we seem to be popular with reddit users that were banned from reddit, which on average seems to translate to less than wholesome behavior - so maybe lemmy’s whole reddit-alternative branding works against us that way.

maybe developing a distinct UI so it’s not just a reddit clone, and directing features in a way that is appealing more to particular communities or people we wish to attract would be a good idea, rather than trying to directly replace reddit as a whole?

for example, attracting academics by supporting built-in LaTeX syntax rather than requiring a browser extension

Generously start using CWs (Content warnings) as folks used to do in the early days of Fediverse.

Let’s talk about politics a whole hell of a lot less. Yes, things are awful and insane, but there is good stuff to discuss.

My thought process:

1. Post wholesome content. You need to be providing what you want to see, first and foremost. Provocative content is easy engagement, but wholesome stuff is both a little harder to find and to get people to interact with.

2. Support other people doing what you like. See a post you like with no or low comments? Leave a comment to show that person other people want more. Likes are nice and all, but I personally post things I’m interested in and want to discuss. If I get likes, but nobody is talking with me, I get bored and feel like posting less.

3. Clarify when you post or comment. If you’re sharing an opinion, make that clear. If you’re interested in a subject but understand you aren’t an expert, make sure you’re not coming off as one. If you’re bringing facts, support them with quotes and citations and be sure to credit others where it’s due.

4. Respect constructive discussions. If people are rude, feel free to ignore them. No one wants to see 2 stubborn randos arguing in a thread though. If people give counterpoints or ask questions of your opinion, return the politeness given or steer it back to positive interior you feel it isn’t.

5. Discipline is required if I can’t stick to my principles that I’ve outlined. If I think what I’m going to post is going to rule people up or if I think I’m saying too much about something I’m not very informed on, am I better off hitting cancel than post?

For replying: Give others the benefit of the doubt. If you’re not sure, ask clarifying questions instead of assuming things and attacking first.

I see too many people fall for this basic thing.

There’s two subreddits I really miss: AskScience and AskHistorians. I was a regular and flaired contributor to AskScience, but its super helpful to generate a response when there’s a good question. It would feel weird opining on a random science topic that I come up with. And I loved the well sourced AskHistorians posts. When I do see a c/AskHistorian post on Lemmy the responses are very low effort

“If you can’t say something nice…”

Shouldn’t be regulated, but that’s my advice for improving discourse and awareness.

1. Try not to fall into the trap of groupthink. The “reddit hive mind” was one of the worst things about our predecessor, and it seems to have followed us here.

2. Understand that humans are not, and never will be, perfect. Endless purity tests do not accomplish anything other than turning away newcomers.

3. For the love of God, pick up a hobby. My feed on any given day is 99.8% US politics and activism. I’m not saying that these things aren’t important, but it gets exhausting when it’s the only thing people want to discuss.

It would be cool if people stopped thinking the only ideologies are their ideology and fascism

There are ideologies that are bad that arent far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist

Can we all just post something instead of redirecting , every subreddit has this shit . I wanted to ask something about passkeys and i made a big post for that but all the technology sub just deleted it and I got the answer for it on reddit within 2 hr also there are no fun sub as well all the memes look shit and boring . No wonder nobody uses fediverse

Hmm, maybe some more diversity? Right now it seems to be mostly hypernerds who use fediverse services. When was “Ask Lemmy” about web development questions… you know

Quit artificially upvoting US politics?

ban Nazi’s and defederate from fascist instances.

Please post more wholesome content

I tried some magic mushrooms the other day, has ab absolute horrible trip and decided to just watch something wholesome and funny.

I went to Lemmy

That did not go over well, all my content was cynical, sad, sarcastic… It made me feel even worse. I went on to try and watch some simply laugh Comedy, couldn’t find friends anywhere, tried to find it on YouTube, big mistake… Long story short, it was the longest night of my life and I’ll bever ever try that shit again but for heavens sake, please try posting more actual positive and or funny content!

Any subs anyone could recommend for that?

I’ll go for the technical side: having a distributed accounts manager so you only need one account to use every aspect of the Fediverse.