Posting links with no attached (body) text
We could easily add a community setting to make the body mandatory. I suggest you open an issue for that.
Comment on How to make the Threadiverse a nice place and effectively make it grow
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 months ago
What can we do?
Votes
I think we all know votes are broken. They just show the agreement level of the mob. Not necessarily connected with quality or if something is interesting to read. I think ultimately that's unfixable. But I'd like to invite you all to vote more. People who write posts or comments need to see it's worth typing it. There has to be some interaction or we're just wearing out people who contribute. And remember to vote on comments, too. Be generous.
Posting the news
I'd say don't do it too much since we already have RSS readers and news sites. But I'm willing to yield with my personal opinion. But(!) Please just post articles that you've read yourself. If it's too boring for you to read, it's probably also too boring for the other people to read any you're just contributing to make this place be littered with random noise.
Posting links with no attached (body) text
Connected to my previous point: Ask yourself: "Why am I posting this?" Is it because you want to discuss something? If yes: Put in a minimum of effort and contribute something yourself. At least write one or two sentences in your post and don't just dump a single link. IMO you should also write a short summary for your audience so they know if they want to click on the link. If you respect them and their time.
Reacting emotionally
We all do that. Just take a step back every now and then and see if your reactions are balanced in a way that you're comfortable with. Remember you can always down-vote someone and be done with it and not start an argument. But you don't need to keep silent. Especially if you're reading a text like this and making an effort, you're probably on the good side, so I don't want you to surrender this place to the people with less approvable behavior.
Be nice
I'd say everyone of us shapes this place by their behavior. If you want it to become a nice place, be nice yourself. We all know that's easier said than done, but we can make an effort.
Diversity
I think diversity is baked in to the Fediverse. We can have different instances with different focus, different moderation policies and a different tone of conversation. The technology isn't there yet to give everyone what they want, but I think we should embrace our diversity. And do something constructive with it. That's not easy. Some people like to have "free speech" and no moderation. Some like to have civil discussions without trolls and people who are constantly wrong, yet very aggressive and argumentative. Some are meme-lords or whatever and everyone is here for their individual reasons. I don't think we need to completely unite or agree on things. But we have to find a way to get along. Be liberal with other people using this place differently. But don't tolerate in-acceptable behavior.
Moderators and developers
You have quite some impact here. Use it wisely. Be fair, open-minded and make this a nice place for us.
Netiquette
People figured out in the 1990s, communicating over the internet is different from communicating in the offline world. They wrote an unofficial code of policies that encourage good behavior on the Internet. Used to regulate respect and polite behavior online. It's called the Netiquette (If anyone has a better link, feel free to provide it to me.) It's a bit outdated so let me copy some guidelines and paraphrase:
* Never forget that there's a human being on the other side!
* Read and think before posting
* Share something new
* Your posts represent you - Be proud of them
* Consider your audience
* Be careful with humor, irony, and sarcasm!
* Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive.
* Take your time when writing a post
* Make things easy for the recipient.
* Don't waste people's time. You should put in a bit more effort and in return save hundreds of people from spending extra time.
* People's culture, language, and humor may have different points of reference from your own
* Avoid posting "Me Too" messages, (use an up-vote instead)
* Consider using Reference sources (Documentation, Newspapers, Google, ...) before posting a question.
* Use spoilers when applicable
* Don't get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to incendiary material.
* Don't feed trolls!
* Deal with the issue, don't attack the person
nutomic@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Carrolade@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Excellent summary overall.
One thing though, regarding feeding trolls. This was excellent advice in the earlier days of the internet, back when anyone trolling was doing it simply as a recreational activity, to have fun.
We no longer live in that world though. People have realized that there’s real power here, where one guy on Twitter can start riots through an entire western European country with a single tweet. Where an online campaign can change the political makeup of your country.
Now, in this day, we have a civic responsibility to treat trolls as we would if we encountered these behaviors in real life, because there is no difference anymore. It would be unrealistic to set some utopian standard for our online interactions when the digital sphere has simply become an extension of the physical world, with all the same problems and issues, and thus a responsibility to engage as one’s conscience demands.
As a side note, one idea I saw recently that I liked, I think it was mozz’s, that people receive temporary bans for any examples of using a classic strawman argument. I think this would be fairly easy to enforce and quite productive. It’s almost impossible to troll effectively if you can’t strawman, it’s probably one of the most common features.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 months ago
You're probably right. The world has changed substantially since the 1990s. I mean all of the text is more or less the opinion of a random dude (me) who'd like to make Lemmy a better place. But I don't claim absolute truth with any of that. Thanks for your input. I appreciate your pespective.