Is Lemmy an effective alternative to Reddit?

Zansuvobr@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 393 points –

What are your thoughts on the Lemmy ecosystem?

I've been trying it out for the last week. I have my own opinions, but I'd like to hear others and see if we have common ideas on what is good/bad/indifferent about the Lemmy ecosystem.

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Forgive my ignorance, but what's a zero-reply guy?

i think corgana meant zero people who reply with meaningless comments just for the sake of replying, like those tiresome one-line joke threads that choke up every big subteddit.

A "reply guy" (wikipedia) is someone who responds to posts/comments in an annoying (usually smug/condescending) way, like what you think of when you think of a "redditor". Big platforms like Reddit like reply-guys because they generate engagement (often someone telling the reply-guy to f-off) it's also not a behavior that an algorithm can recognize, so human mods/admins are needed to curb it.

Over time, if Reply-guys are not banned they tend to make the overall ecosystem too exhausting to participate in, and (authentic, desireable) engagement declines.