I get the chicken/egg situation, for sure. Without material being posted, the community looks dead. I think the contentbot currently pulls things too far - with so many posts that are reddit links, with almost all of them having 0 comments on Lemmy, it kind of makes the community here look and feel like a proxy for r/edmonton. I see that you've put effort into making the contentbot bring over curated posts, and that's really cool, but I think it's bringing over too much.

I think an online community needs a few things to work well, and one of them is that It should be a water cooler, where people can talk about the news, share their views, & discuss. The news posts are brought here, which is great, but they get diluted by the amount of reddit links. Getting people to actually comment is hard, if they feel like they're speaking into a void.

The thread/comment format is amazing for people to ask questions, and get good answers. Like, "where can I find a jewelers hammer in Edmonton?". The sort of q/a that search engines deliver poorly on. But I understand, it's hard to get that q/a going, if nobody is commenting. And I'd be disincentivized to even post a thread with that question, if the majority of the threads have 0 comments - I wouldn't really expect an answer.

So, the goal would be to build on the existing subscriber numbers, and incentivize people to comment. There are already 425 subscribers, which is cool. And the users per month here is high for a city-centered community, so we know people want to be here. Maybe pinned weekly general discussion, and q/a threads would be a good way to get people talking? I'd comment in those, to try and get things kick started :)

I mean, that's fine. Good, even.

Thanks to you for modding, and I appreciate your efforts. To speak honestly though, something that stops me from getting more involved here is that all the posts are almost exclusively made by a bot that links back to reddit posts. I think that's kind of a bummer.

One of the first things Trudeau did as Prime Minister was break the top-line platform promise that got him elected - he promised Canadians that the 2015 federal election would be the last one under the first past the post system. So I'd say from the standpoint of democracy, he had an absolutely horrible start.

Of course he went on to reap the benefits of the imbalanced first past the post system for two subsequent federal elections, one of which he called unnecessarily during the pandemic in order to consolidate power for his party.

I think him and his party have been vaporware since day one.

This is not news to be calm about. A bipartisan intelligence committee has released a report that details exact and specific instances of MPs working wittingly to assist foreign state actors in meddling with the Canadian government. Freeland did not commit to expelling MPs who acted in this manner. This is a crisis.

"If there's any evidence that somebody knowingly worked with a foreign government to influence our democracy, they should no longer be a member of Parliament," Singh said.

Why is this impossible for the Liberals to say?

This is insanity. Any MP who is proven to have aided a foreign actor in interference operations needs to be removed from Parliament immediately, and prosecuted.

This is an encouraging step, and it's nice to see the heat being turned up on the grocery monopoly.

I think we need cost controls and compulsory transparency about pricing. What stick exactly are the grocery companies wielding to prevent measures like that from being rolled out? A federal government with vision and principles would have had a plan and gotten this done yesterday. Instead, we're waiting for the assent of megacorps to a non-binding code of conduct, which everybody knows is total vaporware.

I can see why people are disaffected by all the hand waving about 'competition'. Increased competition is probably part of the solution to the problem here. But it's not a valid starting point. It's a result of wise policy and good implementation.

Not going to steal, but definitely will boycott for the month of May.

As a millennial with a not-amazing but decent paying job, the notion of retirement at all is laughable. What incentive do people like me have to save, when inflation and cost of living are on the trajectory that they're currently on? Putting money away at this point just means less money for groceries, rent, and enjoyable things. And in 5 years, that saved money will be worth less than it is today.

Median wage of $45k per year is wild. Tough to live comfortably on that in most cities in this country.

Talking points printed for comrades at the Russian troll farm

Man, fuck these UCP idiots.

Provincial governments need to work closely with the federal government. The provincial government actually has a responsibility to establish and nurture that relationship, and not simply throw temper tantrums when the relationship isn't what they want it to be. When the UCP chooses to be oppositional and obstructive like this, it hurts Alberta citizens, and makes life worse.

There are a lot of things I love about Alberta. But if the next provincial election shows that a majority of the citizens truly want a provincial government that behaves like this, I'm outta here.