this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
1 points (100.0% liked)

Fedigrow

327 readers
1 users here now

To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks

Resources:

Megathreads:

Rules:

  1. Be respectful
  2. No bigotry

founded 3 weeks ago
MODERATORS
 

Content jacking and top posting other people's content is really bad for Lemmy. It's also just being a dick to other people making content on the platform.

  • feed is spammy
  • divides conversation
  • chills engagement
  • makes Lemmy less friendly to posters

This pattern is very common on lemmy, and needs to stop.

This is often used to attack or force migrate conversations from a instance someone doesn't like to another instance they do like. It's offensive by its very nature.

If you want to make a better community, great, do it but not at the expense of other Lemmy posters.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

What do you mean by this?

I do sometimes see a link post on Lemmy (often on some general community like !games) and copy it to (usually more-specific, like gaming genres: think copying from !games to !rpgs) communities I am active in (or sometimes ones I am not but am aware of: if I see a strategy game post I'll put it in all the relevant strategy game communities I know of), and figure it is alright because I always see a little "cross-posted to:" and the community I got it from, so I figure that is good enough for credit. Probably obvious I got it somewhere else, and easily clickable to find out where. (Or sometimes the little communities are just the communities I myself already posted it to.) Is this a bad assumption and I should stop?

I do it because I want conversation in the specific communities, and for things that could go in more specific communities to not only get talked about in one giant umbrella when the smaller niches already exist on Lemmy. Especially because I think there is a valid reason to not be on !games. Maybe you are not interested in most posts there, just some subgenres, or like me, you are sick of the ragebait-but-also-probably-true-news-so-not-off-topic-and-allowed posts.

I am fine stopping though, less work for me, and as life gets busier I have less time for Lemmy anyways.

I admit I exclude .ml from my crossposting bonanza because of all the political drama I hear about but never bothered to look into, because I feel I'll end up drawn into a political slapfight. Just look at all the comments here about .ml, whether justified or not (not sure and not about to try to figure out). I do not sub to anything on .ml and mostly look at Subscribed though, so I know I am not taking any of their content and copying it elsewhere, unless it was first copied from .ml to something I do look at. I also don't really look at the instance someone is commenting from unless I suspect trolling or we interact a lot though, so I am not being nasty to .ml users for just being on .ml, either. I know a lot of people who do not have anything to do with the political drama are there too because it is recommended as the Lemmy dev's instance, and I do not expect everyone to litmus test every social media for political drama before joining it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

I don't think you should stop, the use case you described is you WANT to have a conversation about the cross-posts you are doing. Your not motivated by trying to starve out another community. You are personally choosing what to cross post and not reposting EVERYTHING from a different community.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I feel you. This is quite an interesting thread to read and the different opinions in the comments.

I also think this is a problem for Lemmy. We could be better than other social media sites. Have genuine human conversations. Post high quality content that matters to us. But we regularly don't. We dump the news, re-post memes... And I mean there are people who like it. But I don't. I'm here for the comments and I'd rather talk to people than have a lot of noisy content dumped at me, burying human interaction with fabricated activity that's following some ulterior motives, like make the place seem more busy, or do some internal politics... Which may be warranted. But those aren't genuine in my opinion. It's not some other user who likes to talk to me, but someone fabricating something, and it regularly makes me feel used. Plus I'm pretty sure I see it chill engagement.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I wish people only posted things they wanted to talk about. That would mean the entire feed are possible conversations to have.

I try to only post things I'd be happy to talk about.

Maybe it would be interesting to see a poster score based on how many of their posts they don't engage with once someone makes a comment.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

Maybe it would be interesting to see a poster score based on how many of their posts they don't engage with once someone makes a comment.

I thought about that as well. It's a bit tricky to pull it off. But ultimately I think the entire voting system on Lemmy and hence the way it sorts posts is a bit suboptimal. People upvote memes, the ragebait of the day, simple truths. Content that I find interesting or an interesting and long opinions regularly end up with 0-3 upvotes and float to the bottom. So I mainly discard what kind of scores this place has and sort by "new" anyway. It'd be really great if I had some score available to tell me if some content is what I like to read.

I wish people only posted things they wanted to talk about. That would mean the entire feed are possible conversations to have.

A hundred percent that.

I'm pretty sure we're the minority here. Most people seem to like it the other way around. (Need..more..posts in everyone's timeline.) I'm pretty sure it's also a big part of the equation of why Lemmy always stagnates and we're stuck at 45k users. We've been doing it the "re-post" way a long time now, and we can see the results of that. We shove around content because of some reasons, but we should come up with original and genuine content instead. I think what we need is foster a nice atmosphere. Genuine human conversation underneath posts with above average quality. That'd grow Lemmy and make it a better place. (And instead we dump more posts/noise, and we can see where we're headed with that.)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am insanely guilty of the content dump, figuring it'll prove a community active, but aside from "awww!" comments on [email protected] where there just is not much to build off of, I also reply to almost every comment I get because I also want to have conversations.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think that's fine. At least from the "dump" perspective, because you're not just dumping something but tend to what you post. And you're part of the conversation so you add something of substance there.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

Preach!

What makes hackernews, metafilter, lobsters great is the community and not the posts.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

I think what we need is foster a nice atmosphere. Genuine human conversation underneath posts with above average quality. That’d grow Lemmy and make it a better place. (And instead we dump more posts/noise, and we can see where we’re headed with that.)

Beehaw wanted to have this kind of very curated approach, their communities aren't much more active that on non-curated instances.

If you want very in-depth conversation, maybe try to revive [email protected] ? It seems to fit your requirements.

You talk about original content, it is not contradictory to have both OC and reposts from elsewhere. A thing to keep in mind is that people posting OC will only do so if they get enough reactions on it. [email protected] used to be quite busy when it first started, but the main mod who used to post a lot hasn't been active for a year, probably because there weren't enough people here to justify posting here on top of Reddit.

People upvote memes, the ragebait of the day, simple truths.

It depends. I post about things I care about. My latest post was about a new movie coming, there were 68 comments: https://piefed.zip/post/153138 , and it was a legit conversation, even though it was a repost from a new movie poster. Reposting existing content isn't contradictory with having genuine conversations.

I’m pretty sure we’re the minority here. Most people seem to like it the other way around. (Need…more…posts in everyone’s timeline.) I’m pretty sure it’s also a big part of the equation of why Lemmy always stagnates and we’re stuck at 45k users. We’ve been doing it the “re-post” way a long time now, and we can see the results of that. We shove around content because of some reasons, but we should come up with original and genuine content instead.

It's a multi factor issue.
To have genuine conversations on a certain topic, there need to be at least a minimum userbase interested in that topic.
With 45k MAU, we can talk about generic topics. The more userbase we get, the more niche topics we can have.

When I talk about Lemmy on Reddit to try to get those additional users we need, the first issues they have with the platform is the political stances of the devs, and the fact that a lot of communities are still hosted on the hosted instance (you've read cm0002 comment, so you're aware).

Lemmy has a bad reputation due to this, and while this will remain true, this will prevent us from getting more people. That's also why Piefed raises a lot of hopes.

Last potential example of growth: a niche community moving.

Db0 had a large influx of users (625) following a post on Reddit about their instance: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37167077

[email protected] is mostly reposts with news about piracy, not a lot of OC content, but it being out of Reddit is enough for people to use it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Lemmy as a social media discussion forum is about human attention. The economy of success on lemmy is curating a audience and having their attention both in terms of voting, but more importantly, in terms of discussions.

Competition between communities is healthy and good

  • Better content
  • Better curation
  • Better community (welcoming, etc)

Trying to "boycott" or starve out other communities by making them "redundant" by burning out human attention on lemmy is bad for everyone

  • Lemmy feels empty
  • Repetition of content is wasting people's time
  • Dividing the conversation drives people away

If you hate a community, make a better community, don't try to burn out everyone who likes the old community.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Repetition of content is wasting people’s time

Not when crossposts are used: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47235271/19582739

Lemmy feels empty
Dividing the conversation drives people away

Piefed solves that issue: https://piefed.zip/post/100161

All comments from 5 crossposts in a single view

A few options

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

not everyone is using piefed.

And if everyone was using piefed that merges cross posts, this war against instances makes even less sense.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Mbin has at similar approach where it is possible to see the number of comments on other communities:

https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/2321464/New-Linux-Flaws-Enable-Full-Root-Access-via-PAM-and#comments

This issue is due to Lemmy.

The Lemmy devs recently stated that this is a client problem, and that they don't plan to change that

In lemmy-ui we’ve chosen to link the posts at the top rather than combine comment threads.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46984024/19528869

And if everyone was using piefed that merges cross posts, this war against instances makes even less sense.

Instances still have different moderation policies. A comment could get on banned on one instance and allowed on another. Being able to see them all doesn't change that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nah ML is trash. Moving off the remaining non-tankie communities would be a good thing for Lenny as whole.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

ML is trash. It's a septic tank of degenerates, "communist" role players and the mentally ill (e.g. Dessalines who claims that North Korea is a great place to live and that there is massive conspiracy to discredit them).

When I first encountered Dessalines, I assumed he was a demagogue and he was knowingly lying, but it seems his word salad is actually genuine.

I do hope that one day all ML tankies end up in a russian internment camp; it's only fair for them to experience what they wish upon Ukrainians. The funny thing is russia is a hyper-capitalist, authoritarian, plutocratic shithole.

load more comments
view more: next ›