It seems like any platform that features link aggregation is soon overrun by bots and self-promoters trying to drive traffic, and pages and pages of link posts versus pages and pages of people talking.

Are there any lemmy instances or other defederated networks that focus on Q&A, niche communities, and people conversing, instead?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I dont mean a chat/conversation-specific community, I mean a collection of communities that are more people interacting than links being posted.

Especially for hobby, parenting, philosophy, politics, technical discussions, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Why does it have to all be on a single instance? Can you not just subscribe to a number of communities that have interests the same as yours?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

For hobbies, depends, but there is the general pinned post in [email protected] which list a lot of crafting communities: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/842186

For parenting: [email protected]

Politics, you should be able to find a lot by searching that word into https://lemmyverse.net/

Finance? [email protected]

The thing is that people tend to post links as you can't really force people to post if they don't want to (or if they critical mass isn't there). I'm guilty of that in the [email protected] for instance, as I don't have kids yet, I can only but post articles.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Maybe the instance I’m on is wonky, because I can’t even find those communities - I just get the “top”/”default” type communities ala reddit: technology, news, etc, which are all linked mass media articles.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You might have to click the link twice, sometimes the first time the community isn't found because you are the first one on your instance to search for it

One link that works: https://lemmy.radio/c/[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Now I think my client (Memmy) is wonky too, because it can’t follow any of these links! Will try the web UI.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Did you manage to figure out what the problem is?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

[–] solrize 2 points 9 months ago

The saying is "code is law". I.e. if the Lemmy software architecture makes it natural to post threads starting with links, then that's what people will do. Design the software differently and it will be used differently.

[–] Dehydrated 5 points 9 months ago

I noticed that beehaw.org on average has more "normal posts" (not links) than other instances. I found communities there for the topics you are interested in like technology, politics and parenting. It's not completely link-free, but I'd say there are fewer links than elsewhere. That's the best I could find on the Fediverse. Maybe someone else has better suggestions.