What it says on the tin, really. I think this is going to be an issue when they get around to the smaller communities… It’s going to suck majorly, as most people’s default will remain with reddit for community discussion like this…
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Splinter the community, I’m going to stay with the people who went through the mess of setting up a new place that isn’t beholden to Reddit. It may be forever smaller, but of the 600,000 subscribers, how many of them contribute?
It may be forever smaller
I would honestly consider this a feature, not a bug.
eh, it is what it is, and i’d say not really either. For now, probably nearly everyone that’s staying here is probably a contributing member, but if we continue building and promoting this community, then it will get to a sizeable number of lurkers. As long as we don’t attract bad actors, or bad actors are dealt with swiftly, it’s all good.
yeah we gotta grow this community. And wait for reddit to make the next mistake that will drive people here.
For sure. If this community stagnates, it will eventually die of attrition.
Most social media runs by the 90/9/1 rule. 90% of users lurk, 9% of users post, 1% of users produce content.
I’m hoping that this house cleaning changes those numbers up some.
I know that a lot of people are afraid to post. They may not believe that they have anything interesting to say. And they may not trust their ability to write coherently. Some of you folks are intimidatingly good at writing insightful posts and making it understandable to everybody.
Maybe with a smaller community we can encourage more people to take part and, paradoxically, become more diverse.
I’d also like to encourage everybody to attempt to post something interesting. A pet theory. A reinterpretation of a scene. It doesn’t really matter. You can only get better by doing and we all benefit from new ideas. Don’t be afraid to sound like a fool. It’s kinda my default state and I’m still here.
I’d also like to encourage everybody to attempt to post something interesting. A pet theory. A reinterpretation of a scene. It doesn’t really matter. You can only get better by doing and we all benefit from new ideas. Don’t be afraid to sound like a fool. It’s kinda my default state and I’m still here.
How about we post some of our favorite quotes from the series? Here’s some of mine :p
“Use the force, Kirk.”
“Help me, Spock. You’re my only hope.”
“Beam me up, Skywalker!”
“This isn’t the Data you’re looking for. Move along.”
“To boldly go where no Jedi has gone before”
“You’ve never heard of the Enterprise? … It’s the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.”
“Set sabers to stun!”
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The “sacking” of the current moderator volunteers that I’ve seen in some news articles this morning leads me to the next step, which is if a moderator can be tossed, that’s a chilling effect for the next moderator and then, all the people who remain subscribed to that subreddit. I don’t know if that will actually happen this way, it will at least be a fascinating exploration to see how this all unfolds. Someone on Mastodon mentioned that Reddit makes no content of their own, it’s all volunteers, the public, and their 3rd-party toolset. That they are burning all of it and maintaining that everything will be fine in the end. Smells a lot like bravado and big-talk.
I think this is a important take - as far as users are concerned Reddit merely hosts the content and the community, but as far as Reddit is concerned it owns the content and wants to monetise the community.
The problem for Reddit is the moderation is done by users who do it for free, mostly because they love their communities and want to keep them going. Those people are not easy to replace - plenty of communities shut because no one wanted to moderate them, and plenty of users just aren’t interested. So if they lose the moderators, there is a small pool of people to replace them and many of those may not be motivated in the same way. There will also be bad actors amongst those untested moderators.
Lose the moderators, and the communities fall apart as bad content, rule breaking and negative behaviour takes hold. The “content” becomes lost and the value of what reddit things it owns falls massively. An archive of old reddit comments is actually not worth much - sure people google things and find answers on Reddit - but it’s the current active users and daily content that draws people in.
I think Reddit is doomed as it is failing to understand it’s own business and what made the site successful.
Yup. An opinion writer in the Washington Post had a weird analogy yesterday, but it works — Reddit’s business model is almost the same as a thrift store’s. People donate stuff (clothes and furniture to Goodwill, analysis and humor to Reddit). Volunteers sort through it and throw out the bad stuff (volunteers at Goodwill, moderators at Reddit). And the business sells it (Reddit has one extra step here in that it sells ads, so it uses the donated-and-sorted stuff to build an audience to sell).
If the donators and the sorters walk, what do they have to sell?
That’s a good analogy, makes it easier to communicate Reddit’s business model and how messed up they are right now. Thanks for sharing!
That opinion peace helped me to understand what was different about this situation vs Twitter. The business model at Twitter is different. Twitter didn’t require communities with tremendous user investment to create a community, and by not realizing community was the differentiating aspect of Reddit, they didn’t understand how passionate people would be.
I read a pretty great write up on Mother Jones about the inevitable enshittification of reddit. Seems like all social media sites are doomed to turn into hot garbage eventually.
Oh, reddit will survive, it’ll just be even shittier than before. And maybe it’ll bounce back to somewhere close to what it was, but in the meantime, there’s now a growing viable alternative.
My recommendation for anyone who decides to visit reddit adopt a comment signature promoting startrek.website along with a link to a new user tutorial and a quick explanation of why we left. Keep picking them off and make our existence common knowledge over there.
Wasn’t there a thread on r/startrek today about them deciding to reopen? I was surprised by how many users were pretty angry about it having been closed, tbh. I felt really good about the decision to close, even before I joined Lemmy.
I don’t know. I haven’t been back since the day the move was announced. So if they have decided to reopen, be it old mods or not, all the power to them. I don’t care any more.
The impression I got was that some mods have left and/because the remaining mods have decided to reopen. Honestly the thread was a bit depressing, lots of “it’s their platform, they can do what they like” and “who cares, it doesn’t affect me”. :/
You can safely scratch the “because” - those of us who left were leaving either way. There’s no drama there.
Oh that’s good to hear! It did make me sad thinking that it had created conflict.
Everyone involved is acting in the way they feel is best, both for the community and for themselves on a personal level.
I don’t like speaking for others, but those who stayed behind are still supportive of this new endeavour, and in fact are still involved.
Hooray, that is a very Star Trek resolution to the story. :)
“The interactions of the future are somewhat different”
“No account karma? You mean, you don’t get your internet points?”
“The acquisition of Karma is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves, and the rest of the community.”
Ironically, it actually doesn’t affect me either, since 9 times out of ten, I use/used Reddit on desktop, my phone being, well a goddamn phone and an Ersatz-Kindle.
I do normally use RiF on my phone – but yeah, mostly I am using my PC. For me it is mostly the principle also. Especially the way it seems likely to affect blind and visually impaired users, but also even just the overreach and disregard of the userbase who creates any value the site has. :/
Honestly, for me it’s not so much what they did, but rather how they went about it. To clarify, them wanting people to use the official app is fair enough, but instead of market economy, i.e. providing the superior product, they went gilded age capitalism and try to hulk smash the competition, and that’s just not on for me.
I agree, although also I think their official app is unpleasant to use on purpose, because it’s designed to put ads in front of users, not to actually allow users to see content.
They do that, and r/startrek dies. It’ll be a hellscape and nobody will want to go there anymore.
There’ll always be people who thrive in that sort of environment. Very recently someone said he was going to block me because I didn’t agree with him on how PIC S3 is ‘stupid fan pandering and NotTrueTrek’ and instead asked what he would suggest as an alternative if in charge. I.e. some people are in it for the ranting and internet fighting.
Yes sadly that is very true. I was the original top mod for /r/StarTrek (I quit last year) and eventually realized I had to make our rules distinguish between “debate” and “arguing”, between “constructive” and “un-constructive” speech. It’s a difficult line to walk, but if a space makes room for arguing and low-effort bickering like that, it has a way of taking over every topic. Ultimately moderators have to tell people “It’s OK to have an opinion but you need to express it constructively and explain why you hold it if you wish to participate”.
Same goes for mindless cheerleading too honestly, though it’s not quite as toxic. But left unchecked, internet fandoms have a way of dividing into ideological camps with purity standards. I encouraged my mods to maintain a “house party” atmosphere. Let people do their thing, get silly, have drunken debates, etc. But if you see someone acting inappropriately or making it not fun for someone else, time to put on your party host hat and ask them to leave. “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here”.
It looks like it is (not surprisingly) already starting to be considered. https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/15/reddit-threatens-to-remove-subreddit-moderators/
Open it back up and change the rules to only allow pictures of starships, encourage discussion’s over here.
I’m loving the malicious compliance arch
All pictures, videos, and discussion must have John Oliver in them somewhere.
All pictures and videos must be deep fake John Oliver in Star Trek
Would make the Kira/Quark holosuite scene extra spicy!
That would be unfair to the people who stayed behind and want to stay with reddit.
That’s their choice.
Just because some users decide to stay with reddit does not mean they deserve to have their community destroyed.
Beg to differ there. Reddit has shown it’s hand. They want to profit off free content while giving nothing back to the people who create that content. Back them at your peril.
The actual users or the community I should say, is not profiting off of anything. Don’t conflate the users of the service or app that is Reddit with its management.
Let’s be clear on one thing: as with any private social network, Reddit’s users are the product, not the customers.
They are the community, just like we users are here. Punishing them for something the Reddit management did, would be unnecessary vindictive, IMHO.
I didn’t conflate them. I never said the users were trying to profit. Reddit is trying to profit off user generated content that is free given and moderated while whining that others are using the api they gave away for free to do the same thing, except those developers actually provide better user experiences and accessibility than Reddit does. Reddit has shown that the only thing that matters is the money they can extract from the free labor of others, so staying on that platform is acceptance of those consequences.
I know what Reddit is doing. What I’m saying is that the users and the community in many of the subreddits are not to blame and should not be blamed or punished by users who decided they no longer want any part or reddit.
Reddit is making it much more difficult for the moderators to build and maintain communities. They’re also cutting off accessible apps for using Reddit, eliminating a portion of their userbase.
Brass tacks, the community will come back (or another one will form, like r/Star_Trek or something) if people are willing to do the work. This requires them to be okay with doing unpaid labor for Reddit even while Reddit is making that labor harder. They also have to be okay with crossing a picket line.
I’m not defending reddit as a corporate entity, I “defending” its users and the community and argue against punishing them to punish reddit.
That’s a fully general argument against strikes. We shouldn’t punish Piggly-Wiggly’s customers by striking; they might not be able to get their groceries somewhere else. We shouldn’t punish drivers by striking at the auto shop; some people won’t be able to get their cars repaired.
The big difference is that r/StarTrek is nowhere near as important as a grocery store or auto shop. People need to eat to live. People need to get places. People don’t need to discuss Star Trek online at all. Much less do they need to discuss it specifically on Reddit. So the argument is more like: we shouldn’t punish customers of Sam’s Nail Salon by striking; they might have to go to Pat’s Nail Salon a couple blocks over instead, and that’s just not fair.
If you were to protest Piggly-Wiggly grocery store, you would do so by not going there and not by tampering their products or blocking people from entering the store. And your second argument can be turned around to the actual reddit protest itself, like you said reddit is not important so it is equally unimportant, technically speaking, what they are charging for their API. Fact however is, people use reddit, so we are back at the beginning. Protest is fine, put to punish users who still want to use reddit is not.
Oh No!!! It would be UNFAIR!!!
Thats part of the point.
That is a bad and vindictive point then, since the reddit users are not the ones who wronged you.
You do realize that if a protest doesn’t inconvenience people its worthless right? A protest that makes everyone happy is just a rally.
Who are you protesting? The users of reddit or reddit? You are here and I am here, we are protesting reddit with our actual feet so to speak. The ones who want to stay behind, that is their right and who are we to punish them?
Most likely, they’ll make a way for people to take over subreddits that went private and have no activity for a while, if there isn’t one already. r/StarTrek might get special treatment, or it might just be shunted over into a new general policy like this.
This is a completely empty threat. Do you think Reddit is capable of replacing the whole moderation teams of 5000+ subreddits in a couple weeks? NO they aren’t. Which is exactly why /u/jailbaitlover i mean /u/spez is trying to get singular mods to cross the line so they can boot the rest and put all the moderation on their new scab.
Probably. There’s nothing said about how active the moderators have to be, and there are a few who would happily claim the role, even if they aren’t going to do anything with it, except to step in when other mods do something they dislike (since Reddit’s mod privilege system is hierarchical, higher mods outright lower ones, and can remove them if desired). /r/Tumblr basically had that problem, with the only recently active mod being kicked off by both Reddit, and one of the higher moderators, who opened the sub back up (its back private now, citing a “disinformation campaign”, so the users probably rioted, given the support for a shut down). There’s a suggestion that it was a Reddit scab who suddenly became active, and booted said mod, but that could be either rumour or fact, since there’s not a lot of supporting evidence in either direction, except that said user is not on the site, nor moderator on /r/tumblr any longer.
Reddit does have an issue with “power mods”, where a user will just collect moderation roles in subreddits, so there are a few who would probably just add a few new subs to the list.
What happens afterwards probably depends on the user base. While they could probably try and silence dissent, no few people can handle multiple riots going across multiple subs they moderate.
They are probably currently interviewing Paramount employees for the mod position.
That’s probably a good guess. Either that or trying to sell it to them somehow.
Since they are looking for revenue, selling/renting out is quite likely.
I guess everything connected with Disney will be next.
Though I wonder if reddit is still in the grey zone where they can’t really enter a relationship with big media conglomerates because their reputation precedes them.
I mean, big mouse will probably not become involved with a company that hosts a lot of pornography.
Is it possible to delete a subreddit if you were the one that created it? That would be what I would do if it were possible.
hey um, /r/startrek is reopen now lol
Eh it’ll happen. Either the mods will want to see the subreddit continue or they will leaveike us. One way or the other it will be back.
Just gotta make this place fun a d engaging.
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Why is everything good always marginal.
I’m tired of getting treated awfully.I think it won’t be overnight, but there’s probably a sea change coming where more and more people are getting fed up with gigantic centralized platforms and all the manipulation and trolling that the companies operating them are all too happy to let go on. I seriously doubt the mods are going to get their way on Reddit, but I suspect it’s going to get even less worth visiting from here on out.
I agree with the sea change. The reason we started an instance as opposed to just joining another is that we wanted to help that change along by providing a familiar community to a group of people statistically more likely to be both nerdy and optimistic about the future.
" … a group of people statistically more likely to be both nerdy and optimistic about the future."
I have not felt so seen in ages, lmao. Thank you!
Yeah, and I think it was a wonderful move. Star Trek is nerdy but also approachable to a wide range of people so I think it is a perfect early adopter of lemmy.
Star Trek was very over-represented on usenet boards back in the 90s, so it seems appropriate that it would have an early presence on this new frontier.
I would love to read an article about this, that would be a cool article, connecting the vibes of usenet startrek to fediverse star trek!
@porthos I couldn’t agree more! Been a fan of S T since the TNG days. Proud to be one of the #Blind Trekies out there among said federation/threaderation!
Posting from Mastodon, though shall sign up over on said enterprise to further show my appreciation.
PS. Although TNG is my favorite series, DS9 is my mother’s favorite. She’s always looked up to major kira.Good choice on your mom’s part, kira is badass. Seriously, I don’t know why everyone isn’t terrified of getting in her way sometimes hahaha, she is a freight train of willpower.
Sign up for an account here at startrek.website! Even if you don’t use it as your main account you could pick out a funny star trek related name and use it for comedic purposes on comments… not that I would ever do that of course.
But you’re using your real name right…?
give me a slice of cheese and you can believe anything you want
This is pretty much what I think as well. I migrated to here mostly because I think that the root and core of the Community has done the same, and r/startek was one of the few places where you could still talk Star Trek without unreasonable whining.
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Reminds me of when I got banned from a Star Wars forum for saying that I liked some aspects of the prequels ('twas long ago) and not hating on them and Lucas enough.
EDIT: That being said, for me, r/startrek was more about the community, and the spirit, core of it has moved here, then so be it. If reddit is little more than a knowledgebase/thing I come across when googling STObuilds or something then that’s also fine.
