Prologue7642

I agree, what I wanted to say with that is that if someone from other lemmy instances come here even with our reputation, there is a good chance that it is someone who is actually interested in what we have to say.

Yes, in this case it did work. But I wanted to use it as an example of someone who was originally met with a more hostile response, even if it wasn't warranted. Personally, if I was in his place, I would just not want to engage with us anymore. I don't want to say with this post that we are terrible etc. but at least in my opinion people who actually come here from another instances and are not trolls are prime target for education. That is the reason I think we should try to be more kind to them.

We get a huge volume of bad-faith interaction here. Especially when you sort by “new comments”.

Interesting, I rarely see that, apart from obligatory "China bad", "Russia putler" etc. under some news articles. But maybe that is just due to the posts I read.

I agree that is not a huge problem and yes it is mostly not so harmful. I was not trying to suggest with this post that we are super terrible etc. Mostly I just wanted to say that I think we could be a bit better. In my opinion, these people are the prime target for educating. Overall, from what I've seen Lemmygrad has a pretty bad reputation on most Lemmy instances so if someone ventures here and is not a troll, I think we should try to be kind to them.

See our other thread https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/1166824

How are you making the distinction between trolls and good faith participation?

Sometimes it is hard to tell, and I do understand that it is easy to make mistakes, but we should still try to assume that not everyone is here just to troll.

Can you share an example from your post history where you’ve patiently educated an account seemingly engaging in bad faith?

Personally, the only example I can give of my post is this https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/438417, but I don't post here that much. But I think that a much better example of this is: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/1165246 Here, even if you disagree with the original statement, I would argue that someone was met with too hostile response and seems to have changed his mind after he was shown proof that he was wrong. I do agree that sometimes it is hard to not just make fun of people, especially with Uighurs and China in general, but we shouldn't automatically assume bad intentions.

But why? I completely understand having fun with people who are here to troll/argue in bad faith. I also completely understand just not wanting to engage with those people. But why would you argue to not try to educate people who came here in good faith?

That would be interesting. Personally I mainly focus on local stuff and just sometime look on all but not sure which is more common, at least in web UI local is the default one. But even if it was all, Lemmygrad is a relatively small instance when compared with some others, so we would probably not be in many people's feed anyway.

Most of the time yes, but from time to time I see someone post something and the only comments they get are pretty hostile. Even if later it turns out they were just genuinely asking questions and even admitted to doing so. I think this just pushes some people away, that we could educate instead.

Of course then there are troll etc. which are different story.

I am not arguing against reactionaries or people who are bigoted, arguing in bad faith etc. But I've seen multiple times here people just now knowing something, asking and the only responses they got were too combative. I understand that it is often annoying to deal with these people, but we should at least try to educate them, as long as they are arguing in bad faith or just don't engage with them. And not being openly hostile to them.

To be honest, I am not really sure if this strategy makes sense here. I don't think there are that many onlookers when you are arguing on Lemmygrad. If you are commenting on another instance that is a different story, but here, I doubt it.

Interesting, probably a Czech thing then. We like to pretend we are part of the Western Europe, or at least Central Europe (as opposed to the uncivilized east). You often even get maps of Western Europe like this:

I think the most interesting part is Germany and Switzerland not being part of the West Europe. Anytime someone uses the term Central Europe, it seems to me just trying to be not considered Eastern Europe.