Hi all,
I am noticing that a lot of what is being posted is the same outrage clickbait articles on crime and poverty that have overrun other Portland centric communities. These are absolutely important topics, and something I hope everyone is thinking about and involved with advocating for improved policy around. However, I do question the usefulness of a constant deluge of these types of articles.
When we go to a space like the local coffee shop, pub, or bookstore, a place where we immediately feel the “Portland vibes”, we usually aren’t met with a non-stop stream of poverty, drug, and crime news. If I we were, then we would probably leave (or at least I would). Similarly, I feel like our online space can be so much more than just the same daily rehash of divisive arguments that don’t go anywhere.
This is especially true on our Lemmy community, where we are small and still developing a culture. There are not many other types of posts here yet, so the click-bait outrage headlines dominate. Personally, I would love to see more events, reviews of concerts, pictures, slice of life stories, and other things that make this feel like the “Portland vibes”.
This isn’t a moderation decision. It’s more of an appeal. I haven’t removed any links or banned anyone (other than some obvious malicious spam), and I don’t plan to. I haven’t even been down voting.
IDK … what do you think about the future of this space and how we might build a community space that isn’t just local doom scrolling?
There are a number of options. One for example is to have a weekly mega thread for news, and require it all gets posted there. Maybe with exceptions for major events, elections, etc.
Oh I see, you’re talking about limiting news stories. That’s a good idea.
Megathreads make a lot of sense, but I say that as someone who’d just route around them: I keep a tight rein on my news sources and have never considered this kind of site — whether it’s reddit, Lemmy, MetaFilter or other — a useful way to get current events precisely because each forum will eventually develop a character, and that character will influence the mix. Just plain old RSS to a select group of sites for me, with a content blocker to handle the inevitable bad comments.
Anyhow, I’d support weekly (or even daily) news posts that encouraged people to only start new threads within them on new topics (vs. starting threads with different headlines on the same topic).