Elevator7009sAlt

Glad to hear your symptoms are gone, hope it stays that way :) Thanks for making the community for anyone who needs it

I have noticed how a lot of communities I participate in, not just ones I mod, have mostly me and one other person posting ^^; I am always grateful when I see people outside me and the other person, but I always wonder if it seems weird or desperate to say "hey welcome! Nice to see someone else here!" instead of just directly replying to the post.

In general, I feel a bit overwhelmed seeing a smaller community do a lot of posts in a single day. I expect it from big umbrella topics like video gaming in general, fitness, etc., big user base, naturally lots of people are going to have things they want to post and I should expect that. 10 posts from a niche community from the moderator… I like the spirit but you are drowning out all my other small communities ;-; I'd rather they spread them out with Lemmy Scheduler the way I do.

Wondering if an option to opt a community out of downvotes outside subscribers would be a good idea.

I remember being on Mbin and seeing some poor baseball community I was browsing with things that looked to be factual and from credible sources having about 3 upvotes and downvotes to most posts, making it look like the content was fake or low-quality. I'm wondering how many of those votes were actual subscribed people (or people interested in lurking), and how many were just trolls downvoting anything they could—which happened to congregate in on a tiny community with not too many supporters to shout out the troll voices (like when a post has 50 upvotes and 1 downvote and zero negativity in the comments—you can probably guess the downvote is not for "off topic" or "low quality" or "spam" or "cruel," just a troll being a troll).

I do think the outside world's input is still valuable, but I do want to be able to protect small communities from having this happen to them, where every post looks like a shit contribution if you just check the votes even if the posts are good, because random people who downvote a topic because they just don't like that topic instead of blocking it from their feed or scrolling past, or actual trolls, got to it and there are not enough subscribers to drown the noise out.

Posting because I think some small communities I'm in have total outsiders downvoting posts to the point it outweighs subscriber upvotes: they are usually totally inoffensive, have no misinformation, and are on-topic for the community and on par with the usual effort it takes to make posts in that community, and yet almost even in upvotes/downvotes.

I think part of the issue is that it would be nice to contribute but I'm not always super aware of smaller games that could fit the community.

Kind of surprised this is the take. Algorithms in general, just sorting by highest to lowest or whatever common problem that needs to be solved, aren't bad. "Algorithm" has become a dirty word mostly because of the stuff pushing short-form content over long-form content, outrage that generates engagement over something you would enjoy that doesn't enrage you enough to make you type fifty paragraphs and keep coming back to fight in the comments, etc. So I agree with the literal statement that algorithms aren't always bad.

But as for what you meant, I'm super surprised at all the people who want an algorithm to feed them content and aren't satisfied. I looked for the stuff I was interested in, subscribed, and am happy. When I run out of content I either log off and do something else or go seek out stuff I'm kind of interested in. In my most charitable possible assumption, people who want algorithms are probably a lot less suspectible to getting pulled in by outrage and scrolling all day, and just want to be able to discover cool stuff fast, and the algorithms somehow worked to show them the cool stuff. In my experience I had to strictly stick to my Home feed with just stuff I subscribed to on Reddit to not see outrage porn, could never poke my head into Popular or anything without seeing some outrage sub like r/noahgettheboat or /iamatotalpieceofshit. And then they started forcibly sorting my Home feed by Controversial… yep. Stopped regularly browsing there really fast.

I am just really wary of asking for algorithms back because I really don't want the Fediverse to become another place catered towards outrage porn for max engagement. I really want users to have options if this is implemented, so as not to force this algorithm on users like myself who like the "chronological order of stuff you purposely followed only" algorithm. And for that option to not be taken away from me in an effort to "drive growth!" and all that.

I don't want to refuse others a good thing just because it's not for me, but I also have been burned by social media algorithms that were once nice chronological, and later became catered towards outrage and showing you content you never signed up to see without having an option to switch back to chronological and opt out of having RandomInfluencerYouDontFollow in your feed. Looking at you, Instagram. I signed up with my elementary school classmates, liked chronological feed, liked having Explore just be friends of friends… I still only follow people I know in real life but now Explore is a bunch of controversial memes, people selling stuff, and influencers who want me to form a parasocial relationship with them. This is also what my regular feed, which used to just show me chronological order posts only from people I follow, turns to once I scroll past maybe 7 posts my friends made. Have not fully deleted but also haven't touched the app in months now.

I guess the real solution is giving people options and not taking them away because you decided to go public and need maximum eye-on-advertisement time. Hopefully Lemmy stays open source and different instances stay popular, so in case someone does try to take it public we can all flee to different servers and keep talking.

Pleased that !automationgames@lemmy.zip has attracted posters who aren't me in its first few days of existence! Thanks to it I played some automation games again. Mindustry may not be for me… I'll give it an honest shot but I just hit the tower defense tutorial and am feeling a bit leery. I'm not a "violence in video games is bad" type so not sure why I am getting like this.

Waiting for the day the Fediverse gets more users. I mod 3 communities now and I am letting it go because small platform, someone has to provide content, and although I am fully capable of posting without being a mod the things I'd like to post about don't always have preexisting communities (or have a dead one, so precedent to recreate—the "hey that's too specific, just post in a big general community" hurdle tends to be presented less often when the community already existed on the Fediverse). But in a normal situation this feels too powermoddy.

I've come off seeing a lot of people express dissent in a rather acidic manner, so I just appreciate that you have stated an opposing view in a way that is informative, and a lot less "anyone who disagrees is [bad thing]", "I will say that anyone who approves of [thing I don't] masturbates to it as a way to be hurtful and insulting", "you disagree? I will position you as overly emotional and myself as the realist by saying 'Cope'", etc.

You've made me curious about various programming languages' efficiency, specifically in how choice of language might affect resource consumption. Not just CPU cycles but carbon and electricity. And I'm actually going to look into it instead of feeling put off enough by vitriol that I just wash my hands of the entire disagreement and walk away. +1, this is how you disagree online.

Yes, I may be venting my feelings about seeing too many people being mean online.

I still have not tried PieFed yet but I always find myself cheering it on whenever I see it.

Worth crossposting to !lifesimulation@lemmy.world

Very Into magic in fiction, life simulation games, good pixel art. Almost certainly going to play.

I wish you the best of luck with your instance, sounds like a solid smaller instance!