I saw this discussion brought up on a different thread and I though I’d get some more opinions on the matter.

The Beehaw community guidelines describe a place that’s meant to be safe, friendly and encourages people to discuss their ideas in good faith. For the most part I feel like this community lives up to that; users of this instance are generally thoughtful with their responses. However, I don’t feel like that level of quality extends to the users who post from other instances. Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.

Now I may just be an elitist fuck so I’d like to hear your opinions on this. Does Beehaw benefit from federation? Do the community guidelines even matter if they don’t apply to many of the people who engage with this instance? Am I just looking for a reason to complain?

EDIT: This post isn’t a request for Beehaw to defederate btw. I just wanted to discuss the negatives of federation and what we can do to alleviate them :)

  • magnetosphere @beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.

    I’ve noticed a small uptick in responses like that (which, admittedly, may just be confirmation bias).

    I think it might be due to the large influx of reddit refugees (full disclosure: I’m one, too). It takes a while to get used to the fact that the “atmosphere” of fediverse instances is different. It takes time for people to realize that this isn’t a toxic environment that encourages assholes. They’ll just keep on being hyper-defensive, confrontational, and/or deliberate misinterpreters of things while they focus on irrelevant points. After all, that was the norm on reddit for years.

    Good users grow out of that. Unfortunately, some users just don’t want to. We have to take the bad with the good, though. Defederating completely would make Beehaw much less interesting and fun. The community just isn’t big enough by itself.

    TL;DR: Yes, Beehaw benefits from federation. Federation has its drawbacks, but they are massively outweighed by the advantages.

    • jarfil@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I think there is a very toxic trait that ex-Redditors need to shake off: every response to a comment DOES NOT need to be a rebuttal.

      Agreeing is allowed, and I agree with you.