c/Superbowl

For all your owl related needs!

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I seriously worry about coming off creepy or insincere, or else I would shower you with praise more constantly! Your app has made my experience here so much better, and I’m grateful for the things you’ve added to it, sometimes I’m sure, just for me.

    You’ve always been really friendly and helpful and lightning fast fixing any issues, and you obviously put a lot of time and work into developing and maintaining the app, and you don’t ask for money or have ads or anything.

    None of the other apps are bad or anything, but I still think yours offers the most and the best for me, and how I don’t see Summit near the top of every best Lemmy app posts is crazy to me.


  • Fair enough reasons. If you’re doing custom ublock filters and such, you’re likely able to tweak a lot to how you want it without any outside help from an app.

    I see in you rother comment to someone you haven’t tried Voyager in a year. I haven’t tried that one recently, but I will say even over the last 6-8 months, so many of these apps have really matured from where they were a year or so ago. Very significantly so IMO. I think Summit is really the sleeper champ of the apps for my use case, and the dev is super helpful and responsive.

    To each their own though. I love we have such great variety in UI here. At this point, there should be a couple viable options for near anyone.





  • Yup, my questions in the Maori article have been up for 24 hours now, so time for people in that part of the world with direct knowledge had time to see it. My comments and questions got 7 upvotes, so other people seem interested in some more elaboration, but the thread is probably dead.

    Someone’s leaving an audience that wants more hanging, and nobody even gave a yes or no saying if my understanding of the article was right. 😮‍💨


  • Oh for sure. It’s going to be what ultimately makes or breaks this as a platform. You can’t force a userbase to interact, but as OP states, like many before them, for some people there’s not going to be much going on here. For people that want to at least be mildly active participants though, I haven’t had this much fun since forums were the big thing. I just imagine since that was a decent while ago now that either those of us old enough to have enjoyed them are rusty at it, and the yoots are too young to have seen how it used to work.


  • not a lot of people even bother opening posts

    I’m a bit inclined to agree with this. I try to do the equivalent of the XKCD hover text, where you have to click through to get some of the good stuff. If you aren’t clicking through to the comments, you’re going to miss a lot of good stuff. Photo sets, photography tips, stories, fun facts. I try not to have the pic and title be the whole thing. But I’ll have 100 upvotes on the post pic, and maybe 10 on any bonus pics inside.

    With some news posts, they feel like a RSS feed. Just a link to an article and nothing else. I may read it or I may not. There’s no initial comment or question to interact with. I don’t even know if it’s a bot posting or not that way. If all you offer is a Reuters link, I could have just gone to Reuters and gotten the headline myself. I feel these posts have little value until they start collecting comments.

    “Yes I agree, nothing to add”

    This is a common response I get when I try to get people to comment more. There can still be value to add to something like this though. Why do you agree? Did you agree before you read the post/comment? Do you have any caveats to your agreement? If you haven’t always agreed, what changed your mind? What part of what they said, or the chart/pic/stat they shared really stood out or was unexpected? You may agree, but you’re still a different person with a different background and different adjacent ideas.

    Example from today: Pic of flying owl. Comment was basically I like all these recent pics of flying owls. On the surface, not the deepest comment ever. Buuuuuut, someone took the time to respond to a post, so I know they liked it enough to make effort. Makes me feel good knowing I motivated someone enough to respond, keeps me motivated to post again. I also learned that a specific type of content really got them interested. I know to look for more of it. Then I took the time to respond in kind, because their effort deserves recognition. I said I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I also said that even though I see hundreds of owl pics every week, that I was still surprised by something I saw in one of the recent photos, so that gives them or anyone else reading the response something to go back and look at. They might not have noticed the unique thing about the photo the first time.

    Example going the other way: Maori rights in New Zealand. You can’t get much further from NZ than where I am. I know basically nothing about it. This topic really caught my attention though. I read the article to see what was going on, and I thought I understood the basics of it. I commented and said, hey, I read this, and this is my understanding. Am I correct in my understanding or am I missing some significant parts of the story not in this article? If so, can someone explain it or point me in the direction of some more reading? So I know nothing, but I showed them the story was making me interested in something they shared. Anyone familiar with NZ can chime in to talk to me. I hopefully get more things to talk about from that, and we have some conversation. I don’t have to know anything, I just show interest in the topic, and in interacting with someone.

    Not every interaction is going to result in more upvotes, comments, or conversation, but if nobody is going to be willing to make the first move, it’s gonna be boring. We’re not big enough for the 1% rule (1% creators, 9% commenters, 90% lurkers) to carry us. It kills the creators having to force the momentum all the time, and if you disagree/agree too much with the small pool of comments, you’re going to say this place is boring. We need to participate, we need to show our individual personalities, and we need to interact. That’s the “social” part of social media. Have fun with it!


  • For me, the upvotes are ok. I use them more to gauge overall traffic. I have an idea the typical number of votes things will get, and I can see what deviates to see what is a hit, what’s typical, and what isn’t resonating. But without comments, there’s no “why” anything is good or bad. I’m not really any better off than before to give you what you want. I can take a guess, but you could have also taken a moment to tell me. It doesn’t tell me everyone’s opinion, but it gives another things for the people that do vote to either add upvotes to that comment or ignore it.

    Also, as someone providing the content, it’s nice to have an interaction, even if it’s minimal. Creating posts can eat up a lot of time, and I’m doing it to talk to you all. If nobody stops by to even say, yo, nice work, or whatever, even if I have a lot of upvotes, it still feels like I’m not talking to anyone. It feels like a chore. But if I get one person that says, hey, seeing this really made my morning, now I feel awesome and I want to post more.


  • A lot of focus is put onto posting, but I like to encourage commenters. I’ll post and respond all day, but if nobody is interacting, it’s going to stay quiet. Put the quiet to your advantage by doing things like:

    If you like an image, say what you like about it. Lately, I’ve been having people talk about how they really have been enjoying dawn/dusk pictures, so I’ve been collecting more of that so I can post what people are in the mood for. It gives me good feedback, it gives people a chance to agree or disagree with you, and you got to participate.

    Do you ask anyone any question? Take advantage of the relative quiet. With not having a million comments on every post, I have plenty of time to give you really detailed answers. I got asked how to differentiate between 2 animals yesterday, and I had time to make a nice visual guide, highlighting key differences and giving multiple visual examples of potential variations while still simplifying the process of identification. If there’s a million people talking like on Reddit, it’s hard to give people that much attention, but here it’s easy. I pretty much take time to respond to every comment.

    Don’t be afraid to go off topic. Rules seem to be looser in many communities because of the low post count. This week, I posted something from a country with a different language, and I ended up having 3 days of conversation with a native speaker who filled me in on tons of subtleties of the language pertaining to our niche topic. I got to learn so much, and they got to learn a few things about English.

    I feel you have to do something to have a good time here, but it needn’t be to post multiple things every day, but it’s more than just up or downvoting something like you can get away with on Reddit. We’re too small for you to have a free ride. But make someone laugh. Let them know that you liked their post with a short comment. If you don’t like it, say hey, do you have any content on such and such instead. Make a post saying, hey, what’s your thoughts on this? It doesn’t need to be something groundbreaking or insightful, you just need to give a sign of life so we know you’re here, and one of us will probably talk back to you.

    Interact enough like that, and you may find what you enjoy doing, if that turns out to be posting, or you become the resident expert on a topic even if you’re not an expert, being a serial commenter, or whatever it may be. It’s a great opportunity if you make it one because it is so easy to get attention here if you try.

    I’m not typically a social person, but being here has let me talk about what I want, when I want, and somebody will listen to it, and I can ask about things I want to know and get answers. There’s much less shouting into the void like at Reddit. Play Lemmy to its strengths and you will find enjoyment. And if you don’t like it, go to where you’re happy. Nobody’s going to hate you if you split time between here and Reddit.







  • I think many may now be too young to remember, but in the 70s and 80s, this was a big issue.

    NY Times, 11 June, 1983 - DEMAND INCREASES FOR FIRE-SAFE CLOTHING

    Clothing that can erupt into flames is coming under increasing scrutiny of consumer and fire safety organizations. They say Federal regulations governing the safety of fabrics used in clothing are too weak to protect the people who are most vulnerable: the elderly.

    Those who most often suffer serious injury or death from clothing fires, safety experts say, are retired people who spend many hours of the day in such loose-fitting garments as bathrobes or housecoats. With the exception of children’s sleepwear, for which special regulations were decreed in the 1970’s, Federal standards allow clothing manufacturers to use all but the most extremely flammable fabrics.

    Plastic fibers can melt to your skin, which isn’t great considering you’re in contact with the seats and carpets of the car. In an emergency, you’re not prepared to deal with additional complications like that.

    The article I linked here is pretty good, so I recommend reading it if you aren’t familiar with this issue from back then. It will really help give you the other side of the issue to see why these chemicals are there to begin with.


  • Not sure exactly why you’re getting downvoted as that was essentially the point of the article:

    Flame retardant chemicals off-gas or leach from the seat and interior fabrics into the air, — especially in hot weather, when car interiors can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Advocates argue that the risks of these chemicals outweigh the benefits.

    But health researchers have found that the average U.S. child has lost up to 5 IQ points from exposure to flame retardants in cars and furniture. And adults with the highest levels of flame retardants in their blood face a risk of death by cancer that is four times greater than those with the lowest levels, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.