Conversation ongoing over there, inviting anyone who wants to participate to please consider sharing their thoughts if they are willing to. If you wanna post in the original thread from your instance copy and paste the link into your instances search panel

As I said in the thread, if you aren’t comfortable posting feel free to DM me here or on matrix and I can post anonymously for you.

  •  Gaywallet (they/it)   ( @Gaywallet@beehaw.org ) 
    36•9 months ago

    This is unfortunately an extremely pervasive problem on the internet. I think we’re making a lot of headway in recent years, but unfortunately you’ll still find a lot of fragility online. It’s entirely unsurprising to me that the thread was quickly populated with a fragile male voice (how dare you exclude men, that’s sexist they proclaim, when you explicitly don’t exclude them 🙄). It’s unfortunately not something you can solve as it’s a cultural issue. The best you can do is curate a space which is heavily moderated and one in which fragility which is implicitly misogynistic or derailing is not tolerated. Asking for this feedback without making it explicitly clear that fragility won’t be tolerated will just allow a thread to be populated with fragility, as many people with fragility problems are hyper-online and get emotional support through validation in that context.

    Allowing a space to be populated early with this voice discourages engagement for your intended audience. I’ve seen this happen time and time again on the internet when people ask for input from only for people to chime in some characteristic with “I’m not that characteristic, but…” Even when it’s not fragility, these people often end up make the space not welcoming to those which the space was intended for simply by their insistence to colonize the space.

    •  Ada   ( @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
      17•9 months ago

      The best you can do is curate a space which is heavily moderated and one in which fragility which is implicitly misogynistic or derailing is not tolerated.

      Yes, exactly this! And that is the crucial difference between the microblog fediverse and the threadiverse in my opinion. Micro fediverse instances are more likely to heavily moderate on those axes compared to lemmy and kbin instances.

      •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
        1•9 months ago

        What is the size for “micro” in this context?

        LW and kbin are disproportionately huge in the threadiverse (135k and 65k users respectively), instances like Beehaw (13k users) seem to work reasonably well, and that’s 6th place in user count, with the remaining 1200+ instances being smaller than that.

          •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
            1•9 months ago

            Ah, I misunderstood.

            Then… what you’re saying is, “short format” content tends to be better moderated?

            I guess that’s true, short is easier to moderate than long, less context to take into account.

            Not sure how to apply that to long format content though, with threads, which extend the context even more… 🤔

            Splitting content into short format blobs, like I’m doing here? But this seems contrary to the spirit of long format platforms.

            Now that I’m thinking… 💡 maybe context tagging is the key? Short content tends to use hashtags to include context, while threaded long format platforms rely on following the thread back for the full context, and deeper nested discussions can easily veer off-topic.

            Could that be the key difference? On-topic context-tagged content, is easier to moderate?

            Then… maybe threaded long format platforms, could offer a way to split a thread apart, let an off-topic conversation follow its course in a separate “context container”?

            I’m thinking, Matrix has introduced “threads” to help follow a back-and-forth exchange in what otherwise is a mix of comments in a channel.

            What if Lemmy offered something similar but kind of opposite: the possibility to upgrade a comment thread into a post, maybe even one on a different community or instance?

            So, instead of having to moderate comments off-topic to a post, or even off-spirit to a community, a topic could be kicked out to somewhere else it fits better?

            Optionally, adding some feature for tagging comments, that could help mods follow topic changes?

            Hm, @Gaywallet@beehaw.org, would you say something like these could be useful features to act as funnels that could automatically redirect behaviors unwelcome in a community to somewhere else, or am I just rambling here?

            (PS: this could also solve the question I had about following discussions on deleted posts, just boost the thread at whatever point from the same or another community, and done. Same for the issue of posting a Mastodon comment, just set it as the head of whatever post.)

              •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
                1•9 months ago

                I think I’m suggesting a different way of viewing and approaching the threadiverse/fediverse outside the Reddit/Twitter dichotomy, using the base features that allow both interpretations, but in a slightly different way.

                Just wondered if any of it resonated with you, since your philosophy posts and such. Maybe it would be best shown with an example, but I can’t do that right now. I know you’re looking into alternatives.