How can we make the Fediverse more positive and wholesome?

we seem to be popular with reddit users that were banned from reddit, which on average seems to translate to less than wholesome behavior - so maybe lemmy's whole reddit-alternative branding works against us that way.

maybe developing a distinct UI so it's not just a reddit clone, and directing features in a way that is appealing more to particular communities or people we wish to attract would be a good idea, rather than trying to directly replace reddit as a whole?

for example, attracting academics by supporting built-in LaTeX syntax rather than requiring a browser extension

My thought process:

Post wholesome content. You need to be providing what you want to see, first and foremost. Provocative content is easy engagement, but wholesome stuff is both a little harder to find and to get people to interact with.
Support other people doing what you like. See a post you like with no or low comments? Leave a comment to show that person other people want more. Likes are nice and all, but I personally post things I'm interested in and want to discuss. If I get likes, but nobody is talking with me, I get bored and feel like posting less.
Clarify when you post or comment. If you're sharing an opinion, make that clear. If you're interested in a subject but understand you aren't an expert, make sure you're not coming off as one. If you're bringing facts, support them with quotes and citations and be sure to credit others where it's due.
Respect constructive discussions. If people are rude, feel free to ignore them. No one wants to see 2 stubborn randos arguing in a thread though. If people give counterpoints or ask questions of your opinion, return the politeness given or steer it back to positive interior you feel it isn't.
Discipline is required if I can't stick to my principles that I've outlined. If I think what I'm going to post is going to rule people up or if I think I'm saying too much about something I'm not very informed on, am I better off hitting cancel than post?

Bingo.
Each of us doing these things is the key.
- That's what I'm talking about!
  It's a few comments more positive in here already. 😜
- You've never needed everyone for something, that's unrealistic. A village doesn't require the exact same behavior from all people to function smoothly, and any such bottleneck would create weaknesses anyway. You just need that to be the prevailing culture.
You are the most wholesome user i see around here, I love your posts lol =D
If anyone's fit answering this question, it's you
- I appreciate that. It does take effort. It's not like I'm an especially positive or happy person, but for building community here, I feel I need to put special attention into what I say and how I say it.

Let's talk about politics a whole hell of a lot less. Yes, things are awful and insane, but there is good stuff to discuss.

Try not to fall into the trap of groupthink. The "reddit hive mind" was one of the worst things about our predecessor, and it seems to have followed us here.
Understand that humans are not, and never will be, perfect. Endless purity tests do not accomplish anything other than turning away newcomers.
For the love of God, pick up a hobby. My feed on any given day is 99.8% US politics and activism. I'm not saying that these things aren't important, but it gets exhausting when it's the only thing people want to discuss.

Generously start using CWs (Content warnings) as folks used to do in the early days of Fediverse.

It would be cool if people stopped thinking the only ideologies are their ideology and fascism

There are ideologies that are bad that arent far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist

Yeah, I agree 100% but this also goes for the left. The tankies on some Lemmy instances are so vocal that it makes me appriciate the normal left more
- You and the person you're replying to are saying the same thing / agreeing

There's two subreddits I really miss: AskScience and AskHistorians. I was a regular and flaired contributor to AskScience, but its super helpful to generate a response when there's a good question. It would feel weird opining on a random science topic that I come up with. And I loved the well sourced AskHistorians posts. When I do see a c/AskHistorian post on Lemmy the responses are very low effort

ban Nazi's and defederate from fascist instances.

Do you have examples of fascists instances so i can block them?
- I know you're trolling but I'm vicious like this.
  *.ml
  db.zero
  programming.dev
  sh.it.just.works
  I have ran into more fascist supporting shit heels from those instances than anywhere else.

My take is that the fediverse is wholesome. Today's news isn't but that is our current reality and the topics on a social network will always cover current events.

But when you really pay attention to the people here, they are wholesome. And if what you see is a lot of terrible people in your feed, start watching the instances they are coming from. Frequently the difference between a good and bad experience here is how well you curate your feed and how well your instance is moderated.

Yup agreed. Compare the comments on most of Lemmy to YouTube or Twitter or the like, which very frequently quickly devolve into hate filled cesspools. It can happen here, but it happens far less frequently. But yeah, check instances, block toxic people so you won’t even be tempted to engage with them in the future, etc

I'll go for the technical side: having a distributed accounts manager so you only need one account to use every aspect of the Fediverse.

I thought that was part of the package when I made a lemmy account. Man was I disappointed.
Could this be an XY problem? Maybe instead of having several accounts and a way to log in everywhere easily, the problem is lacking interoperability? It's hard to follow lemmy from mastodon, for example, but what if that was easy? Then you wouldn't need both a lemmy account and a mastodon account, one would be enough to use different aspects of the fediverse.
- Yes and no. Mastodon and Lemmy and Pixelfed and Peertube and FunkWhale and... have different uses but can be mixed. It would be a dream to have all in the same place so you can have a tab to upload images, another for videos, another for news, another for microblogging, another for DM (Matrix? XMPP?), another for short videos (Loops), ... Just like FB has in some way.
- this sorta defeats the purpose of decentralization...

Stop posting world news (unless it’s specifically wholesome news).

From a reader perspective, filter out everything news related (or subscribe to everything you want to see and only browse by subscribed).

When you create a piefed account it asks if you want to filter the "Trump & Musk" keywords by default, that’s pretty cool.

This. Most news sites nowadays are all about clickbait and ragenews while pushing their financer's agenda (left wing, right wing, whatever)
And there's always the users whose only purpose is to post these clickbait/ragenews in 30 different communities as if they were karma farming on reddit; just poisoning the global feed with doomposting.
There needs to be a way to tag news posts across instances.

My biggest issue with the fediverse and all alt social media in general is due to the current social climate and censorship on mainstream SM platforms, every alt platform is inundated with politics. Politics is very hot button, it breeds negative interactions and very often is worded in such a way that its very ragebait-y in order to increase engagement. I have this issue with Bluesky as well, even after blocking bad actors and bad communities, and muting keywords I still find myself overwhelmed with political content and I find it difficult to not engage even if I support the causes.

When I consume media that is not politically related, I find people are very positive and easy to connect with, the problem is that type of content is few and far between.

it's cool though because the fediverse has no incentives to increase engagement which means our ragebait is all organic and free of the profit motive!

Hmm, maybe some more diversity? Right now it seems to be mostly hypernerds who use fediverse services. When was "Ask Lemmy" about web development questions.. you know

Liberal use of the block button.

Sorry, I should clarify: better for everyone*
I want to help improve the experience, not just for my own benefit.
- Admittedly blocking isn't directly effective, but it could be if it generally gets people to stop feeding trolls, thus cutting off reward feedback loops for bad actors.
  Just a thought.
- Food for consideration:
  Blocking people makes the place more pleasant for you, which makes you a more pleasant person to interact with and the people you respond to will tend to reflect that.
  Blocking people denies them interaction even in their less acerbic comments, making the place less fun for people who are so inclined.
  Since becoming a parent, I've learned that sometimes self-care is caring for others because it helps us keep from being ground down to our worse selves.
  That's not to say more can't be done, but don't discount the effectiveness of starving negativity of air.

When you've been shown facts that contradict your argument, concede politely. People will respect you for it. In fact they'll probably respect you more than if you go down endless chains of trying to save face.

Remember, this should go both ways. There will be times when people concede to you, and other times when you need to concede.

I don't think it needs to take very many people doing this to create a snowball effect where it becomes the common way to debate.

We should upvote to the moon any comment that concedes their original viewpoint.

Try to be insightful, supportive, and ask questions that lead to discussion

This is a good point, I like how you've simplified it into 3 easy to follow steps; Do you have any more advice?
- Thank you. Sure, I will list a few more:
  -in general, try to be polite
  -make an effort to be an active participant in the communities you are a part of
  -donate to the developers if you have the means to do so

Please don't, disneyfication is as bad as enshitifcation.

I'd say worse, because it's delusional.
- I'd say it's not as bad because it comes from (I think) a genuinely well meaning place, but it is definitely destructive, both just on its own and because it will produce a Streisand effect from the people it pisses off and cause them to devolve into full time trolls when they might not otherwise

Quit artificially upvoting US politics?

"If you can't say something nice..."

Shouldn't be regulated, but that's my advice for improving discourse and awareness.

Can we all just post something instead of redirecting , every subreddit has this shit . I wanted to ask something about passkeys and i made a big post for that but all the technology sub just deleted it and I got the answer for it on reddit within 2 hr also there are no fun sub as well all the memes look shit and boring . No wonder nobody uses fediverse

we require men to read a single feminism book, just one /j

The Will To Change by bell hooks. It was the first time ever I felt seen as a human by a feminist writer.
pls drop the /j 🥺
- wish I could, unfortunately they're allergic to critical thinking

WITH FIRE!!!!!!

- Sorry... I know that is not the answer you were looking for, but it felt right, and sometimes you just have to go where your heart leads you.

Welcome folks, be friendly, get to know people. I've started a podcast, because I had this exact question. I talk to folks from around the fedi and just have a fireside chat. We need more projects like this that show who and what we are and it has to be shown outside of Fedi as well.

If you're interested the show is at video.firesidefedi.live/@show . Also on YT, but delayed by months and with new videos I'm pulling some out as a teaser to go to Peertube.

Join/make communities that crack down hard on negativity

Sharing nice posts and personal experiences. We can discuss news pieces all day long under anonymous accounts with no need to really communicate with each other, just competing for a best take in the comment section, and it's something else entirely to discuss some OC with a person who shared it. Fedi is small and tight, so acting like we are a small community and not the Frontpage of the Internets may be beneficial to our existence there, leading to less toxic behavior and more quality interactions.

Ask youself, where have you seen the best comments and interactions? I've seen them when either post is OC, or if a person under a random post gives their expertise in something. While we can't predict the latter (if there's a Boing malfunction and there's a guy who worked with them who can go into details), we can encourage OC posters to do their thing and find if we ourselves can join them.

Implement a way for users to subscribe to an updating community/user blocklist. That way new users can get rid of all the crazies and block all the ml instances.

Mandatory fursona creation required upon account activation.

I'm not a furry because I don't have a fursona. To have a fursona I'd have to choose one of my oc's to elevate above the rest.

Ok, this doesn't answer your question, but is that an ICQ icon?? God I haven't seen that thing in a bazillion years.

Uh-oh!
- Oh my God, you're bringing back so many memories LOL

Change the world to be less hostile toward ordinary people. Improve general conditions and decrease inequality. I know it's a tall order, but it's a pretty big step toward people being less angry, aggrieved, and sullen.

More attainable, and not applicable to everyone (but works on me), more pics of kittens and puppies and other cute critters. Sorry that I don't have a more actionable philosophical suggestion.

Change the sorting algorithms?

I’m not sure of the details, but the default “Hot” algorithm for Lemmy surfaces ragebait from popular subs first, while Scaled or New Comments are way more wholesome.

This should be an ongoing experiment, but I think “Hot” or whatever is default should boost quiet communities more.

I just started using scaled. Its nice.
"scaled" and "Top - 6 Hours" are pretty decent at surfacing meaningful .... well, maybe not conversation but engagement at least.
- Top 6 hours is very light on niche communities. Sometimes they're in top hour, but its still mostly the big few.

Maybe dispense with the power-tripping moderators and also give me lots of money

i dont like wholesome anything, to me it is often infantalizing or saccharine

I mean. Its pretty great compared to the rest of the internet.

Yeah, always room for improvement, but from my limited perspective this site does pretty well

I've noticed that people seem to agree with the person they "think" is winning the argument and turns it into a game of butting heads, when I don't think that is how social media should be treated anyways.

The whole point is people don't know what you do and these spaces are supposed to be for coming together and communicating in a digital space instead of a physical space and then you share. But because it's all practically to an audience people treat the conversation like a gladiator combat where someone needs to speak more confidently and belittle the other as to show their strength and get the upvotes. Or their humor to show they don't care and are more funny than the other. It's so competitive.

Honestly the best interactions come from the people who don't use the platform as much and just talk like a person asking what other people think and responding reasonably. No assumptions of using the platform as a stage, no attempts to "win", shouldn't even be thinking you will get the other person to agree with you just that you both leave with more than what you came in with.
And that needs to be especially true for the fact that new younger people will come in and having no expectations of what they should already know or be but welcoming them in anyways is how it will have to continue.

You'd have to change humanity.

Tax the rich out of existence and watch how the quality of life goes up everywhere and everything starts being good again.

Idk, I think the fediverse is sufficiently positive. I also think society is going through a wealth inequality period common with most of history, and we're either going to correct it or continue to suffer on a global scale. I don't think I want to be a part of any aggregation site that isn't tuned into the real world.

Completely agree.
There seems to be this concept that humans do their best when under pressure and I really think that is wrong, heck science literally agrees with me and so does history.
When people are uncomfortable and struggling they really just suck. Short fuse, anxiety, and uncreative. But during extremely peaceful and well funded times people prosper and contribute better. Look at how much we got out of the post world war 2 era of just funding and building more that gave us new genres of music and art and it's from free time and comfort that people can get creative. Humans love to be lazy but get bored quick. It's the center of all our innovation.
So, I agree that a better world would give us better everything but not really actionable advice for the moment in here though right?
- I mean, I don't know what actionable advice looks like if I'm being honest. I haven't exactly connected the dots between wanting something political and achieving something political.
  So I'd say that starting with raising awareness about root causes, building a community with an expectation of that awareness, and then manifesting meaningful action when an opportunity presents itself is likely as actionable as I can get. I think the benefit of doing this here on Lemmy is that it will make things more positive. We don't have to have childish comments defending the rich and make the space more negative if we have a robust resource that explains the position. Maybe it's short sighted of me, but a chunk of the negative articles and daily happenings can be chalked up to "rich people attempt distraction by talking about thing that doesn't effect you or matter really much at all". I think a community that posted those with a consistent title of "DISTRACTION - (news of the day)" would go a long way in allowing actual news to elevate itself. Because this is a root issue to a global problem, I think this awareness could effect nearly every community on Lemmy so why not talk about this more, educate yourself and your peers, and the more people who are up to speed the less time you have to spend talking about it and the more likely it gets fixed.
  Idk, it's not exactly "do X and get Y more positive posts" but it's the kind of advice I think leads some percentage of people to start a union and then get parental leave and overtime protection. Like it's not exactly sexy work, and it's slow and not fun, but it's the best I've got. I need to educate myself more on how to make actual political change in my local area (let alone online).
Hahaha, right.
As if being rich is why we're all assholes at one time or another.
Its the way of humanity, all of us have a different experience, all of us are struggling in our own ways (though most of it is a common experience).
If I had indigestion right now, my response may have been more snarly, but I don't, so this is what you get. Wait ten minutes, and I could be the ass in this conversation.
- Are you claiming better living standards for everyone wouldn't reduce people's aggression, apathy, or lack of energy? I'm just trying to understand what your point is, because it seems immature putting it kindly.
  People having money for good education, good healthcare, good public transit, time for community building, for hobbies, for art logically, obviously, and experimentally reduce trauma - crime - sadness. I mean you name it, money helps people in every statistic (up to a point). That seems fuckin obvious and not worth debating if someone disagreed.
  All I did was append the notion that right now most people are losing purchasing power, losing quality of living, compared to just a few generations ago, because of wealth inequality. It's why we can't buy houses, it's why there's so much debt, it's why we can't seem to make effective change at the rate at which it's needed. Tax the rich out of existence such that money remains in the hands of the working class and we'd all start to see improvements along every metric we care about.
  If Lemmy seems negative, it's because the world is in a negative zeitgeist right now due to the negative happenings. If one would want to make Lemmy positive, just like every where else in their life, they would need to address the root cause which I'm suggesting is wealth inequality.
  I also further express that artificially creating a positive space on a site who's purpose is Link aggregation seems less useful to me than one that keeps me informed about the various topics I like - including the positive and negative.