appeal to such a person.
Nailed it. I’m curious to see how that turns out. I love the idea that a user, community, or entire instance can be blocked to keep a higher standard of discussion.
My personal take on it is that such behavior comes from the large-site mentality. Smaller subs initially do have higher levels of discourse, but each posting account is still sharing a karma score across the entire site. Eventually it shifts to discussion-ending posts with high upvotes.
I have high hopes that the decentralized nature of things like Lemmy will help preserve quality topic discussion. Lemmy.ml being overloaded pushed me to find a server instance more in line with my individual topics and ending up joining a very nice science community. Shout-out to Mander.xyz
I think you make a good point with the persistent karma score. Basically, Reddit is a site that has gamified popularity to the point where everyone is trying to make the quick, easy joke or reference as quickly as possible to score the highest number of points. The existence of sites to track the highest karma accounts only served to reinforce that behavior, which wound up having a bunch of knock-on effects like gimmick accounts that jammed themselves anywhere no matter how appropriate (which led to groupies that would try catching collateral karma), bots copying higher-scoring comments to try building a “trusted” account to then flip and sell to advertisers, and likely a bunch of other stuff that I’m not considering. In the end, there was a lot of shouting into the void and not much actual conversation. That’s how it felt to me outside of smaller subreddit, at least.
Yes this reflects many of my observations as well. I mostly lurked on the lager subs, and if I did post it would be on niche hobby, or the sub for my local area.
I’ve been consciously trying to ask myself before posting a comment here; is this something I’d say to someone’s face in person? If not, I readjust my tone or simply don’t comment.
Exactly! The Internet is the real world. Framing it as a virtual Far West where anything goes is harming human interactions and that attitude is bleeding into traditional channels of communication. Beehaw is giving me hope.
heavy moderation and trying to make people aware of logical fallacies and the awful stuff in Eristic Dialectic: The Art of Winning an Argument. People need to learn to be able to turn away from fights online.
This is by no means a complete list, but I’ve got some suggestions:
Be sure to read and understand a post/comment before replying
Avoid being pedantic
Give people the benefit of the doubt
Remember that an opposing viewpoint is NOT a personal attack
Everything you mentionned is basically how I give it a go in the real world. That is how human relationships are supposed to be. Everyday. With everyone.
I feel like that’s partially intrinsic to the upvote system. one nice thing is having upvote and downvote count on here - you can see if people are still supporting your point instead of just a negative score
Should the space get bigger and bigger inevitably it will become the way it is on reddit.
What I found most helpful was finding smaller subreddits and sticking to those and blocking keywords and subreddits I found too big and mentally draining from appearing when I went to /r/all. Like way too many popular subs focused on promoting topics that would antagonize people.
So my reddit experience has been positive. But, it was due to great third party tools, so I think the key is going to be more feature rich curation tools whether it’s official lemmy ones integrated into the site or extensions/apps.
I don’t think believing that the community will stay the same should numbers increase is something that can be relied on with how it only takes a small percentage of the userbase to start skewing content as the population grows and grows. Tools I think is the way forward, and why third party apps were invaluable for some for being able to be in a good headspace while browsing reddit instead of being exposed to unfiltered reddit.
That’s a great strategy to stick to. I did realize that I would sometimes lurk around the rage-bait subreddits and find myself in a distasteful mood afterwards. Hopefully, there won’t be a lot of those shaming communities that would be created
/r/all I noticed over the years would have so many subs focusing on highlighting the worst aspects of humanity that you’d be left thinking everyone out there wants to start a fight with you, rob you, or murder you. Reddit had no problems removing nsfw stuff but was happy to let videos with violence be present.
It was interesting seeing so many different variations of amianasshole type subs keep popping up too. People naturally gravitate towards rage since it does invoke deep emotional responses.
