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.

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    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

    • ALostInquirer@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • Otter@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        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)
        • Treczoks@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          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.

    • Nobody@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

    • Bluetreefrog@lemmy.worldOPM
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      11 months ago

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

      • FireTower@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        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).

      • Otter@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        Appreciate your team being open to thinking about it :)

        You could even ask it as a meta askLemmy question

      • Treczoks@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

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

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

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

        • Pratai@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          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.

    • Magrath@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      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.

    • Treczoks@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

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

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        “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

    • A_A@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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 ?

  • asudox@lemmy.worldM
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    11 months ago

    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.

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

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

    • Treczoks@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      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?

  • Harpsist@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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

  • Pratai@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

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

  • Treczoks@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    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.

      • Treczoks@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        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.

    • KISSmyOS@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Without moderation, all the trolls who got banned elsewhere will congregate, then everyone else leaves, then the trolls get bored cause there’s no one to troll and leave, too.