@ArtieShaw@kbin.social avatar

ArtieShaw

@ArtieShaw@kbin.social

Este perfil es de un servidor federado y podría estar incompleto. Explorar más contenido en la instancia original.

Be wary of spiteful Reddit users (kbin.social) en

In the past week and a half, I've noticed Reddit behaviors starting to try and poison all of the places that people are taking refuge in to get away from the toxicity, myself included. They've started to DDoS Lemmy for a while, which is a Reddit thing to do and what they're notorious of doing whenever they feel they don't like...

ArtieShaw,
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Honestly? It has been for ages and ages.

In 1989 a grown-ass grad student at our flagship state university tried to get my 14 year old friend to visit him downstate. (She told me all of this via a handwritten letter, mind you, but she was communicating with this creep - who wouldn't admit his actual age - via an early text only messaging system.)

I remember the 1990s as a weird free for all, but also very gate-keepery. Oh, and those chat rooms/IMs out of nowhere were just... not even a thin veneer of "normal people doing normal things." (I'm OK with that, but let's not pretend).

The 2005-2010 era was all about collaboration (wikis) and forums and LORD ALMIGHTY, that almost always ended as a shitshow. Highlights from my memories of one wiki mashup:

  • One kid from Slovakia faked his own online death, came back a month later and held a memorial for himself under the guise of a real-life friend of the kid. No one was buying it, and he lost his shit over the lack of mourning. It was cringe, but people were pretty mean about it.
  • Another kid from Louisiana (if you believed his bio he was 11 and lived in a trailer park) was attacked by two adult men for "trying to score contribution points" on the wiki... by adding valid information to the wiki.
    -An unhinged person in the Philippines threatened me with death, violence, and the destruction of generations worth of my family. That threat was delivered with the added terror-inducing information that her husband was a "lecturer at the university."
    -One of the site admin's/owners (a Russian dude who was the equivalent of Reddit's Spez), banned a guy.... this is so stupid and complex... mainly stupid.... I feel stupid just typing this out. It was Russian Spez's birthday and a few people on the forum wished him a happy birthday. (Myself included. I mean, have a nice b-day dude. Typing costs me nothing and maybe it'll dislodge whatever's up your butt.) Another guy on the forum (let's call him Derf) called us birthday-wishers "suck asses." Whatever. Anyway, Russian Spez freaked right the fuck out, banned Derf, and started whining in broken English about why it's unfair that we "think it's OK that people call him suck ass." And although I'm generally a nice person, I took this opportunity to call Russian Spez a thin skinned moron. (Seriously - I'm a 30 something woman and I'm not pitching fits over a childish taunt, but you are? And it wasn't even directed at you? To his credit, Russian Spez didn't ban me.)
    -Was creeped on like it's 1989 once people on that forum realized I wasn't a dude.
    -There were internecine disputes over formatting, where people in the US banded together to create a local standard that made no sense globally, people in the EU banded together to make standards that made a little more sense globally but pissed everyone in the US off because they preferred to say "Kentucky" vs. "KY", people in Finland created their own insular state of affairs and refused to enter a debate over site-wide standards, and everyone else around the world just glowered and waited it out.
    -Then there were the geo-political warriors. There were people in Iran and Iraq who fought an online proxy war over whether the Persian Gulf should be called the Persian or the Arabian Gulf. There was some drama over the South China Sea that I never really delved into. A single man in the middle east made 200 sockpuppets to defend 20 meters worth of sand in the Sinai peninsula that defined the border between Egypt and I-forget-the-hell-who-but-it-wasn't-even-Israel.

That got into HobbyDrama territory, but the point is: Shitshow. Always has been.

People just sort of suck. And when their natural impulses towards suckiness run up against site rules? Shit gets lost. When someone calls them out it becomes a personal grievance. The lawbreaker becomes the victim.

In the end, no one can have nice things.

ArtieShaw,
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Vielen gruss aus Deutschland! Wilkommen und herzliche Wiedervereinigung mit uns. Wir sprechen gern Computor mit ihr!!

(Sorry to all involved about that thing that just happened there. I'm actually enjoying the German instances that I can understand about 35-65% of. IEL)

ArtieShaw,
@ArtieShaw@kbin.social avatar

I can talk about a similar (karma-like) system on another site. It was a wiki-style site popular from 2006-2010.

Their original system counted a user's creations and edits. There was the expected amount of drama around who had more creations vs edits. Creators tended to add a lot of high volume but low effort crap. Editors would get a lot of grief over 'stealing' entries because the idiots who created the site put the username of the last editor at the bottom of the entry.

It got worse.

Around 2008 the idiots reimagined the site and expanded the scope. They kept the shitty idea of keeping the last editor's username, but they added a points system tied to how many new features were added. For example: if you added a town you were awarded 1 point, but if you added a street or river you were awarded 1 point for each kilometer of road or river. Shit got real weird.

It was a race towards crap. AngrySteve59 was no longer at the top of the list. He was replaced by GamerJoe84 who had racked up shit points using the new system.

Points just seem to make people crazy. "Rate me! Evaluate my work" - Lisa Simpson

ArtieShaw,
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I wish I had gone with this route, but I honestly didn't foresee the possibility that admin might restore what's been deleted or edited.

I had no intention of ever using the account to add content in the future, but in retrospect it would have been better to keep it in a dormant state.

ArtieShaw,
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If it's a minority, it's a vocal and loud one. I've never heard anything good about the official app.

ArtieShaw,
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You're making a great point about Facebook. It's still insanely popular among older and more rural Americans. I guess these are populations that would be more isolated without it and still see the value in participating. One example: I have a 21 year old niece who is on it 24/7, but then again she is a hour's drive from the nearest Walmart and and her parents. Three hundred miles from her bestie. She's two-thousand-ish miles away from me. She has my number, but she prefers Messenger to text.

It's also good for community groups, online garage sales, in memoriam pages, and the like. Some businesses like to use it instead of having a proper website, probably due to zero cost of hosting and familiarity of use.*

Reddit never fit naturally with any of those, but I'm sure it will find a niche of users in the same way.

*I'm sure there are other dynamics worldwide where Facebook might also be a valuable tool. These are just the first few examples I can think of in the US.

While larger, more general communities are thriving on the Fediverse - I'm missing out on the niche communities (kbin.social) en

Gaming, news, tech, general literature. All of these are somewhat thriving, with a steady influx of posts and comments. At the same time, the userbase is sorely lacking for more niche communities. In my case it'd be stuff like poetry, yoga, religion, linguistics, meditation. Or many other communities I'd doubt they'd form a...

ArtieShaw,
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I think what you're doing so far is key. And it's really the hard part. The rest is just being a friendly place.

No one wants to be one of those 5 people howling into the void when something is getting started, but it needs to be done to demonstrate that people are willing to participate. You might also consider posting easy polls or open ended questions to invite engagement. (If you haven't)

ArtieShaw,
@ArtieShaw@kbin.social avatar

https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/122599/While-larger-more-general-communities-are-thriving-on-the-Fediverse#entry-comment-479872

https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/122599/While-larger-more-general-communities-are-thriving-on-the-Fediverse#entry-comment-479569

I hope those comment links work. They suggest creating your own niche magazine, nurturing it through the early stages, then handing over mod duties to others who might be more comfortable in the role.

I saw that someone did that here with my favorite sub. I made a post just to show that there is interest in the topic and to hopefully invite more engagement.

ArtieShaw,
@ArtieShaw@kbin.social avatar

Damn. Saved.

Thank you for this because I've been flailing a little bit. I've commented on some posts but I'm not always entirely sure where I am when it comes to the different instances.

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