Apologies, I seem to have missed some discussions on this. It was a little surprising when I came back and saw todcon on the front page even before logging in.
Long story short, I don't think it's a good idea to show NSFW posts to logged out users. The reason would be that some of the NSFW communities and posts are a bit too far out for the average anime fan (who is your likely person that would come across such communities) to be comfortable viewing, and having those posts visible to someone that's not even logged in (e.g. public) right under the pinned "We're not what you think we are" isn't a great look.
First impressions count, and I'm not sure that's the best first impression a random person stumbling across here might have.
I understand the original discussion was about getting more members,* but I'm not sure doing this would have that effect. If people aren't comfortable viewing some kinks and fetishes, they're not going to want to be associated with a community that displays these things so openly. The previous method of "Yea, you gotta log in to see the NSFW stuff" makes sense, since it gives the user the freedom to block/not receive updates from communities they aren't interested in, or they aren't comfortable viewing. Between that, and the current "Just turn away from this community if you don't like what you see on the front page", the former seems better. Imo those that are interested in such niche NSFW stuff would find it themselves after they make an account to browse.
*For what it's worth, my stance on this would be largely similar to CookieJarObserver - it's alright to have a small community and to just treat this place as a "loli-meme friendly version of Reddit." Growth may be possible from future migrations resulting from Reddit's actions (just like how the original migration occurred and brought the NSFW Touhou subs, along with me, here), so it shouldn't be something that's chased.
On the other hand, the "NSFW publicly on display" route can result in some that really hate/detest some kink right smack on the front page and immediately coming away with the impression that that's what the entire Lemmy instance is about. Even if it was just one post that popped up at the wrong time... they wouldn't know. If someone doesn't like seeing people die, but they browsed Reddit at a time when r/watchpeopledie had NSFW posts publicly available on the front page, they're not likely to think "Oh, I'll make an account anyway, find a community I like, and block that subreddit." It's more likely they'll go "What the fuck" and associate the whole site with what they saw for a few seconds... just like that, the site's lost a potential person that could've stuck around happily in another community and formed part of the desired broader community even if they didn't like... watching people die.
For proposed solutions, I'd like to suggest the following (though some of them are probably already done):
- Restrict NSFW communities and posts to registered users.
- Have a pinned public post explaining that NSFW communities and posts are restricted to logged-in users, and have a list of what NSFW communities exist (along with a short description, if any). You can also emphasize the fact that users have full freedom to block any communities they don't want appearing in their feed.
- Just relax/chill with the current userbase and see if Reddit takes any more actions that cause further migrations. You can advertise about this Lemmy branch/instance in the meantime if you want, but even Reddit didn't quite gain traction until the Digg exodus/migration (among others). It's not impossible for further growth to come from external factors just like how this came into existence.
- For those particularly interested to grow their communities, trying to start discussion posts and getting to know members of your community may help. Weekly discussion threads, seeing who's alive and bothers to respond... it's not much, but it's something.
I've used todcon as an example above, since I don't particularly care for it, but I want to stress it's less about the content and more about the approach. Others might dislike NSFW loli but they're alright with NSFW shota, or they might dislike NSFW shota and they're alright with cub stuff, or they might hate all these, but lurk to see how this place develops (and to bring the banhamma down or call for it, but that's another matter). In general, most people have stuff they wouldn't like to see, so giving them the freedom to decide if they see it (by making an account and letting them decide what to block) is probably going to go down better than someone coming cross the site and thinking "man that place is a bit too crazy for me, given what they allow on the front page... I'm not going back there."
Ultimately, I'd like to suggest that the image of the Lemmy branch should be something along the lines of:
"Yes, we allow NSFW loli memes which Reddit used to allow, and which other Lemmy anime communities don't allow. That's what differentiates us in terms of content. If you dig deeper you might find some extra stuff that usually won't see the light of day anywhere else, but we won't force it in your face."
"You have the freedom to choose what you want to see, and the community might not be very big, but it's actively and decently moderated. We're happy with how it is, we won't water down ourselves just to pander to the masses/get more people. That's what differentiates us in terms of community and moderation."
"At the end of the day, you're welcome to join us at a level you're comfortable with."
If people go away thinking "Yea, that content's not for me, but good for you", that's miles ahead of "I really didn't need to see that... and I'm not even logged in, wtf."
Happy to hear thoughts of y'all.
Currently burggit is using lemmynsfw.com's lemmy-ui changes. Besides displaying NSFW posts to logged out users, they also auto-expand content and unblur nsfw thumbnails.
There's no major problem with that for lemmynsfw (and they tell in the sidebar you can block communities you don't like), but i can see why this would irk some people on this instance.
I think the latter 2 changes can be reversed at a stylesheet level, which AFAIK burggit already did previously when spacing items. would non-autoexpanded content and blurred NSFW thumbnails be a good compromise?
I'm not sure if the concerns of the "ghost town" in the original post can be resolved by having non-registered viewers see a bunch of NSFW posts. If one believes the 1% rule that says 99% of people generally lurk and it is a small minority of 1% (and maybe 9% who contribute once in a while) that actually create content, it feels like growth and discussion comes from hitting a critical mass of users (which this community might not have hit yet, but may hit in time), rather than "look, here are more NSFW posts, but you can't comment until you register an account with us."
Though it's not quite the same as hiding away NSFW posts behind registration (since a flood of "wtf" NSFW posts relative to the viewer could flood the front page), I guess that can also be a function of post content as well (SFW vs. NSFW and so on.) With that, I would support your suggestion on the UI changes, since it would give them the same view as registered users (albeit an expanded view of non-blocked communities). At the very least, having the "wtf" content be blurred and not auto-expanded might help avoid insta-reject reactions (or delay it for a few seconds until they click on one out of curiosity and go AHHH MY EYES WHAT IS THIS) 😅
99% of the posts here are NSFW (I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't an exaggeration), so someone visiting the site for the first time would only see the other 1%. Given how few of SFW posts there are and how they don't tend to have much interaction beyond the occasional comment or two, it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to assume that this place is pretty much dead. By showing NSFW posts by default, new users would get an accurate measure of how active it is here and would be more likely to stay (and (hopefully) less of them would be scared off by extreme content than would leave due to lack of content).
Honestly, I'm not sure why the NSFW Lemmy UI removes the blur and auto-expands posts in the first place (though the option to automatically do this is appreciated). Reverting these is a no-brainer IMO, and it would bring the experience in line with vanilla Lemmy after creating an account (and enabling NSFW posts).
Yea, that's ultimately the question. I think reinstating blurs and removing auto-expansion (for the visitor view) would help mitigate the former somewhat... it remains to be seen whether that's possible, even if it seems to be broadly supported here.
From a convenience/UX perspective, it makes sense. It brings the experience closer to Instagram/Tik Tok "card" style posts where the content is displayed without needing an extra click. That said, I think their content there is relatively tame compared to some of the content hosted here, so it might work for them but not so well for us.
I agree - it would also be in line with Reddit's approach of "Yea you can see NSFW as a lurking visitor, but the thumbnail is hidden and you get a red warning that it's NSFW". I think it's a fair way to go about it.