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I've noticed a pretty glaring trend of OC posters creating an account, posting for a few days, and then disappearing never to be seen again. Posting studio and model content found on the corners of the internet is fine, but in the end it doesn't actually drive much engagement, which is essentially the primary purpose of a link aggregator site. The primary content people engage on are going to be things that a person has taken the time to create themselves or something with a clear gimmick, like the ifyouhadtopickone or kink communities.
Personally, I'd say that the reason we're seeing people drop off the site shortly after joining is because of the overall community at large. When anyone from the Fediverse can just drop in on a whim and comment something disparaging to someone who went out of their way to post themselves it really doesn't feel great. Combine that with the fact that if you're not a professional model or Onlyfans producer, you'll be downvoted pretty heavily even with the rules changes in place.
I try my best to go out of my way to comment on anything I reasonably can and I don't know if I can place exactly why, but the instance feels both simultaneously hostile to post and to comment/engage in at the same time.
There does seem to be a problem with a lack of empathy with people wanting to share something that's deeply personal. And I think you're right that federation kind of works against those posters. Not all instances seem to have good manners when it comes to other people's sexuality.
In the end that comes down to moderation. I don't mean to imply that mods and admins are doing a bad job in any way, but they'll always be fighting a losing battle. The manpower and tools just aren't advanced enough to deal with it all before the damage is done.
I know you mentioned it in another comment and I've mentioned it before in the past, but the instance overall always feels like it's having an identity crisis and doesn't know what it wants to be. Sexuality is a very broad spectrum and the nature of that means that most people are going to find the sheer existence of certain parts of that spectrum that don't include them unsavory or offensive.
Before anyone grabs a pitchfork, I'm not saying it should be a free for all and predatory things like pedo and beastiality absolutely need to be banned, but if you're someone who isn't into kink or gay or whatever else then there's always going to be friction with those that are. Personally I'd say the instance as a whole needs to take a more specific stance on what it wants to host for this specific stage of growth.
The problem is with a certain immature section of the audience. Perhaps there needs to be the equivalent of private subreddits for the OC and people have to prove they aren't going to be troublesome before they get access.
Restricting access would probably not be successful. It would just fragment and wall off significant sections of the already small communities.
That is absolutely what would happen. I'm a mod for a sex positive community on reddit and we tried this. Once a user managed to get into the private / closed sub they no longer wanted to post in the main / public one and that caused all kinds of problems.
Good point.
AutoMod tools are the answer, if a comment has certain keywords, or even a negative sentiment a good automod can remove the comments pretty much immediately. We've talked about automod for awhile, and I definitely want it, I'm going to start experimenting with existing solutions soon.
We've talked about wanting to implement an automod solution for awhile, and finally there are some tools for that, I personally am going to start experimenting with some of the tools, and will begin to provoke more chats with the other admins to start creating a plan of action in regards to that.
Also, as far as separate instances like that, that can get muddy, I think, unless you have a really clear definitions of what's "too hardcore."
What we don't allow on the site are
- things that are illegal (like CSAM and beastiality)
- things that would be illegal to host on the sites servers because of where they're located (like animated beastiality, shota and loli)
- things that are generally considered very extreme (like scat and barf)
The last one is because lemmy doesn't have a good automod system and most people don't want to see that kind of thing. I would argue that, outside of those things, what people are into varies greatly and that's why we allow pretty much everything else.
I think the problem lies in the fact that, unlike reddit and most other social media platforms, lemmy has no personalized algorithms. This means that everyone on an instance gets the same "hot" and "active" page. So I think the main reason the content seems all over the place is because the algorithms aren't personally catered. Reddit has just as many, if not more, niche communities, but their "best" and "hot" pages have personalized algorithms so that you see more of what you like.
Personalized algorithms like that aren't insanely difficult to create, but it's the nuances of it that are difficult. It's something I would like to look into and partner with some of the other admins that have dev experience to maybe create for use on any lemmy server, but as of now there is nothing developes on that front.
That being said, I don't think the answer is to split the content even more by making more instances and then having potentially even more uncertainty about what is and isn't allowed.
I think the answer is for us admins and mods to continue to do our best to reduce toxicity, to continue to improve our mod tools, and continue to have active discussions about what would be good for the growth of the instance.
But if you have other reasoning that you feel that the instance is having an identity crisis, I'm all ears, we're always open to constructive criticism and suggestions to improve the overall user experience on the instance
The downvoting on pure amateur content seems quite aggressive. But perhaps that's a matter of building the right community or communities for that particular aspect. Wife and I love sharing content but it's not always going to be hyper-produced. Can't think of a real solution but it might end up driving us away. I'm sure we are not alone on that sentiment.
I know you're relatively new around here and there's been a lot of discussion and changes regarding downvotes in recent months. They were completely disabled for a while, but currently you need to be a subscribed member of a community for it to register. You are not alone I'm your feelings regarding user behavior. I appreciate that you're sharing yourselves at least!
Don't judge me, I am a tech geek --and hopefully this doesn't break any rules but, I've been working around Lemmy itself trying to figure out how to get some basic analytics for myself. Got some interesting --and perhaps obvious data points that I am looking forward to continue see develop as we share more OC material.
Positive Sentiment by Community is just a weighted average between up / down votes. It essentially shows me which communities are more/less welcoming to OC content produce by my wife and I. That's all.
Perception by Community just distills the above purely on
upvotes / (upvotes + downvotes)represented as a %Engagement by Community on the other hand is the total of votes
up + down--I am working to include comments by anyone except the OP as well. This one, IMO, is the metric we should be watching to gauge true engagement.Cheers!
Very interesting!
We're working on the hostility aspect, it's slowly improving, and we're slowly getting more OC posters, it just takes time.
As an admin I see more and more posts in general and more OC posts every day. Our growth is slow and organic, and until there's larger roadblocks on reddit it'll probably stay that way, but given reddit is going public this year, we will most likely see some of those road bumps start to happen.
Until then, the admin team and mods are working to get her to reduct toxicity and make it a good place to post, we've even implemented some bespoke code to prevent mass downvotes, and we're talking about implementing some sort of automod. We will continue to improve the experience as best we can and we will continue to slowly but surely grow.