Hello users of hexbear after some discussion we mainly wanted to get your thoughts on the two pinned megathreads, one general and one news.
We've noticed that the news mega has basically become the general mega and the general mega has kinda slowed. Some are thinking that it might be time to tell people to stop posting random shit to the news mega because some appreciate the ever so slightly more serious, focused tone of the news mega
As of now there is not much of a standard for comments however we wanted to discuss with you regarding making a change. Where the news megathread is for discussion on current events and their history/implications for future while the general megathread is for commenting on one's life, interests, or for shit-posting.
This would result in the news megathread being more heavily moderated to actively remove comments that are a better fit for the general megathread or off topic.
Please comment with any thoughts, opinions, comments, questions, or concerns.
Wait do people actually check how many updoots they get on a comment? For me updoots are not a measure of approval so much as a mark that I have read it.
I do think a PSA will do a lot of the work to bring the news mega back into alignment. I also think its good to have mods step in a bit and talk to users who aren't getting the message. But that could also be something users of the news mega involve themselves in a bit too. We should be saying "Wrong mega, comrade" instead of "No big deal... [continued input on non news topic]"
Upvotes are supposed to improve upon the traditional forum model by providing a way for the community to endorse the best posts for visibility. If a user doesn't care about that, they can always sort by new/old. Either way, it's up to the reader to decide how posts are presented on their end, not up to the posters to modify their behavior to produce a convenient feed for readers.
The issue of non-news posts in the news mega is an issue of efficiency for readers. If the site had better features for filtering comments, then it wouldn't be necessary to impose rules on how people post because the burden of filtering comments would be put on the reader.
Perhaps a tag system would be nice to add to Lemmy, with a way to filter comments by tags. That way users could tag their posts as sarcastic or serious or shitpost.
we consistently have to remind people to put content warnings on their posts and that policy has been in place for at least two years
Instead of tags, maybe FB-style reacts would work better... some way that the community does the tagging, not the poster. Perhaps the issue is that the upvote is a single number without info about why it's upvoted (e.g. because it's funny or because it's informative)
The issue of people posting in the wrong thread is pretty much the same issue as not tagging their posts properly