[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 5 points 1 hour ago

(we need to stop talking about asses here though... Riker could be nearby!)

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 4 points 1 hour ago

I came late to Reddit myself but even I noticed that happening during the pandemic. The decline was rather speedy, sharp, and extensive (affecting all subs).

And we could even track some of those to specific implementations or lack thereof of features by Reddit. Like how their search feature sucked so bad, thereby encouraging people to write a (still yet another) post to ask rather than look up an existing highly crafted and well-researched answer that even if posted a mere week prior still would not show up in the algorithmic feed pushing all the latest noise to the absolute tippy-top. And mods were forbidden from pinning more than two posts. And even those only showed up when sorting by Hot. And maybe not even then in some apps. And you couldn't consolidate ones bc the moderation tools sucked so damn hard, e.g. posts made by Auto Mod could not be edited later by the very same mod team who requested that the post be made. Every damnable one of these things increases apparent engagement metrics like "number of posts", but at the expense of actually connecting people with the information that they wanted to receive. :-(

To which we can say "fuck spez", but it's deeper than that bc of the chasing after profits to the expense of all else that led to that, as in if it wasn't him that did it then it would have merely been someone else instead.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 1 hour ago

Fwiw, this might be a special time around the launching of the Loops service, which I heard will be placed underneath PixelFed. I know nothing more than that but thought I'd offer that much:-).

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 3 points 3 hours ago

So only 2% "not likely to be AI-generated or deepfake"... that means that it's almost definitely AI, got it!? :-P

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 3 points 3 hours ago

Well I don't know if "wise" would quite apply...

img

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 4 points 4 hours ago

Well now I don't want you to feel left out so... this is for you:

img

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 16 points 4 hours ago

Soon (TM)...

img

Very soon now...

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 7 points 4 hours ago

If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well.

Unless you can half-ass it, in which case definitely do that!:-)

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 11 points 4 hours ago

But on the other hand, think how much time they save by never once having to shift a chair over to sit in it!?

img

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 7 points 4 hours ago

Okay, but don't say that I did nothin' for ya m'kay!?

Here it is just for you:

img

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 16 points 5 hours ago

Welcome! People are kinder here, overall. You'll find yourself less defensive, more willing to engage, less snarky, easier to be around irl - man, Reddit was (is?) toxic AF, and whether or not I came here I was definitely leaving there.

Remember to block early and often here - back there that was almost pointless bc a never-ending stream of Reddi-trolls was ready to take their place, but here that actually works!:-)

Check out !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca for many more tips. You are going to like it here:-).

Also, since you mentioned PixelFed, check out PieFed as well as a Lemmy alternative - it has e.g. "categories" of communities rather than making you find and subscribe to each one individually, so it's a whole different style compared to Lemmy where you have to browse by All to find new content. I'm speaking to you from it right now.:-)

But either way, I find that (most of) the people here are more worth talking to than Reddit:-).

7

I gather that it had a use unrelated to Lemmy but for Lemmy posts I make a case here that it is more misleading than helpful. For a moment, please ignore the underlying reasons why things are the way they are and focus on how the issue presents to the end-users.

(1) By pulling in solely the post, but not any of the comments, it at best provides only partial information - which if all you wanted to read was the post, then why bother pulling it here at all? (as opposed to retrieving from its original location - I mean, to do it you already need the full URL...) While if instead you wanted all of the comments... - e.g. to be able to reply to - then too bad, b/c it won't do that?

(2) It also does not pull in any of the old vote counts. So if hypothetically a post had 1000 upvotes, and then after pulling it here it received adjustments +2 from upvotes and -4 from downvotes, then its total would then be 998, right? Except PieFed would instead display "-2", a qualitatively different score for a highly popular post that is a terrible misrepresentation of the actual facts about it.

(3) It conveys a distorted view of things to the end-users. e.g. see !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com where there are 6 posts from the last 2 months, right? Right?! No, there is actually only a single post there in its entirety, then a few more that I and what I assume was Blaze pulled in - note how those other 5 have zero comments, and total scores near zero, due to the aforementioned issues. Really the "earliest" post that PieFed.social reliably has from that community is from 4 days ago, and then beyond that is a scattered, partial mess. There are actually MANY more posts from the last two months, which are not represented here. Ergo, the initial impression that a quick glance at this community offers turns out to be false, due to these federation issues.

(4) showing only partial information is often called a "false positive" or type I style of error, whereas showing nothing at all for those posts that are not fully here avoids that pitfall. If certain content is not here then... well it is not here, and that's that, but for only some of it to be here leads to much confusion, imho.

Almost entirely distinct from this issue, the ability to find an existing post given its URL should be added to the search menu, b/c that is where people will go to find it. But ofc all the more so if the retrieval button is removed or made less prominent, so that that find ability is not lost along with that.

I understand that there are hard limitations of the federated model itself. So if e.g. older comments and votes cannot retroactively be pulled in - or possibly even if so - then maybe this function should just be abolished? Or perhaps a couple more layers of "are you sure you want to do this?" added, or better yet moving it from its prominent place showing up to everyone on almost every page to a more subdued location where only those who know what it is and what will happen if it is used are likely to access it? I now feel that I actively made the situation in !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com worse by pulling in those posts, and wished now that I hadn't done so, as it could lead people astray into thinking "this is all the posts that the community has to offer from this time-period" (NO, it actually has MANY MANY more than that, on the original server!?!!). Now that I know this I can refrain from using it, but it would be nice to help others who climb this ladder after me as well:-). So I am sharing my thoughts with you in case that helps.

PieFed is freaking awesome and you all who work on it are magnificently extraordinary to share your knowledge with the world:-).

16

See e.g. https://piefed.social/communities?search=forward - there are 2 communities listed there, both go to the same place if you click them, and that place has no posts from the last 3 days.

It almost looks like the existence of the second version of that community - changed mere seconds ago at the time of my writing this, except again, when you click the link it doesn't show anything new for several days - is soaking up all the new posts, but since it is inaccessible by the normal means those new entities cannot be accessed.

This is my favorite spot in the Fediverse, so I hope it is addressed soon! That community in particular is doing great work to make the Fediverse fun & welcoming to come to by all us nerds:-).

108
Coming... (efangelist.wordpress.com)
view more: next ›

OpenStars

joined 6 days ago