So this is a bit of a meta-question. I was going to post a question about tech (for context I am looking for a tablet/iPad to read journal papers) so I headed to the technology community. But all the posts are news articles and the description is along the lines of ‘post happenings and innovations in tech…’ so I chickened out. Same over at science and humanities (I was thinking a more acedemic community might be up for a convo about journal reading)…

I know Beehaw is really friendly and it probably wouldn’t matter if I posted random questions in the “wrong” spot but I would like to be able to target my questions and convos and not just put everything in chat and AskBeehaw. But maybe that’s the idea. News type posts by topic and convos in other communities to maximise the relatively small community?

I’m really interested to know what ‘rules’ other people use to decide where to post non-links. Or any more formal guidelines - Am I missing something?

Edit: and yeah I did (over)think about posting this in Beehaw support but I am more interested in hearing about other people’s thoughts then asking a help question

  • Hey, !technology mod here. We mostly get tech news and articles, but personally I have no issues with questions or self posts that promote discussion. Some communities do have more guidelines about how and what to post but !technology is fairly lax as long as the post is tech related and not spammy.

    All that to say, please feel welcome to post your question there and see what folks recommend.

  •  bbbhltz   ( @bbbhltz@beehaw.org ) 
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    108 months ago

    I was going to post a question about tech (for context I am looking for a tablet/iPad to read journal papers)

    Depending on how much you want to spend, you should take a look at the remarkable tablet slate thing. My students love them, but it seems like reviewers don’t like them as much?

    I think you can post questions to communities. Doesn’t hurt. If it is the wrong place you’ll find out, no harm done.

    It does seem like the usual suspects keep things going with links to news but very low engagement. I think some users went back to Reddit. It is slow social media, and that is ok.

  • There is not too much vibing at all really. Though I like the content i get here on beehaw there really inst a lot of it. I still see the same posts from weeks before in the top 50 to 100 posts. But thats the same problem nearly every Lemmy instance has. Honestly The whole fediverse is too spread out and lacks engagement because anyone can create an instance and then most of them end up sharing the same limited content. It all feels like too much water in my Scotch.

    • Yeah the last part is where I find fault in the fediverse bit was hard enough trying to get 1 sub turned into 2-3.

      Now everyone can make a community, but there is often high overlap. Furthermore, the “solution” is that you can subscribe from anywhere, but that doesn’t entirely matter if federalization is incomplete - the user will end up needing an account to view everything eventually.

      It somewhat solves the 1-sub problem, but only does so via brute force for the most popular instance.

      On the other hand, there isn’t anything wrong with some overlap, having all your eggs in one basket can also make the content iffy. and it’s good to be able to have the opportunity to migrate should the instance go down or its owner shows to be insane.

      It’s a tricky one for me definitely, but all we can hope for is more people using the fediverse.