I imagine there’s excitement for the increase of activity but worries about the potential toxic side of Reddit coming along too.

I’d especially be interested in the Lemmy devs’ opinions.

  • Sun-Spider@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    2 years ago

    I think the conventional way this is handled on Reddit is separating memes and fluff into one one community (subreddit) and more discussion based content into another community. It works on Reddit because even if the memes get more engagement in an absolute sense, each subreddit has it’s own yard stick for what is doing well, so a discussion that makes it to the front page of its own subreddit will make it through to the front page of users who are subscribed, alongside the memes. I don’t yet know enough about how Lemmy ranks posts to know if this will work, but hopefully it will.

    • captainteebs@lemmy.mlEnglish
      81·
      2 years ago

      This is what I am hoping will happen. With the current reddit structure, for each topic, you have multiple communities -

      1. The noob-friendly one that is not actively moderated and has a lot of reposts and garbage content
      2. The offshoot that was created because the main sub went downhill. Has stricter moderation and content policies.
      3. The meme offshoot that was created because the main sub banned memes.
      4. The circlejerk version.

      /r/gaming is garbage, /r/games is for discussion. /r/StardustCrusaders is a fan-art dump, /r/Shitpostcrusaders is a meme juggernaut The mods of the Game of Thrones subreddit wouldn’t allow people to shit on the show, so /r/freefolk was formed, and that also served as a template for stuff like /r/titanfolk.

      Anything that gains critical mass will break down into multiple sub communities. It’s inevitable.

      • Deebster@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        I like this model, although circlejerk can be the meme version too. Even a fairly quiet sub like /r/baduk/ begat /r/badukshitposting/ and it works well.

    • Veritas@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1913·
      2 years ago

      Nah, most subreddits are the same. All the top threads in each community are usually pictures, memes, or news. It’s hard to find discussions unless you specifically search for not so popular posts.

      • PureTryOut@lemmy.mlEnglish
        52·
        2 years ago

        Can give you some examples? That is definitely not my experience, the few subreddits I visit often only have memes every once and while and they often get removed quickly by the mods redirecting them to dedicated meme subreddits.

          • hadrian@beehaw.orgEnglish
            42·
            2 years ago

            Sure, when it’s r/all by top. But a massive part of it is subreddits, which then constitute the front page. The majority of my Reddit front page isn’t memes, because my main subscriptions are things like acting, patientgamers, askhistorians, piano, etc. Which don’t have many, if any, memes posted.

            • Veritas@lemmy.mlEnglish
              10·
              2 years ago

              Ok, it’s not a problem of the majority of Reddit but of the most popular subreddits and the front feed.

              • hadrian@beehaw.orgEnglish
                42·
                2 years ago

                Yeah I totally agree with that! I think it’s a basic side effect of the way the voting algorithm works - namely that early votes count for a hell of a lot, and so memes/pictures get those early votes much earlier than discussion posts do - because it’s much quicker to look at a picture, than it is to read a long text post.

                So the good thing about smaller (especially smaller and well-moderated) communities, is that there’s enough space for text posts to breathe, without competing with memes for vote ascension space. But that doesn’t erase the problem of meme/image supremacy in r/all and r/popular.