Hey folks -
The seemingly never-ending flood of Musk/Twitter news and commentary is getting to some of our users (and some of the mods, too), so we’ve decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter.
This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we’re including news about Musk acting the fool as related to any of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring). News about those companies that don’t involve Elon can be posted outside this thread.
I agree with others that the concept of “mega threads” are fundamentally broken and not something I’m interested in carrying over from Reddit.
This is a place for discussion where users vote to decide what rises or stays obscure. Let the system work how it is designed. If there are too many posts about a particular topic, it’s either extremely relevant at the time or there are other moderation rules that could be considered to make sure low-effort posts are not dominating more substantial posts.
Tagging. Flair. Hashtags. Some kind of meta information.
Even in reddit posts can have flair. Lemmy have come to the edge of not having a filtering system, and need one asap. community specific tags or lemmy-wide tags or organic loose tagging, something is needed.
Here’s the issue for this feature : https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/317
It doesn’t exist yet.
Yeah, i found that. As it is pretty clear that official support for tagging is not there, causing mayhem here looks like the better idea.
Tags with mods having tag powers feels like the best option long term. Any sorting system can be applied without worrying about compatibility.
I agree. Even when the megathread included a list of posts relevant to a topic, whatever nuance was there gets lost in the grand comment thread. We really need a tagging and filtering system so that users can opt out of topics.
That way, it’s not incumbent on mods to make a Megathread, or make a judgement call on whether there are too many posts on any one topic.
X suspends pro-Nazi account after two brands halt advertising
I just went on twitter today and saw the change. X? What is that man’s obsession with the letter X? Half of his kids are named X-something, his newest scheme is called x.ai or something? I swear to god he’s an android or something.
I haven’t seen official sourcing on it yet but apparently a QAnon guy got suspended for posting notoriously bad child sexual abuse materials and then Musk reinstated the account. I’m frankly afraid to look it up because I don’t want to see the materials. https://twitter.com/faineg/status/1684329030500098048?t=747mnnSVncGD8OBd0Vhddg&s=19
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Great, a megathread, let’s bring over one of the worst parts of Reddit and moderation 😒
I’m sorry if it’s frustrating to you to have megathreads like this. I’m not enthused about the extra effort in redirecting posts to the Megathread, either, but I’m not aware of a better way to handle topics that are flooding a community other than gathering them up in a thread like this. It annoys users (and mods) when dozens of articles about the same topic are dominating a community, so we’d like to do something to alleviate that when possible. I’ve seen similar concepts used in a number of different places (old-school forums, reddit alternatives like Tildes) because, as far as I’ve seen, there’s not a better alternative for wrangling topics that might otherwise clutter the feed.
If you have any ideas about better ways to handle this type of thing in the future, I’d love to hear them (and I genuinely mean that - I think we’re open to suggestions if a better way exists).
As others have suggested maybe having a sub for trending news, that might be good actually. That way people can easily sub and unsub to this stuff without having to worry. (An on-going catch all for this kind of news, I think it would be better than focussing on a single current topic)
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Seems to me that these threads keep coming up and rising up because people want to talk about them.
The better solution reddit had was to let posts be sorted by tags so that people who don’t want to see a certain topic can turn it off, rather than that decision being made for everyone else.
Unfortunately tags are not currently a Lemmy feature, so this isn’t an option
So despite the fact that a ton of current tech news revolves around Elon musk and his companies, the solution is to bury any and all discussion about him in a megathread we all know people will never read or comment on?
You know you’re commenting on it now though right?
Day 3 and not a single post/comment about Musk, just you taking a needless jab at me because it’s funny to you. This thread is dead except for you and me right now.
News about the companies that don’t involve him are still allowed outside the thread. The idea here is more to contain stuff about the man himself, as it gets spammy and repetitive after a while
News about the companies that don’t involve him are still allowed outside the thread.
That is not entirely correct.
so we’ve decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter.
This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we’re including news about Musk acting the fool as related to any of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring).
So 1) ALL things X/Twitter/Musk, 2) you can only talk about his other companies if it doesn’t involve him (which are the vast majority of stories about his companies).
This is functionally banning Musk and his companies from being discussed. No one will check the megathread. We both know this.
I hope you can appreciate and understand that the decision was made, in part, because we had users asking for it. I recognize the shortcomings of a megathread. However it won’t be possible to make every user here happy. We’ve taken the actions that we thought were best based on the desires of some of our users.
We appreciate feedback, and are welcoming any suggestions on how this could be handled better
Y’all have functionally banned all news related to Elon musk, Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Some see this as a feature, not a bug.
Whether you do or don’t, it’s a flagrant attempt to end the topics without owning up to it. It’s window dressing.
Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great. It’s also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum while still providing an outlet for people to discuss.
If your goal is to idly consume content, then a megathread probably sucks. Same if you want to be an influencer, it’ll cut down on your exposure. Megathreads also can hide major developments that can hide behind a thread that people should be notified about. And if there wasn’t much content on a platform to begin with… A megathread can force a ghost town.
There are definitely both good and bad things about Megathreads and there’s a ton of depth and nuance that could be had.
In this case, I’m not sure whether a megathread was warranted or not though
If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great.
Strong disagree. My experience with megathreads is primarily being full of memes and puns, with so many hundreds of root comments that even using extra tools it was impossible to follow any real conversation or updates.
It’s also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum…
That is the only thing megathreads accomplish, IMO.
Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great.
Nobody on Reddit, Lemmy, etc. behaves that way. Nobody checks megathreads unless it’s an ongoing, high profile situation. I guarantee you this megathread is going to get essentially no engagement within 48 hours and now for some odd reason all news about SpaceX, Twitter, and Tesla is functionally banned.
Terrible idea.
Elon musk containment thread thank God.
Now if only billionaires could be contained in real life.
An alternative that may address the concerns in comments would be temporary sub communities for loud events
- Create community technology_elon_bs@
- Mods of parent community inherit sub
- Create a pinned post in parent community announcing.
- Close sub community when noise goes down.
I like this compromise solution.
Or, if one wanted a more permanent community instead, we could split a, idk, “Corporate and Billionaire Drama” or “Web Drama” community (something along those lines) off for this type of thing going forward, so “Technology” could stay more specifically about tech and not about all the crap around it. But maybe that line would be too hard to draw I guess.
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I don’t think I really need to tell y’all that megathreads are, as a general rule, worthless. The only way they are even moderately useful is if they are recurring, such as a weekly megathread for beginner questions on a technical/hobbyist sub. A static, one time megathread means that no one will ever talk about it at all. That is not the right call.
Anybody who has been a mod for more than a week knows that a megathread only stifles discussion unless it’s some major event happening in real time, such as Jan 6th. I get you don’t want musk spam but you’re over correcting.
No one is going to post news/articles here and then discuss them as they would in a regular post. It won’t get bumped up on the subscribed page if something interesting happens. Most of the comments here are going be about the megathread itself.
So this is effectively banning all the discussion concerning all of his companies. Which might be something you want to do, every community can decide for itself what kind of stuff they want to forbid after all. But I feel like it should be said directly, not via making a catch-all megathread.
Everybody’s subscribe page is different. It will get bumped in active and new comments on Lemmy as I understand them. This feels like the intended use case for those sorts.
Whether or not it intended that way, that is not how people browse. Most people just sort by “hot“ - the default - and doomscroll all day. There is nothing to incentivize people sorting by new/active comments so no one will.
Bro you’re on kbin. How do you know how or why people do things on Lemmy?
You’re so right. I have absolutely no access to Lemmy, especially not Memmy on my smartphone. There is no possible way for me to know how it works.
Do you know then that hot is still pretty broken?
Ok? It’s the default just like Reddit. We have a massive migration of people from Reddit operating like they’re still on Reddit because they’re on a site that’s meant to be a replacement for…Reddit. And one day it won’t be flawed/broken I imagine.
I really am not interested in discussing this with someone who is so eager to discount someone’s point because they use a different side of fediverse tbh.
I see posts on the daily talking about better sort options than hot. I think it is you who is less familiar with the diversity of the fediverse. Remember, my original comment was:
Everybody’s subscribe page is different
I’m not interested in dismissing your feedback, but I do kind of agree with the point made by person you’re responding to (I don’t agree with the rhetoric).
By sorting by hot, I get a lot of low-engagement posts with 5-20 upvotes and 0 comments. It’s just not the kind of content I want on my feed. And while this is all anecdotal, Lionir also responded to you with (hopefully honest) confirmation that active > hot for most users.
Unfortunately, as I have this data - I can tell you “hot” is not how most people browse according to their preference settings.
Active is overwhelming how people browse.
Which doesn’t solve the issue at all. It’s just trading problems. It biases new content just like Reddit’s karma algo did. Same problem, different flavor.
I like “active” sort specifically because it biases new comments on posts, instead of new posts, so that if people keep talking on a post, or if an old post gets an unexpected rush of comment activity, it’ll stay on my homepage. It makes the homepage move slower, makes post success much less dependent on its exact timing vs peak lemmy usage, and it lets discussions last longer, and lets people participate in discussions longer than immediately after the post goes up. Gives everything a more patient feel.
And imo may indeed mitigate the problems some are fearing with megathreads based on how they could be on reddit sometimes.
None of that will stop the chilling effect this functional ban is creating. Notice not a single post/comment about Musk, Twitter/X, Tesla, and SpaceX has gone up yet they claim we were basically drowning in them prior. So if we were, why aren’t they happening here now? The answer is: No one will bother.
I don’t love Musk and frankly I’d like to see less but it also takes me less than a fraction of a second to scroll past it. This change will not lead to them being aggregated in one place, it will simply mean the topic disappears entirely. If that’s what the community wants so be it but this wishful thinking that it won’t have the chilling effect I’m mentioning here is, well, wishful thinking.
