Asklemmy

Simply, stop being dicks to each other. Politically motivated or not, a lot of people are just straight up cunts when someone says something that they don't disagree with.

I can forgive the political extremism, and being heavily biased towards Linux, but you don't need to insult anyone that's to the right of Bernie, or someone that uses Windows and is happy.

Lemmy is small enough that it cannot afford to alienate people, or afford to have a superiority complex over the likes of Reddit or Twitter. The best advert is to be a welcoming community.

We need silly hats. Most human cultures throughout history had hats (or other headwear) that were unique to them, including modern ones. The human eye is naturally drawn to the faces of other humans, and headgear can be a useful shorthand for "who is this and what's their culture like?" These hats are frequently silly looking. Modern examples include baseball caps, cheese hats, military berets, helmets, cowboy hats, various religious headwear. If you want to stand out as a unified culture, you need your own hat.

Posts that are just a link to another forum. I don't remember which community it was exactly but every community post was just a link to the respective forum thread on the posts topic.

Astroturfing.

Like it or not, some of the power users here post nonstop about certain news subjects while completely ignoring others. I don't even have to mention which ones. It's always a shock to me to see important news stories that don't even make it here, and this happens every single day.

We're great about dealing with trolls here, but we completely ignore other forms of manipulation.

I wish we could have a higher level of discussion, with an expectation that claims should be supported by evidence. Less ad hominem and conspiracy theories about everyone with a different point of view being a bot. And much less "I heard someone from [group I dislike] say [comically evil thing]," being accepted purely off hearsay with no source.

I think lemmy unfortunately inherited some toxic reddit traits in that regard. If you make something up, whole cloth, that tracks with what people want to believe, you get upvoted, if you make a case with strong supporting evidence but it doesn't fit with what people want to believe, you get downvoted - it's circle-jerk-y.

Also, people just seem generally incurious about the world and it's rich, diverse history, and just want to rehash the same talking points over and over again. Too many big communities are focused on news or current events, not enough on broader historical context or philosophical discussion. I don't really want to rehash the same discussions about the US election over and over again for the thousandth time. When history is discussed, it's at a meme level, with a handful of historical events being referenced exclusively, oversimplified and weaponized to own your political opponents. The world is filled with color, depth, life, and wonder, but when site culture is so focused on scoring points, the result is everyone's too guarded and defensive to appreciate that.

I'd much rather read people randomly gushing about some special interest or rabbit hole they went down, or even just rambling thoughts about whatever, compared to the latest story about the latest thing and discussions where everyone knows where they stand based on their camp. It gets boring.

We like to emulate Reddit for no good reason

I don't want change necessarily, but a few more normies would be appreciated. I do miss things like gossiping and silly brainless celebrity news, but I have a feeling most Lemmy users are only interested in the nerd stuff. I mean, me too. Give me nerd stuff and the brainless unserious gossiping! Lol.

Fewer politics.

I just wish more of the reddit escapees would understand and embrace that, technologically speaking, Lemmy is not Reddit and that this is a good thing, actually.

There will be splintered communities hosted on different servers. There will be servers that decide to defederate from each other, be it for understandable reasons or stupid ones. And you will, probably, end up having to create more than one account because of drama that had nothing to do with you.

This isn't a bug, it's a feature. For everything you lose in convenience by not having "the everything site" where you go for literally all things, you gain flexibility and freedom. If my home-instance decides it doesn't want legal trouble and bans talk of piracy... I can just get an account at one that has no such qualms. My browser/phone will remember my passwords for me.

A community's culture shifting over time is inevitable, but these newcomers seem to want to change Lemmy on a technological level, and change it in ways that would rob it of the things that make it interesting, yanno?

I also wish it'd be less US-centric around here. But I guess that is inescapable.