Portland

As a recent transplant, I would like more upcoming events posts, and suggestions on places to visit. To that end I really ~~enjoy~~ enjoyed /r/ askportland more than /r/portland

So if we could cultivate more that kind of vibe, that’d be cool.

When I first came to r/Portland, it was the kind of place that made fun of the oLive comment section. Over the last few years, it became functionally indistinguishable from it, with posters stumbling over each other to find the most nihilistic Eeyore take on any given subject.

It'd be awesome if we could avoid the same trap here, and I guess the solution is to consciously try to avoid Nextdooring the place up too hard. Like, how many different homeless camp fire articles do we need in a week to drive meaningful conversation?

I don’t live in Portland, but I agree with you about the types of posts I would like to find when I go to a community magazine/sub/page. I like to see recommendations of things to check out that I haven’t heard of, small businesses to support, things that make a place unique. I can find the critical stuff almost anywhere else (although there should be discussion on that of course).

I love your thought process, but I'm not sure how we get there

Would definitely love to see less of the doom and gloom porn that has been so prevalent Portland Reddit. I think there’s certain a time and place for discussing significant news events that happen in town, but I was really really sick of seeing all the doom and gloom porn of Portland Reddit.

I stopped going to Reddit at the start protest and haven’t been back, and while I’m definitely feeling pretty out of touch on local goings on and Timbers news, it’s been refreshing to not have my day filled with the endless negative posts about our current ills.

Definitely not saying I want to ignore what’s been going on, it’s pretty hard to ignore, but if/when I need to know about that stuff I’ll seek that news out.

I don’t know the right answer to make that happen without some more heavy handed moderating (which I am not advocating for either), as at least some of the folks posting that stuff have a clear agenda and will swayed by appeals to out better nature like this. But I am definitely in favor of this place becoming a more positive place for community engagement and not another next door or battle ground for political/ideological troll warfare.

In short, I am emphatic YES to everything you said!

Great perspective, I felt the same. Maybe some sort of "official content" filter rule that says any discussion is open/welcome from any perspective, and you're welcome to cute any source, but posting an article from a news source isn't, in and of itself somehow creating value in the sub. I'm fact, IMO, just reposting for-profit media articles that have all sorts of narratives and motives behind them is the death of conversation among real people.

I think it's important to place actual individual opinions equally if not above "official" content. As an example, I remember an awfully written article on a major finance site(fortune, MSNBC, WSJ, etc.) that explained young folks should be grateful for their enormous college debt as they wouldn't know what to do with the money they were making if they had it. Sarcasm and satire were the only things that could communicate how awful the article was. I posted it on finance subreddit for exposure of the author and website propagating such muck as well as discussion and it was immediately removed as I had altered the headline in my sarcasm and satire. I guess it's a fine line to walk if you don't want deliberately misleading links but I feel like reasonable rules and mods should have allowed that.

Based on the above, I say we don't get valuable, independent, complex, educational dialogue from just reposting a news article, there should be context given by a poster and some effort put in to how they want to further the conversation rather than just a race to post O-live articles.

Cheers!