this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
39 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

44331 readers
1032 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Most online communities have a low barrier of entry and effectively no user onboarding, and end up becoming chaotic messes where content is difficult to navigate. Obviously this is fine for more chatty communities, but is unfortunate in more serious and discussion-focused forums and for content archives. Even on Lemmy, there are communities where formatting rules are completely ignored[1]. This results from a combination of site design, moderation, and user respect for the community (three things notoriously bad on reddit-like sites, and well, most popular sites)

A couple of exceptions to the trend are forums which enforce a barrier of entry and quality control (unfortunately I can't recall any right now, but I would love to hear of some!) and some booru IBs. A booru site is an archive where users upload media without titles and tag it for easy searching. If a booru manages to enforce a decent quality of tagging (and there are mechanical ways to assist with this, such as tag aliases) then the site becomes a well-organized online content community.

Most boorus I've found allow NSFW content, so here are some work-safe examples:


Note: feel welcome to list slow or 'dead' sites!

all 22 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

It never ceases to amaze me what exists in the internet. FindAFox is pretty damn cool. I feel like it would be cool to have FindAnAnimal which covers all animals you could ever want to browse.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I was gonna say SCP but that's kinda fallen apart.

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

I'm only peripherally aware of the SCP community, but I really enjoy browsing the stories... what's fallen apart about it?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

They all got stuck in an infinite IKEA

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Obviously biased but hexbear

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (2 children)

But Lemmy.world told me hexbear is evil?!?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

lemmy.world is a wretched hive of liberals and fascists.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

Certainly seems that way

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

Lemmy.world sure does have a lot to say about other instances don't they?

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

For the sake of discussion, can you give some examples of good design in the community? How does that contrast against other Lemmy instances?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Aggressive moderation of bigots removal of down votes and an incredible dedicated and diverse moderation team for starters.

It is for example the safest place for trans comrades on the entire internet from my experience.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I find downvotes important in maintaining signal to noise long term. If people downvote me, I take that as a signal that there's either something I don't know, or that I need to improve how I communicate the idea. I want a community where I can have a real conversation with people that both agree and disagree with me, not an echo chamber that only allows conforming views, nor a shit flinging free for all.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Nah downvotes are reactionary. If you disagree with someone you have to explain why.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

If I downvote something without explaining, it's probably because it sounded like a bot, but I wasn't sure enough to report it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

And we love our emojis and have the best worst memes, don't we folks? a-little-trolling

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

I don't know if it is good organized, but i like the DevianArt website, a bit classic, a bit modern, full of significant content.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

A couple of exceptions to the trend are forums which enforce a barrier of entry and quality control

Resetera

I agree with the boorus. Some of the best tagging systems and implementations in existence

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This is super niche but Ravelry is a fantastic place for knitters and crocheters. I don’t personally participate in many forums there, but there are lots of other ways to be involved and it’s very informative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

For what it's worth, I'm expecting the best examples to be niche. General sites are often too purposeless to do these things well.

Ravelry looks great, good example!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

It’s great! I’ve picked up sewing now (knitting got too easy after nearly twenty years…) and the first major disappointment is how there is nothing like Ravelry for sewing. There are major pattern companies, indie pattern companies, review sites, blogs, etc. but they’re not all in one central location and it bums me out. Oh well.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

MetaFilter has been a very well managed & moderated community for a very long time. Their FAQ is worth perusing as food for thought. They pay their moderators. Funding comes from a sign-up fee and donations.

Personally I can no longer stomach how labor aristocratic and unabashedly anti-“tankie” MetaFilter is, though.

Fortunately, I think this other site is also well managed: