Low effort posts

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.worldmod to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 144 points –

Ask Lemmy is a place to ask thought provoking questions. The mods have been lenient with some of the recent posts on the basis that they must provoke thought for some people, but after seeing two posts essentially saying "what do you think of my stick?", I believe we can raise the bar a bit on what kind of thoughts we want to provoke here.

No more low effort posts please.

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Repetitive meme posts can get annoying, and mods should intervene in some cases, but I'd prefer if the rules were more open. It's hard to determine what is "low effort" and "thought-provoking", and Lemmy is small so further limiting content isn't that productive

Was this the post? https://lemmy.ca/post/9681692

I think people using this community are looking for something similar to AskReddit, and it's totally ok if you want to be different from that since the Fediverse allows for more communities to be made.

Personally, (and you don't need to run the community like this), I'm looking for a community for open-ended and discussion provoking questions, not necessarily thought-provoking questions. The stick one was fun and lead to fun discussion

I sort of agree, mainly with the lower population of Lemmy concern, albeit I've also seen other questions that, while not low effort necessarily, have made me wonder, "Wouldn't this perhaps be better in a more specific community, or in a different style, like NoStupidQuestions?"

However, low population, not a moderator, so the mixed thoughts have left me refraining from asking or saying anything as I kinda think we already have an abundance of communities sparsely populated as-is and I'm not into backseat moderating. Still, the thoughts have been there and this thread's given a nice opportunity to voice them.

I’ve also seen other questions that, while not low effort necessarily, have made me wonder, “Wouldn’t this perhaps be better in a more specific community, or in a different style, like NoStupidQuestions?”

Yea I've seen a few of those too. Questions that are too specific to a particular app/program or a specific personal problem. Those don't really belong here

  • "How do I do X on program Y" (bad) vs. "What's your favourite program that does Z" (good)

Wouldn't the charter not be more appropriate for a "DiscussOnLemmy" group? And leave "AskLemmy" for proper, answerable questions? That mistake was made on reddit before.

The most fun part of the early internet was the feeling that it was the Wild West. Lawlessness and fun. Obviously, rules are needed to keep things under control, but I agree that erring on the side of having fun isn’t a bad thing. It’s more inclusive and it lets people express themselves.

One of my favorite things to see on Lemmy is people who lurked on Reddit but feel free to talk here. Being too heavy-handed with rules might discourage those people from contributing.

This is a really good point. Should the community be for thought provoking questions or discussion provoking questions?

Both should be welcome. Especially with the current state of Lemmy (low user base), over moderation can be a real thing.

More narrowly tailored communities have narrower appeal and Q&A communities function off of their number of users.

This is one reason why on Reddit r/AskReddit (44M) has more users than r/AskMen (5.8M). And why r/AskMen has more users than r/AskMenOverThirty (458K).

Appreciate your team being open to thinking about it :)

You could even ask it as a meta askLemmy question

There should be a community for both, but it should not be named "AskLemmy".

I liked the stick post :(

Most people liked the stick post. I don't know how these whiners expect Lemmy to compete with reddit while also not allowing people to have fun.

The mods hate sticks. They are stick-bigots.

All this anti-stick propaganda is getting to me.

I’ll have you know, one of my best friends is a stick.

We don’t know if that’s true but name 5 famous sticks. You know what just name 3

  • Hank the Plank
  • The Fourth Branch of Government
  • The Elder Wand

The stick post was the most upvoted post in the past 7 days.

That doesn’t make it good.

Yes, it actually does. Unless you think upvotes are somehow independent of content's value?

You honestly believe that upvotes mean something is good? Or do you think that maybe it just means that it’s popular?

Having settled that-

Popular ≠ good.

Doesn't mean it fit in this community. Yeah it was probably fine to let one of those threads go by,, but the second was too much.

I honestly didn't think they fit and I checked the rules to see what was going on because I assumed this was a community similar to askreddit.

Well, it was way more interesting than the usual stuff here. So much about "thought provoking".

"How do you rate a stick?" is a pretty interesting question, and it as asked implicitly by that post. I'm in favor of posts like that

Why was it so much upvoted ?
What does it say about the average let me use her Lemmy user ?
is there a disconnect between users and moderators ?

Perhaps it's a critique on the quality of the rest of the posts.

Or, the most straightforward option, it's an indication the community liked the post

More like a disconnect between the moderators and reality.

I believe no sexual thoughts went into that, as can be seen by the replies.

I agree. This community isn't supposed to be a shitposting community. It's not quite the same as r/askreddit in terms of quality I'd say.

I'd prefer a "casual stick Sunday" posts now and then, it's fun and I liked it a lot.

At this point there should probably be a generic "just ask random questions for other Lemmy users" community to direct those people to. People don't seem to get that this one is similar to AskReddit in purpose, but Lemmy is small so there's no immediately obvious general communities.

I usually use NoStupidQuestions as the catch all for when I don't have something better. We have a few communities for that

People don’t seem to get that this one is similar to AskReddit in purpose

Which does not make it anny better. Is there no better name for a group that is not about answering questions?

Oh. To be fair, the 'stick' thing has been a running meme for a couple weeks now in some subs.

I... Apologize for my part in the stick fiasco. My 8 year old REALLY wanted me to post about it a few weeks ago.

Might've been in reddit. I honestly don't notice the difference until I go try to use any of the short cuts that spez refused to implement in his shit app

Yeah, I blocked that community within an hour of seeing all the stick posts.

I only saw two?

There’s tons of dumbass stick posts on a community that was recently created for the purpose of sharing pictures of sticks. It’s essentially the new beans meme for all the kids to rally around.

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Prerequisite: you == The asklemmy community

Well, you got what you asked for. As one is not allowed to ask real questions here, you get the "thought provoking questions" you wanted. No sympathy or pity from my side for wasting a good community name for a socio-psychological experiment.

What happened?

Look at the charter. This group is not for asking real questions, as in "Does anyone know..." or "How do I...", but for "though provoking" discussion starters. A bit like r/showerthoughts on reddit was. For that, a name like "asklemmy" is wasted.

What if that stick is one of the most important sticks in history, and OP is just waiting to reveal the truth? What if it was there when Hitler died? Maybe it killed Hitler. You don't know.

I will provoke your mother. This is the most reddit post I have ever seen since joining lemmy

No it isn't. They're trying to make it a place to ask genuine question not to just goof off with silly things. They're just defining it a little more which is absolutely necessary.

It is absolutely not necessary to define it a little more. It's okay to not have control.