maegul

maegul, 4 days ago

Ha … it seems like it at least.

I think I was being dumb in asking the question actually.

It’s really just about the circle of users to whom the community is visible.

Local-only … visible only to users of the instance. I’d presumed that it could be writable only to users of the instance such that only users of the instance could post/comment there. But double checking, no, it’s only visible if you’re logged on with an account on that instance … so pretty private in the end actually.

private communities … which are apparently coming … are visible only to approved users, whether on the local instance or not.

And presumably, these will be stackable, so that a local-only + private community will be visible only to approved users from the local instance. So getting pretty closed.

maegul, 4 days ago

I think it’s a good option to have. Most who start communities want reach and engagement. But for those situations where you want a more in-group vibe, something like this is essential.

It’s sorely missing in the fediverse and a rather good form of social media TBH that the fediverse, until now, has ignored (while it has kinda taken off on discord etc).

Private communities though are intended to federate, just with gated membership. And they could be useful for particularly niche communities that don’t want to be disturbed by those who mainly use the All feed.

It will be interesting to see how it interacts with federation/defederation dynamics though. Lemmy-world for instance, could easily start going local only because they kinda already think they’re the whole of the threadiverse and are certainly big enough to sustain themselves.

maegul, 4 days ago

All good … the whole post was started by me misreading in the first place I think!

maegul, 4 days ago

We can already create private instances that don’t federate for those niche communities;

That being said, creating a private instance is a relatively difficult hurdle. By providing private communities, an admin can take care of the hosting, along with all of the other communities, while those who want something more controlled and closed can have an easily accessible option. Plenty of people want their social media to have options for being relatively closed or relatively open, and I think it’s healthy to provide those options.

I hear you though on the lemmy-world community closing possibility (and similar) … that would easily be an abuse IMO and it’s not entirely clear what would or could happen.

To be fair though, the whole lemmy-world instance (or any other for that matter) could simply turn federation off at any point to the same effect you fear, so it’s arguably just part of the federation flexibility. In this case, any community mod has their hand on the switch for their community, which means we’ll probably see it get used in controversial circumstances at least once. But for any given community, going either private or local-only is sure to drop user engagement or be a PITA regarding managing the “approved users” list, so I can’t see it being a popular action TBH.

maegul, 3 days ago

Still, I think you raise a relevant malicious path. Like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if something contentious happens however infrequently.

maegul, 4 days ago

As naive as it might be about Portugal etc … genuinely (and positively) … woah!

maegul, 4 days ago

Right, so you didn’t watch the video … it’s about the paper that’s getting so much media attention and why most in the scientific community don’t think much of it and what challenges to the initial paper have been made in subsequent publications.

The video is solely about published work, by a publishing and working scientist, and not at all some mainstream media stuff.

Gotta say, at some point, if downvoters are operating at such a superficial level, their reason for existing basically disappears. Like an AI would have done a better job here. The quality of the video is precisely because it nicely dispels whatever media hype might be out there.

maegul, 4 days ago

I really don’t think this video is click bait. It’s reason for existing might be the media hype and clickbait crap that has been produced … but all the video does is dig into the published science and generally dispel what all the media hype is probably saying. It’s the opposite.

At some point, if anti-clickbait behaviour is going to be sufficiently superficial, it’s likely as bad as clickbait itself (not unlike an auto-immune disease).

maegul, 3 days ago

Yea, I’d heard about this planet, but I didn’t know how much modelling was involved and of course what alternatives can explain the data. Still, the new data that hasn’t been analysed seems like it could be interesting.

maegul, 5 days ago

OMFG … it’s beautiful!

maegul, 5 days ago

Hear hear!!

maegul, 5 days ago

Without knowing the financial history of the place, it seems a good case study in something that could have gone for the sustainable stalwart of the internet path but instead fell to the dark silicon valley profit/growth side of things. With wikipedia being the only great success (AFAIK) at forging solid and sustainable foundations for the internet, I suppose the lesson is that it has to be non-profit, or open-source (or both) from the beginning.

In a way, it is kinda on many of us for not realising this and pushing against it sooner.

One of the great things coming out of the fediverse (and bluesky too at the moment) is all of the open software being developed that will hopefully plant seeds that will last a long time.

maegul, 5 days ago

Yea, and the way, AFAIU, that jobs are auctioned off to the lowest bidder. All around it feels like Hollywood just doesn’t want to take the importance of CGI/VFX too seriously or let the sub-industry get too much power or too large a slice of the pie … so instead it keeps them at an arms distance and culturally emphasises the idea that VFX aren’t “central” to the quality of a film when in reality it’s now a key part of the production/directorial process best integrated from the start (as Godzilla minus one demonstrated, apparently as I still haven’t seen it and don’t want to signup for netflix to watch it).

maegul, 5 days ago

I keep wondering if lemmy itself could do a decent job of this, and that being native to a communities style platform is a good thing for a blogging platform on the fediverse.

maegul, 5 days ago

but it shouldn’t

I’m curious about why you think this relatively strongly (if you don’t mind my asking)?

maegul, 6 days ago

I’ve heard several times that Lemmy should consolidate communities (like what happened with !mapporn and !map_enthusiasts recently), but I guess it’s easier said than done.

Yea. It’s tricky and frustrating. The community fragmentation is more than what makes sense here given the user size, which only adds to the confusion of the platform. And yet people like to hold on to the communities they mod/own and many happily route around all of that by just using All as their main feed.

All that being said, this is at least better than the treatment you (and I, sorta, afterward) got from the other place, being banned and all. And it is an understandably touchy topic, so at least they said “maybe in the future”. It’s just be nice if more were actively interested in trying to make the overall platform better (which sometimes involves more different but overlapping communities, just not all there time).

Still, you’ve done well with this one!

maegul, 6 days ago

Yea generally I agree, you kinda need the options to exist before things go to shit.

But when it comes to communities it’s pretty easy to create new ones and advertise them whenever something goes bad. That’s basically what happened with this one after lemmy.film went down. And plenty seem to find the community fragmentation annoying, or at least used to say so. I’m not sure where the balance sits, but at least talking about the possibility of trying to organise better probably makes sense.

maegul, 6 days ago (edited 1 day ago)

Hmmm. I feel like you may be a bit harsh here. I agree that the mod is free to do what they want, and generally don’t think community diversity is bad (though I lean toward some form of consolidation around this kind of community, or at least better organisation).

But for a nascent and small platform like the fediverse, talking about how we organise ourselves is almost always a fair topic of conversation IMO, for the simple reason that self-organisation is exactly what the fediverse is about, how it was made and how it will thrive.

And was it really against the rules? “Self promotion”? The suggestion was for a merger with a community where I’m not sure Blaze had anything personal to gain. So not promotion or for themselves?

I can’t shake the feeling that this is all very Reddit thinking, that makes more sense at their scale and with the more rabid behaviour and territorialism you’d get there. There, shutting down conversations like this makes sense as an immune response against potentially toxic bad faith actors. Plus, the number of users there is such that community building is easier.

But here? That might be an auto-immune disorder. People take ownership on the fediverse and have the opportunity to think about how things should be and even make that happen (beyond just starting a new community that is). Letting that all play out in conversations seems fundamental, and removing comments or banning users for trying to have organisational conversations may just be anti-fediverse as much as it might seem like reasonable community moderation, at least if we’re still doing things the Reddit way.

Ideally, perhaps, there’d be a good meta-community community for people to talk about these things without moderation concerns being triggered.

maegul, 6 days ago

I sent a DM first. The mod didn’t reply to me but opened this thread.

Awkwardly enough, I’m wondering if sometimes a DM doesn’t federate? I feel like I’ve had DMs get ignored, but am wondering now if it was a federation issue.

maegul, 5 days ago

Ok I just checked and … is someone even allowed to mod that many communities!

Your Moderator View must basically be your personal feed huh?

maegul, 6 days ago

I’m a fan of the franchise, so I’ll almost certainly see this. But I’m not expecting any real originality … I’m seeing it more like a cover of a classic (which, despite disliking reboots etc, I’m kinda ok with when it comes to classics with franchises … maybe it’s good just to revisit things without a full rewatch?)