1y ago

We need to be more active about commenting!

I notice on a lot of mags, there is one or two people posting, and either 0, a handful, or quite a bit of upvotes, but no one is really engaging, most the time there are 0 comments.

I think in order to foster the growth of our community, we must try to engage more with the people generating the content, it's helpful and encouraging for them, and also a positive sign for people who are coming into the fediverse. I post quite a bit, and comments always make me feel like it was worth it!

Also, keep upvoting! Someone responded to your post or comment, and you're just grateful for that or agree with them? Upvote them! Engage! That's all :)

74 comments

You can't force this stuff though. No-one wants a ton of vapid, low-effort comments put there just for the sake of it.
- This.
  
  I know, right?
- i'm certainly not asking for comments for the sake of comments, i am asking for less lurking and more generating. people usually have something to say, add, or discuss, it's effort-level is subjective. i just want those people to feel encouraged to speak out, its safer to do so here than it was on reddit, and it's also helpful
  
  It can get a bit frustating at times, but people do speak when they want to, and when they do its usually thoughtful. It helps to respond back.
  My take is to enjoy the silence for now. Once they warm up, we'll be wishing they'd stayed silent ;)
  
  Same
- Me too
  
  Me too
  
  Me three
- You hear me Alanis, this thread is full of irony.
  
  I wonder if she was two moves ahead of us the whole time knowing the song itself was ironic, not the situations in the song…
- People need to step up their games!
- @HeartyBeast Yeah this makes sense, I sadly still see upvotes in posts people create asking questions. When the OC tried to ask a question it's helpful to have an answer but yes not everyone should have to comment as it might not be useful and could clog up the feed.
  
  the thing is, a lot of people wont answer or comment in the first place. maybe they think someone else will, but then that ends up not being the case
- ☝️

Most of us were little fish in the big pond called Reddit and our comments wouldn’t even cause a ripple, but now we have a chance to be big fish in a small pond and create waves 🦈
- very well said
- ... a whole lot of small ponds linked together!

I'm definitely trying to lurk less here compared to when I used to use reddit.
- Same here. I starting making an effort to post more…but then ran across a weirdo angry I told him not to be a dick to someone after he told them to “fucking die,” and now they’re downvoting literally everything I post and comment, despite me blocking them.
  We can encourage commenting, but we’ve also got to strengthen tools to stop harassment and create a culture that discourages people from being toxic.
  
  im sure @ernest is eventually gonna implement something to prevent going to someone's page and mass downvoting, like reddit did, it's been brought up a ton by now
- good on you

I'd like to encourage more upvoting and boosting too! I like leaving comments, but I know not everyone does. The points from upvoting themselves don't mean anything, but it lets me know if my post is appreciated or if someone else's post is worth reading past the headline.

@euphoria That is my observation also. If we want to make Kbin an engaging community it’s incumbent on all of us to comment and post
- exactly right! i understand not everyone is a content creator and would rather lurk, but those same people tend to complain about lack of content 👀 even a single post or a single comment from nearly every user would make a world of a difference, it adds up. we have to be the change we want to see

@euphoria I agree, It seems like most people don't want to comment and interact which is really annoying when trying to build a Mag.
- been there, making a mag that grows but youre the only one posting and no one is engaging and its like uhuhughugh. i wanna contribute and i do, but sometimes it feels like i am talking to myself
  
  Just checked your mags and saw @MagHub !
  I had been wanting a place right here on kbin to help me discover more local communities, this is perfect!
  
  @euphoria Yeah I try to find already made mags such as gaming ones but it seems like a lot of single-game topic ones such as for GTA seem to be pretty dead or the OC of the Mag seems to not be active on Kbin anymore making it feel like it might end up just being another unmoderated dead-end in the Fediverse.
  It's good that we have room to grow especially as it seems it would be good for gaming alone but it doesn't show we are a good system to move to if Reddit and even smaller platforms seem to have better engagement on the Forums than something that is interconnected between Instances.

Agreed, although I must say the quality of the commentary here is far and above what I've seen on other social media, and I'd like that trend to continue.
I want to note that the value of Kbin increases exponentially as you engage and follow each other, and that Boosting can be particularly effective in bringing in more engagement from the Mastodon world.
Also (not sure if this is a bug @ernest), you should know how to get around the magazine filter in the drop-down on your threads and links submission page. If you click when in a kbin magazine or default kbin screen, the menu will only allow you to submit to kbin.social magazines on the instance, not any off-instance communities.
To get around this, go to the off-instance magazine you want to submit to, and it will auto-populate the correct target community on the other instance.
While I know that most of us are focused on expanding kbin.social in particular, spreading the load helps the servers and widens your audience, as well as potential followers, which draws them back to kbin.
- @Arotrios a bit off topic but I see you're into poetry, have you found any good communities here for that yet?

Here is where I disagree with a lot of you guys' points. Even if the comment is lower effort, I still would read them and prefer it to be there than not. Even if it's less substantiated. I primarily acted as a lurker on Reddit for various reason and still enjoyed reading people's opinions and perspectives even if it wasn't "high quality". Even if it's just to get a picture of what people feel about something it still has value. I post comments, and posts that get upvotes and views, and that proves that it still has value.

I think it's a matter of content type. We have a lot of links to interesting articles or pictures of memes with no additional input from the poster. Those make me less inclined to comment. I just tend to upvote/boost and move on.
I think for more discussion/opinions, people need a spring board to jump off of.

Ok. Sounds good.
- awesome, everyone's participation is much appreciated :)
  
  Werd.

Sometimes you just don't know what to say that feels like it actually meaningfully contributes, y'know? Also complicates things that I have like 5 other small scale social medias im trying to nurture on top of my ADHD (and not all of them are even federated...). But I still try to chip in to add some spice.

The comment at bottom of thread prevents me from commenting on a lot of threads simply because I don't want to scroll that far.
- there are various scripts to fix this.
  https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/468681-kbin-move-comment-box-to-top
  
  I just hit the "end" key and it pops me right down there.
  
  Awesome, thank you!

I think it's quality not quantity. I'd rather be in a ~~sub~~ community where a post is made once a week but a really good conversation comes out of it than in a situation where things are being posted for the sake of posting anything.

This is what I've been trying to do. Put some thought into comments whenever I run into a post I'm interested in. Also do favorites have any effect on what shows up on your homepage?
- Put some thought into comments whenever I run into a post I'm interested in
  it's much appreciated, especially by the poster!
  Also do favorites have any effect on what shows up on your homepage?
  no

I feel a bit guilty about this as I comment on a lot of useless stuff but I follow a guy who posts great articles but I generally don't have much to say as the articles are that good. I end up posting something maybe every half dozen articles but they are all great.
- What's the magazine? I'm curious to see if I can sub to a magazine from Lemmy.
  
  im not sure at this point as I did not save the info from the posting but I do a search for keeshond which was its name and nothing comes up. I know I have subbed other magazines if the url was giving me issues by simply searching the main part of its name and it worked for those.

Lots of angry folks out here; hard to get people involved when they see the "big contributors" going around brigading with no capacity for recompense, reporting or otherwise. I think we could get things moving a lot faster if we got rid of the downvote altogether; copying the Reddit way of doing things is... not great.
- when they see the "big contributors" going around brigading with no capacity for recompense, reporting or otherwise
  can you elaborate on this? i don't quite know what you mean
  
  It's easy on some instances to click a name, then click the down arrow on everything they've ever posted. I have a couple of stalkers that are hounding me in this way currently, and there's no way to make them stop. That kind of nonsense makes people want to give up and go somewhere else.

No.
- Yes.
  
  Okay.

74 comments