this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.


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All this « editorial » content is so unnerving with so much shit happening in the world. It does not feel like a safe place if you doomscroll every time you browse it…

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The weekly "How's it going" thread is always sweet; I understand what you mean. I wonder if a platform built roughly like Reddit can properly support sharing on a more personal level though. The tools are never neutral.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's a good point. Part of why reddit became what it did probably is just the nature of the system. Points-based threads with subthreads, are definitely, like, a specific strategy for generating a body of content. It's atomizing. It leads to direct replies to a specific person, which seems to lead to more fighting, and it commodifies posts into rated point values.

Of course people are snarky on Reddit and Lemmy, it's literally a system where you reply directly to someone and everyone rates everything you say.

Compare that with a forum system where it's just a single chronological thread and I can kind of see how it's more conflict-oriented and less community-oriented.

So if reddit-style social media is the social media of bickering for points, and Twitter-style social media is centered around cults of personality, what could preserve that community feeling and linearity of forums in a fediverse package?

How do you scale a linear community?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

For what it's worth, having been on forums like Fuck Combustion, Erowid, and GameFAQs for an extremely long time, the proportional amount of snark here seems congruent with the amount of traffic they get. I will say I have noticed that instant message based ones feel a little different - IRC and now discord it's pretty much depending on what you're there for. Sometimes everyone is a jerk, sometimes everyone is insanely nice, versus posts like these where there's time dedicated to each comment.

You'd think that stoners and psychonauts would be a little more chill than gamers or the average comments on an article but... Honestly? Not really. The things I've noticed that matter is how the vibe of a community is fostered, as that will be the determining factor in how negative responses are received.

In my experience the best possible communities are those that are focused on gaining and sharing knowledge to make the subject easier to have fun with. But if it's too academic then it becomes a problem again, it needs to be focused on knowledge for creative fun. Whether it's video games, recreational drugs, academia, the patterns are the same - there's a common point where the knowledgeable get bored of repeating their information learned from the community to the new users, which leads to the decline of high quality information, which then creates a feedback loop where knowledgeable users then get annoyed and either stop participating or start becoming snobbish or condescending.

The strongest communities that survive this are the ones that have a high concentration of knowledgeable users who encompass different facets surrounding the same topic. There's a shared understanding of the basic concepts, functions and mechanics that the subject is composed of, but each user's preference and interest make up the breadth. It seems to help prevent the feedback loop by replacing it with the understanding that preferences make for a wide variety of reaching the same results.

I may understand that my way is suboptimal, but I want to know how I can most optimize this way of doing it. A good community supports that and shares their knowledge in odd and creative ways. A bad community condemns the user for even considering doing it that way in the first place, why bother when you can do it this way instead, I see where you're coming from but you're really better off just doing something else.... rtfm you can figure it out. The manual: {This page has been intentionally left blank}

There's also a certain level of "just do it yourself" mentality that ranges based on different hobbies. It's far easier to talk "theory" about building Mechas, LEGOs or painting minifigs than it is to talk theory about software. Physical or tactile tasks have a different way of interacting with the needed knowledge and getting a new user up to speed usually is pretty simple. It's talking about techniques, motions, states of existence. Whereas if a new user doesn't know the lingo for software, chances are they are missing loads of regular and contextual knowledge. Different things just have different levels of ease of access, all with different skill ceilings.

This is mostly just hobby oriented, but it seems somewhat consistent overall. Hell, I've seen it in meme subs here like 196, "what's the point of this post?" Like... Dude... It's a meme sub, there is no point lol.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

From the sidebar on the home page: As a news aggregator and a social media outlet, with a focus on being a safe and accepting space, we strive to create a positive social impact.

This is a set of goals with inherent tension.

As one of the moderators of !usnews and someone who started in print journalism in the '90s, I can assure you this is not a new problem even without the impact portion. There are a varying number of steps from assigning a story to having it be aggregated on Beehaw, none of which we have any control over (nor, I can safely say, would any of us want to), and readers always want more "good" news regardless of platform.

If some of our news communities are upsetting you, removing those from your default feed is likely your best option.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

We love to see more good natured content, but unfortunately asking for more doesn't tend to change the behaviors of others. If you have ideas, or want to contribute content in this way, it would be greatly appreciated!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I can narrate about the 20 Windows Server 2008 machines that I'm going to have to bump up to Server 2019. But, depending on how it all goes, I might just spoil the mood even more. :D

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Please narrate lol! Your life is cool, maybe you can give a few anecdotes here and there :((( I don’t understand why people think they’re not interesting

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Anecdote #1: Don't put yourself in a position where you've got a bunch of servers that you have to upgrade from 2008 to 2019.

Anecdote #2: The warnings against doing in-place Windows Server upgrades can't stop you if you don't read them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What are the benefits of Windows server against super snappy Linux servers managed with docker or just an instance on a cloud provider?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

In our case, there are a bunch of benefits and reasons:

  • Active Directory (plus certificate services, but I don't personally touch those at all)
  • A lot of our software here in healthcare is legacy stuff that works on Windows and only on Windows
  • My boss is used to Windows and is far too busy and old to want to learn something different
  • Windows Server is generally okay and comes with some handy management features built-in

We do have some systems that are on Linux (Photon OS for VMware stuff, a couple of vendor-implemented Ubuntu systems). We don't really have much to do with these system, though. I'm the only one here who's familiar with *nix stuff, and while I've tried implementing stuff like our Intranet server on Ubuntu Server, I eventually moved over to Windows Server with IIS because it was just easier for my coworkers to access and use.

As for containerization, we have so many servers that do one thing and only one thing. Docker would be awesome, but it's sadly just really not a thing in our slice of the healthcare and IT sector. We do plan to start moving to a hybrid cloud model with Azure, but that probably won't be for a few years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

LOL. The second one sounds awfully familiar. Not with Windows, but I’ve had my own cases where I didn’t read before breaking. How did it work out in the end?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Going okay so far. We've had a lot going on this week, so I didn't want to touch any of our critical systems for fear of adding even more shit to the plate for my coworkers. The non-critical system upgrades went smoothly. You can't upgrade from 2008 R2 straight to 2019, so I do an intermediary upgrade to 2012 first (hooray, the Windows 8 start screen!) VMware's mouse driver seems to break during the upgrade, and my RDP doesn't like connecting to 2012 servers, so I have to navigate by keyboard to the file explorer to start the upgrade from 2012 to 2019. There's probably a better way to do this, but I can't be bothered to find it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Lol, I forgot how busy this instance can be because I blocked both of the news communities last year (and I think one or two others, but I can't remember which and don't care enough to look) and set up keyword filters in my app to never see posts with certain words or phrases in their title.

Thanks to that, the majority of my experience isn't particularly negative. Admittedly, there's a lot less content, but I don't really care all that much.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What app do you use? Jerboa doesn't allow keyword filtering AFAIK

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Eternity (formerly Infinity) and Sync.

Both have options for filtering, thankfully.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (3 children)

‘Wracking’.

Just sayin’.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In the future please don't be dismissive. We have many non-native English speakers on the internet. Providing them feedback that they are saying something incorrectly so that they can correct themselves in the future is feedback that can be helpful, but doing so in a polite way is much nicer than a condescending one 💜

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I would even go a step further and say that unless the mistake fundamentally changes the meaning of what they are saying, a correction is not necessary. English is pretty fluid grammar and spelling wise, and sticking to strict rules is not necessary outside academia or professional settings

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Language descriptivism, it's the stuff plants crave!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Electrolytes, the stuff English professors crave.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My father is in a relationship with my deceased mother's sister.

I don't know how to feel about this.

Firstly: Ew

Secondly: He's really old and has never been able to take care of himself, so I'm glad that someone is there with him and my aunt really is a kind and sweet person who also is single and both are really too old to date, so maybe it's a good thing.

Thirdly: Ew Ewewewew EW ew

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That sounds really sweet. Good for them if they found each other. How long ago did your mom pass?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

It's been a while, and he sincerely mourned her near daily for years.

There was never even a hint of impropriety at any point, and I know they were both really concerned about the family perception.

It's still weird but they seem pretty happy together and frankly there isn't enough happiness in the world to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

When the migration started on early June, the content on Lemmy was mostly organic (people writing posts/requests and actual discussion).

Now, a few months later, it is mostly links to articles in mostly every instance. I wonder how many are bots flooding the human voices.

The communties I've come to follow are good, but not numerous.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It’s because walled gardens don’t have a very long life expectancy on the internet. If Behaw doesn’t relax its strict rules a little, it will evaporate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I'm ok with an article, but I much prefer it when someone accompanies it with a discussion in the body or comments.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I would suggest something like a "good news week". The last week of every month dedicated to sharing the good content we have stumbled upon or experienced. Something to practice a new behavior and make it stick. I don't believe the changes will come organically. Or maybe a weekly challenge thread, with some goals to the ones that participate. Share a good memory, uplifting news, something that made you smile...