four new Beehaw communities (and a word on new community creations)
hello folks! some additional suggestions have been made to round out Beehaw's current set of communities, so we've gone ahead and done that. we have four new communities accordingly, which are:
Feel free to post anything health, chronic illness, disability or accessibility related. If you need a space for support or sharing your experiences regarding all of the above topics, this is the right place as well :)
People of Color! this is a community specifically devoted to ethnic minority groups and their issues, and for discussions and connections relating to those minority groups. we're also hopeful it'll be a good space for minorities who are migrating to Lemmy, since i'm not aware of very many communities on here to this point like that. there's an already existing introduction thread in the community by @[email protected] if you'd like to drop by.
Betterment and Praxis! i'll let @[email protected] speak for the idea behind this one, because i think it really gets at some of the stuff we're trying to help build here:
Even if it’s just growing a little bit extra in the garden for the local food bank, picking up rubbish on the side of the road, or just making an effort to use the bus, having a supportive community encouraging you makes those little choices a bit easier. Maybe you’ve always wanted to do a little bit more for your community but don’t know where to start. Maybe you already do some of these things and want to help others get started. Maybe you’re just really proud of how something is done in your community. We might not be able to solve all the problems but we can at least try to make a few small things a little bit nicer.
and, finally: Socialism! there's no shortage of communities like this on Lemmy but a commonality many people have experienced is they're... not very welcoming, in general. luckily, a left-wing subreddit got in touch with us about moving (pre-boom, even) and we think their community on Reddit fit the ethos of the site pretty well, so we've helped move them over here. as the sidebar states, this community is:
A place for all leftist and labor news and discussion, as long as you’re nice about it. [...] Non-socialists are welcome to come to learn, though it’s hard to get to in-depth discussions if the community is constantly fighting over the basics. We ask that non-socialists please be respectful and try not to turn this into a “left vs right” debate forum by asking leading questions or by trying to draw others into a fight.
we hope you'll find each of these four new communities a useful space to discuss in.
now, as for the subject of new community creations: we're definitely slowing down on batches of communities after this set. this isn't a total stop--as our existing communities grow, we'll split off new ones as needed--but we're going to try and keep additions to a minimum until the Reddit wave crests. tentatively, our next batch of community creations will probably be after July 1, and any we create before then will be on an individual as-needed basis.
we think the current set of communities covers most things adequately enough for our purposes right now. some imperfections exist but to reiterate: we aren't trying to be Reddit, so some overlap and imperfection in coverage is fine with us.
this also doesn't mean we're done taking public opinion checks. we're not sure when this will be sent out yet (it's being worked on today), but we're drafting a community survey where among other things we'll gauge interest in the suggestions i've seen that haven't already been added. be on the lookout for that.
luckily, a left-wing subreddit got in touch with us about moving (pre-boom, even) and we think their community on Reddit fit the ethos of the site pretty well, so we've helped move them over here
/r/LeftWithoutEdge, which took the principled stance about 5 years ago that maybe Reddit left communities didn't need to be all about killing everyone constantly. they're also not particularly large in terms of active users, so they nicely slot into "large enough to build a community on here around, but small enough they won't really influence the trajectory of the overall community"
I think that's one of the few leftist spaces on Reddit where I actually didn't feel like I was seen as scum just because I'm an Army veteran. A very (unfortunately) common sentiment in leftist spaces is that anybody that played any part in the military-industrial complex is beyond consideration and worthy of nothing but scorn, regardless of the fact that being in the military did more to push me left than anything else I can think of.
I really appreciate it. There's only so many times I could see people join to try to improve their lot in life only to get ground up and spit out, then betrayed by the people who made endless promises to them, before it made a permanent change in my worldview. Thankfully I realized that embracing the system that created these conditions is a fool's errand, but I do actually understand the hesitation to accept veterans when there are so many others that view the establishment as something other than a human rights violations factory that dangles the promise of a better life to take advantage of the downtrodden. There's plenty more I can say about this topic, but I'll cut it short here since this should be a place for celebrating the further development of our community, not to air political grievances.