There are a significant amount of questions here that do not follow the criteria in the sidebar, especially “1. Open-ended question” and “5. An actual topic of discussion”. It seems some folks want others to do research for them, or to troubleshoot some random issue.
This bugs me. Of course, I can ignore and/or downvote those posts, and I do. However, I’m wondering if anyone else feels the same way. I’m don’t want to stifle content and discussion on such a burgeoning platform, but could we do something about this?
Perhaps we could “tag” posts in some way (I know tags aren’t officially supported yet) or maybe we could redirect folks to a sister community for non-discussion questions. Or something else?
Just throwin’ it out there. If I’m alone in this, I’ll take my lumps and quietly sit back down.
EDIT: Already seeing good points in the replies! makes sense- probably a bit too early to be sticklers about topics.
EDIT 2: Really appreciate the responses and discussion! I appreciate the discourse and also not being downvoted to oblivion 😄
FINAL EDIT: Thanks to all who commented. It’s nice to know I’m not alone, but I do accept what most (including mods) have said- cracking down on the types of questions is not a priority when the community is still growing.
I don’t care.
I help moderate a community that tries to mirror how things were done on Reddit, and over time we decided “this isn’t Reddit, we don’t have nearly as many users as Reddit, so there’s no need to run this place like Reddit”.
Eventually this community and others will reach a tipping point where there’s a need to cull posts and have stricter content guidelines, but for now I think it’s ok to be a bit lax.
Yeah there’s only so many actually open-ended questions you can ask without being repetitive, while also on relatively limited users.
Yeah there’s only so many actually open-ended questions you can ask without being repetitive
lmao. I’m curious what you think this number is. How many open ended questions are there? Just ballpark.
Asking open ended questions that generate discussion is a good policy regardless of hating reddit
Eh, yeah but we don’t have the numbers to remove content left and right. Better to have mediocre content right now than 1 really good post every 2 weeks
Better to have mediocre content right now than 1 really good post every 2 weeks
Is it, though? To the best of my knowledge, Lemmy’s algorithm doesn’t penalize communities for low activity; it’s a pretty rudimentary algo based on votes over the last X hours. There isn’t risk of this community becoming de-ranked or anything along those lines. The good content will be just as visible as the bad content (for users browsing their all/sub feeds), so do we really need the bad content in the first place?
I like it how it is. I dislike active moderation and arbitrary rules. The community makes the rules, good mods enforce what the community pushes through, and not just one or two vocal people. If the community engages, and it hurts no one, why interfere. At best you discourage participation.
Yes, someone does care.
You do.
Next question.
I don’t mind questions being somewhat focused or topical. But the ones I don’t like are “Here is my long-winded opinion on x, what do you think?” or “Here’s a random article or other thing I found on the internet, thoughts?”
If it’s a post asking opinions on a recent event, that’s one thing. But I think the soapboxing should be limited. There’s more that a post should need to actually qualify as a discussion-fueling question than just the fact they ended a sentence with a question mark somewhere in their post.
Thoughts?
I agree regarding soapboxing. I think the posts that barely hide the fact they’re looking for reactions or agreement rather than discussion are probably the most grating and least constructive use of this community.
However, I think it remains to be seen if the community believes it’s something that needs to be addressed, and if so, if the mods are even conducive to changes. I do see the sidebar states “loosely moderated”. I am open to the possibility that I’m just being uptight and may just need to move on 😆
