southsamurai

southsamurai , 6 hours ago

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.

southsamurai , 6 hours ago

He was really surprised to see you

southsamurai , 1 day ago

Well, yeah. That’s the idea. Why would they go this far and not go all the way? They know damn good and well that as long as they keep things just barely on the end where genocide isn’t stated as a goal, and they maintain a position of alliance with most of the west, nobody is going to actually stop them.

Hell, without starting a world war, I’m not even sure they can be stopped.

On the world stage? There aren’t enough nations with power that actually care about Palestine. Yeah, leaders will make noise and pretend to care, but Palestine offers nothing to the major powers worth intervening for.

Sounds sociopathic, right? That’s the leaders of most of the world. People drawn to power rarely have the ethical rigor to wield said power. Those that do, still have to deal with oligopoly, hidden fascists, and the reality that no nation can really take action without upsetting the whole damn thing.

southsamurai , 1 day ago

Hey man, you remember that time we went to vegas and had that shootout with some mob goons, banged fifteen hookers, and rescued dogs from a fighting ring?

Great weekend! We gotta do it again sometime

southsamurai , 2 days ago

Technically, you can still get it, but the 7 layer burrito was my go-to order when I was on the road and forced to have fast food. The Taco Bell in the next town over was right off the highway, so as I would be zipping between patients, it was usually the only realistic option other than a truck stop that had put people in the hospital three times. So, you know, l decided to live, mas or not lol.

There was a point in time where I ended up eating a lot of taco bell. Enough that I’d had everything on their menu at least once, up until 2005. After that, I haven’t been able to work, so no zipping around three counties wiping butts, which means no need for fast food except as an occasional thing. So I’ve lost track of if they’ve had any temporary stuff or not.

But, yeah, the 7layer was bomb. Like I said, you can still get the same thing by messing around and adding things to other burritos, but that’s a pain in the ass for drive through, if you feel me.

southsamurai , 2 days ago

As a published (if hilariously unsuccessful) author; no, no it isn’t.

southsamurai , 1 day ago

Yeah, even the big names tend to not care much as long as nobody else is profiting off of their work. Agents and publishers, they tend to get right snippy about piracy lol.

Mind you, there is a segment of working authors that do suffer in their ability to go from a part time, almost hobbyist situation into a proper career of it. They tend to see the lack of sales as more of a problem, but they tend to be younger and didn’t ever see how impossible breaking in to traditional publishing was. It’s easy to look at your self published income and think “oh, if people had to buy these, I’d be making a living at this instead of it being barely enough to cover expenses for writing”. But, most of the time, back before self publishing was actually a valid and useful route, they wouldn’t have been selling anything, they’d be hoping for an agent to get their first sale for them.

And I’ll never tell anyone that they can’t profit from their own ideas and labor, and expect anyone consuming it to pay up. Authors that object, that’s fine by me (and I actually don’t pirate their stuff). But like you said, most writers would rather someone read and enjoy for free rather than not read at all.

southsamurai , 2 days ago

My homie, go take a first aid/cpr class. You are wrong for so many reasons, and taking the class would remedy this one tiny section of that.

And, seriously, go take the damn class, everyone should know how to perform basic care like this, period. It should be taught in schools imo.

southsamurai , 2 days ago

As long as the fuckers don’t try to build a nest near the house, they can have their fun. I don’t go messing with them otherwise. But my allergic ass ain’t playing when they’re right outside the door, helllll no.

southsamurai , 2 days ago

Man, I feel that.

I can’t say I love wasps and hornets, but I respect them (well away from me), but I try to. They’re terrifyingly beautiful.

But bees? As much as they make my nethers pucker up, I love those little guys.

But it took me years before I could stay chill around them instead of running away and screaming. Except bumbles, they’ve always been an exception to my phobia.

southsamurai , 2 days ago

Nah, it has some irish origins, just not only Irish

southsamurai , 2 days ago

Nah, go bugger lol. One side of my family is mostly from potato famine Irish, and we all love some corned beef. It’s definitely on the menu for holidays

southsamurai , 2 days ago

I love that you recognize the original hillbilly usage :)

southsamurai , 4 days ago

Man, I’ve been disabled since 2005, so I feel the pain of having to find purpose and satisfaction without a job. I miss working, though I would have preferred to be able to work less and still make a living lol.

I find that diversifying my interests helps. I have a lot of down time where being productive isn’t possible (you know, chores and such), so I’ve had to find multiple things to do while recovering from activity. But you can only play so many games, read so many books, do so many crosswords, etc.

Meditation is a big plus. Learning how to be in stillness is a powerful tool.

Picking up skills is a huge benefit. Doesn’t have to be anything big. Just watching some videos and reading up on something like sketching can fill weeks of down time, and then you either learn a new skill that’s useful, or improve an old skill (I used to be pretty decent, but years of working and not drawing had atrophied my sketch skill). Could be anything like that with a low investment in supplies.

If you are capable of it, pick up some coding. Doesn’t have to be enough to do anything, but you’ll have a better understanding of things.

Keep your brain active is what I’m getting at. There’s zero pressure to be good at anything you try, it’s all about the process, the exercise of your mind to keep the boredom and ennui at bay.

southsamurai , 4 days ago

Looks great, but how about some love for that corn over there looking all sexy and whispering sweet things until you eat it?

southsamurai , 4 days ago

Gods, I hate those. I won’t watch anything that does it

southsamurai , 5 days ago

Hail satan

southsamurai , 5 days ago

Ngl, I still have the fire truck I got when I was five.

Only reason I didn’t become a fireman was getting convinced I could do stuff in nursing that I was better at and help more people than I would as a mediocre fireman.

I dunno if it was true or not, but it ended up relatively good overall, so I ain’t mad.

But shit, I got to ride in the trucks a few times anyway. My uncle was a volunteer fireman in the next town over, so as a kid I got rides when things were slow. Even went a few times as an adult on actual calls, though that wasn’t supposed to happen lol.

southsamurai , 5 days ago

You windowlicker!

!is the title of a track of his that I like, not a dis!<

southsamurai , 5 days ago (edited 5 days ago)

Heck yeah. Mind you, I respect other people’s contact preferences and don’t push a hug on anyone. Made that mistake some in my younger days, but realized it was shitty behavior eventually.

But I hug the hell out of anyone I care about enough to call friend or family. I’m a hugger, that’s just how I am.

I got lucky tbh. My dad wasn’t particularly huggy, but he always welcomed us kids when we hugged him. And I had one uncle that was never a hugger, and would avoid them when he could. But otherwise, the men in my life growing up were comfortable with demonstrative affection. Hugs, putting an arm around you, pats on the back, gentle pats on the head, just those little touches that say “I love you” in a way that doesn’t need words because they’re done without thinking, they just reach out and that connection happens.

Oh! And kisses on the top of the head. Big thing on my mom’s side for the men to kiss kids on the top of the head.

My dad was more of the sort to put an arm around you when you sat beside him, but he knew the power of a hug when someone is upset and never hesitated to do so, despite not really liking hugs much. And he was definitely a patter lol. Pats on the head, on the back, just affection by touch.

So, by the time I was a teenager, I was without much of a barrier to hugs. Never got indoctrinated with the stiffness and emotional distance that comes with that barrier. My friend group in high school, we hugged every damn day, usually multiple times a day. We’d meet in the library of a morning and as each of us rolles in, a round of hugs would happen. We’d freely express love for each other verbally too. And not even in the forced jocular “love ya bro” way that started being more acceptable back then. But full on “I love you, I’ll see you tomorrow” type goodbyes.

Shit, some of us would hug our teachers, when they’d let us. Obviously, most of them would not allow it, but there were a couple that didn’t mind. Gods! The principal! Old guy, retired at the end of my senior year. Handing out diplomas at graduation, and shaking hands. Every one of our group just took the diploma and hugged the guy. He was shocked by it, but he knew how we were, and ended up just smiling for the rest of the ceremony. After the first few of us did it, other students not in our group did it too. He was a superb principal, and was sorely missed.

Imo, there is nothing that builds and maintains healthy relationships like regular hugging.

This is already long, but you mentioned other forms of contact. Snuggling depends on the person, but I gladly snuggle with friends if they’re down for it. Can’t play wrestle what with my age and bad back, but used to.

And I’m down with cheek kisses with friends too. Hell, I don’t even object to non sexual lip kisses in theory, though it isn’t a thing that happens very often. Only times it ever happened with male friends was in moments of distraction when saying goodbyes in a group that included spouses lol.

southsamurai , 6 days ago

Well, they replace nicotine intake.

You get a measured, stable dose over time. In theory, once you get used to that, you step down the dosage until it’s low enough that you can quit without the worst withdrawal experiences.

Now, you have to be ready to quit, you have to be willing to get past the habitual and psychological side of smoking, and you have to accept that there will be some withdrawal symptoms along the way. But they can and do work.

Me? When I quit with patches the first time I quit for an extended time, they worked fine. I was younger, hadn’t been smoking super long, and had things to keep me busy in a way I didn’t when I quit this most recent time. In between starting to smoke again and quitting this time, I tried patches multiple times without success because of the psychological, social, and habitual influences.

You get out of patches what you bring to the situation.

They can also be very useful for someone that is medically barred from smoking, but not from nicotine itself, or for short term use in most situations.

Side note: I still miss some parts of smoking. But I don’t miss addiction, or the physical effects of smoking and the effects of nicotine.

If you aren’t ready to quit smoking, patches are damn near as expensive, depending on where you live. Some places they’re more expensive than cheap tobacco and rolling your own. So you’re throwing money away for next to no real gain. You’re better off setting the money aside for when you’re ready to quit.

southsamurai , 6 days ago

A good gym, that’s how it will be to some extent. Now, the shitty chain gyms where you get the kind of assholes that would disrespect a beginner in the first place may not have any serious lifters or dedicated enthusiasts of other forms of exercise to step up, but it happens.

Shit, the gym I went to for most of my twenties, and into my thirties, anyone disrespecting a beginner would be out on their ear in a hot minute, and I’ve been to other gyms that were like that too. Gyms for serious lifting tend to be all about helping each other and that goes double for a noob.

It isn’t even something you think about after a while. You see someone struggling, you give support. Might be hyping them up, might be spotting, and it might be taking a new person and making sure they stay safe as they learn. Tbh, it’s my opinion that if you won’t do that, go set up a home gym and bugger off. Not everyone can do it, but if you aren’t willing to try to help a new lifter out, a gym isn’t really where you need to lift.

I just can’t imagine seeing someone doing their best to improve themselves and not taking a little bit of time to boost them. I know I got that kind of boost at a few points, and it really was special to me. You pass that kind of thing on and it helps everyone.

southsamurai , 7 days ago

See, that’s the kind of idiot that makes gun ownership look bad.

They’re tools, not a fetish item. You start being an idiot and trying to make a “state rifle” at all, and you undermine every attempt to actually maintain the right to defense via firearms.

southsamurai , 6 days ago

Ffs dude, you are bonkers

southsamurai , 7 days ago

Plenty. Music and books in particular. I’m usually behind on making legit buys, but I treat piracy partially like a library where I can try before I buy.

That isn’t saying I buy everything I pirate, I don’t. But if I like it enough to keep the files, I’ll wait until I find a good sale and eventually get a legit copy in some format.

I also do it in reverse, where I’ll buy something, but pirate a digital copy when it’s more convenient. That’s typically for paper books and music on vinyl. Sometimes I’ll even pirate a copy of a CD if I’m not up to dealing with the ripping (disability means I don’t always have stamina for everything, so stuff like ripping a cd is low priority).

southsamurai , 7 days ago

I very much enjoyed enterprise at the time, despite the horrible theme song and the flaws in writing that spotted most episodes.

Now, part of that is being a huge Bakula fan. I love the way he throws himself into roles. I think though, had there been another age actor in the role I still would have enjoyed the show.

It wasn’t great Trek. Probably the weakest of the older series, depending on tastes and criteria. Certainly wasn’t up to TNG, TOS, or DS 9. I’d put it on par with Voyager, though it was both bad and good in different ways, with the lack of attention being paid to established Vulcan history in Enterprise tipping the scales to it being lesser than Voyager.

But I really liked that they tried to go back to the whole “wagon train in space” vibe. And the cast was great. Can’t hold the iffy writing against the cast, and there were some great moments where the actors kept things from being worse just by virtue of how they carried their characters.

I don’t rewatch any of the series as a binge though, so my opinion might change when the flaws are showing up in rapid succession compared to the original pace of watching week by week and over time. I know binge watching made me almost hate shows I used to like a good bit (like Bones as an example).

I can’t compare anything to the newer shows since I’ve kinda stopped watching much in the way of “tv” the last few years, so I haven’t caught any of the stuff that has been done in the last decade. Could be that one of the new shows would be worse, in comparison to the earlier shows, I dunno. Doesn’t help that I despise the reboot movies, and the fact e that they happened kinda soured me on new Trek overall. The folks running things don’t seem to be interested in the kind of shows that made me enjoy Trek in the first place, but that’s second hand impression from seeing what people say online

southsamurai , 8 days ago

Because they’re effective synonyms in common usage. All kinds of jargon get used outside of the original field.

In general, we all learn words piecemeal. You have to encounter a word to know it exists. The more specific and/or niche a word is, the less likely you are to run into it. Even after you do, you still have to find a definition. If that definition is simplified, or doesn’t come with links to more information than a solid definition, that’s what the person knows, and they can’t know any other usage until and unless they encounter that too.

Now, that ignores the raw fact that language shifts as long as it is being spoken. Dictionaries follow language changes, and aren’t really good at preventing shifts because they only contain partial information.

Symbiosis isn’t going to have a full explanation of everything it entails in a general dictionary (though it might in field specific ones the way things like medical terminology have). It’ll have a basic definition and some variants. If you want explant, you go to encyclopedias for basics, then to field specific texts/instructions if you want more depth.

As you anyway already said in a fairly compact comment, symbiosis contains within its definition other words. And you even gave a simplified definition of those. Now, anyone finding those words through this post will know that there are multiple “types” of symbiosis. But it is never the default to know things.

Ignorance is the default. We’re born ignorant of almost everything. We die less ignorant than we started, though exactly how much less varies.

That’s the reason people use the word in the colloquial sense; that’s all they’ve encountered. As long as you don’t act like a dick about it, most people will appreciate the kind of simple expansion you gave in your comments, and you can help people expand their knowledge. But you gotta remember that your pet peeves are meaningless to anyone else, just like theirs are to you. Come at it from friendly, kind frame of mind, and it’ll work out best.

southsamurai , 7 days ago

Lmao. Don’t you threaten me with a good time! I will verbiage allll over your semantics.

southsamurai , 8 days ago

Really?

southsamurai , 12 days ago

It’s dumb as fuck.

Hate it if we want (and I have major problems with how young phones and similar devices become glued to kids), but they’re here to stay. They’re a part of modern life, and trying to completely ban them is the most idiotic waste of time and resources possible.

You gotta find a way to limit use in a consistent and evenly applied way so that parents and school staff are all on the same page. Then you just keep enforcing the rules amd explaining them over and over. Eventually, it becomes a manageable annoyance instead of the chaos it currently is

southsamurai , 13 days ago

You said exactly why in your post: “…our biological design…”

There’s no such thing. We evolved. That means we’re a mix of traits passed along over time by individuals that managed to live long enough to breed.

That’s it. That’s the whole explanation for any question about “why don’t humans do x thing as part of our biology?”

Any given trait is all about lasting long enough to make babies. Once that occurs, all that’s left is a general proclivity to ensuring the babies survive long enough to do the same. Regrowing teeth isn’t part of that. It’s a niche trait that isn’t as useful as you’d think for humans. We don’t need to gnaw at things, we don’t need to crack bones with our mouths, nothing that would make a third set of teeth an advantage, or different teeth an advantage.

Teeth are not easily breakable. We actually can crack bone with our jaws and the teeth will usually survive if the bone isn’t too thick; we just have better tools for that because way back when, the proto-humans that used tools had more babies that survived to make more babies. You have to abuse and/or neglect your teeth to break them for the vast majority. There are congenital issues where that isn’t the case, but we’ve also bred ourselves into a social species that takes care of each other, so we aren’t limited to a harsh, primitive survival level of things.

I really don’t get why people think of teeth as fragile. They’re incredibly durable for what we need them for, and require only minimal care to last well beyond breeding age. Even if you factor in modern diets being bad for teeth, regular care for them (brushing and flossing) can stave off those effects for decades. Go search up some of the dental research on old human bodies from archaeological sites. People survived very well with just one set of adult teeth.

And, some humans do have extras that can come in later in life, though it’s very rare and comes with drawbacks (according to the last lady I dated that was an anthropologist anyway). Supposedly, having the extras actually weakens the regular adult teeth and makes them more prone to damage. There’s always a tradeoff in things like this.

southsamurai , 12 days ago

Well, if you make it to breeding age, and successfully do so, then it really doesn’t matter from a species perspective. If you don’t, then whatever traits led to the grinding are weeded out, so that’s also irrelevant to the species in a different way. Also, there are treatments to help with bruxism. It isn’t something that can’t at least be managed to reduce the speed of damage.

southsamurai , 13 days ago

Chocolate.

southsamurai , 14 days ago

Eh, I’ve tried all of them at least once.

For my money, shredded memory foam is the best. It isn’t perfect, but I’ve had the best balance between comfort, durability, ease of cleaning, and cost.

Buckwheat was good at support, and stayed fairly cool, but the breakdown and difficulty of cleaning made it a problem. It just doesn’t last as well. Only thing that was worse in that regard was feathers. Feathers get ruined faster than anything else I tried.

Pillow cases, I’m a cotton fan. High thread count cotton has the right balance of softness vs smoothness. Too soft, and you end up with bunching and wrinkles as you move. Too smooth, and you end up with your head moving too easy but your hair not moving well.

Polyfill sucks for everything except ease of cleaning.

Cotton batting is about the same as polyfill, but not as easy to clean.

Solid foam is just begging to sweat heavy, and damn near impossible to clean well. Plus the durability is iffy.

Pillow cases, actual linen isn’t bad, but tends not to be as comfy as cotton. Silk is way too smooth. Satin is just uncomfortable. Synthetics tend to run hot, even though they feel nice. Knit cotton feels the best, but damn does it fall into poor condition fast.

southsamurai , 13 days ago

Depends on what you mean by last.

I still have one feather pillow from about ten years ago. It’s still a pillow, but it’s gotten lumpy, less full, and it’s really only still around because of a strange nostalgia. It got to the point where it slept poorly at about a year. To be fair, it wasn’t the “best” possible.

Buckwheat, I got a little longer before it lost enough filling to break down that it wasn’t viable, about two years before I was just done with it being progressively flatter.

southsamurai , 13 days ago

That’s true, but I found that just adding wasn’t great. You still have the smaller particles in there, which changes both comfort levels (not by much tbh) and what you might call aroma. It gets a kind of musty smell as it deteriorates, which doesn’t totally go away if you filter out the smaller stuff

southsamurai , 15 days ago

Fuck rcs until Google opens it up.

southsamurai , 14 days ago

Google owns Rcs. Nobody else is capable of doing what they’re doing with it, and they don’t let anyone else play.

No third party apps, no way to choose other implementations.

Nobody really gives a fuck about the standard itself being “open” if there’s no ability for an end user to have any choice is the matter. It’s Google or GTFO.

southsamurai , 15 days ago

Most of the time, lemmy.

Obviously, the difficulty with very niche communities not being useful here can be annoying.

And, being real, the lack of robust moderation tools makes moderating a pain in the ass.

But, overall, I find the people on lemmy less prone to bad behavior, and the discussions more rewarding. That makes up for the underlying missing functional things worth it.

Reddit, even before they went full asshole as a company, had the major problem of being big. Humans are assholes for the most part. The more people you have, and the lower the bar for entry, the more of those assholes are going to be a problem.

Lemmy has assholes too. The usual knee jerk reactionaries, trolls, and that sort of thing. But the very minor extra effort of having to pick an instance reduces how many of the brain dead assholes will put in the effort. The assholes are a better quality of asshole lol.

But damn, there were some long established communities on reddit that simply can’t be reproduced here because you can’t make old communities. There are a ton of subs that had been around since subs came around. You can’t duplicate that kind of organic growth. There’s very few C/s on lemmy that have a real sense of community yet. I think it’ll happen, but it hasn’t had time for a lot of real cultures to spring up the way reddit had.

I miss the hell out of those long established neighborhoods.

southsamurai , 16 days ago

For me, it was an inability to only finger strings properly, even after about six months of practice. My hands, even back in my teens, were huge. That includes big fingers (size 14 ring at the time)

Since I didn’t have the freedom to try other instruments in a useful way, I just decided I had better things to do with my time than fuck around making dissonant sounds on a guitar.

But, before you give up entirely, maybe try learning a simple song all the way. That was what actually made my decision. I knew what it was supposed to sound like, knew where my fingers were vs how the strings were supposed to be used, and knew I’d never make the music that drove me to want to try in the first place.

If you can manage to learn one song and play it to the point you can tell what you’re playing, I say keep going. From that point, it’s a matter of practice and figuring out what lessons work for you.

But it is a learning curve that kills a lot of potential players of any instruments. I hang with an old high school friend that fronts a band. I’ve had this conversation with him (and he reached the same conclusion I did after teaching me a little on both tenor and bass guitar, that I might so something, but it wouldn’t be what I wanted) about getting past that wall.

He said that in person lessons are the best way to get past the initial “what the fuck is going on” stage where nothing seems to work. A lot of people pick up a book, or watch videos and try to get going. But those methods don’t work for everyone. So you kinda need someone that can give active feedback on all the little things that go into learning your first song.

And that’s what he says the goal should be; you pick a simple song, learn it, and then improve on it. Takes a few weeks for a lot of people to get something like amazing grace or Mary had a little lamb down to the point that it sounds right. But you have to start simple because you’ve got to get your hands used to the job. It can take a thousand plus repetitions of a given action to commit it to memory in a way it becomes fluid and natural (which is a thing in martial arts, btw, you have drill the hell out of a technique before you can spar with it).

But it’s also okay to give up. It’s your time, your energy. If you’ve discovered that the return on that isn’t fast enough to give you what you want/need, why waste part of your life banging against the wall? Sometimes a learning curve isn’t worth climbing.

southsamurai , 16 days ago

Nothing wrong with that :)

southsamurai , 17 days ago

Cover your ass, then follow orders. The job is, whether anyone likes it or not, to do what a supervisor tells you. If the supervisor is an idiot like yours, that doesn’t change. Do the job, cover your ass, and hope for the best.

southsamurai , 17 days ago

If you’ve covered your ass already, that’s pointless. Hell, if you’ve already got a record of his orders vs your recommendation, it’s more trouble than its worth.

If you don’t, then that’s perfect.

southsamurai , 17 days ago

Votes mean as much as the shit I just took.

southsamurai , 17 days ago

Your last sentence is contradictory with the meaning of “beating a dead horse” with the usage of the phrase I’m aware of.

To beat a dead horse isn to waste effort at an impossible or pointless goal.

When I used the phrase, it was with the second meaning in mind, but the first partially applies if op wanted anyone to do anything about the situation because the dev team isn’t exactly open to some kind of takeover. The most that could realistically happen is that everyone leave lemmy entirely. Except for the tankies, obviously, why would they leave?

Since anyone that has spent enough time on lemmy to be called a regular user has run across the whole issue at least once, that means that if OP was wanting to raise awareness, the post was also pointless in that regard because it’s kinda impossible to raise awareness past common knowledge and achieve anything useful.

Now, maybe our usage of the phrase “beating a dead horse” isn’t the same. Language is funny like that. Maybe you just disagree that the post has no point, or that the point it does have might achieve something useful. That’s cool, no worries, disagreements like that are healthy and fun.

I will say that in the first part of your comment, you actually echoed the point that I made; it is trivial to minimize/block instances in one way or another, including defederation. Defederation is an instance decision, not a personal one. But it is also a personal decision which instance/s we use to interact with the fediverse. There are instances that do not federate with lemmy.ml, and there’s a ton that don’t with lemmygrad.

So, based on that, I would even argue that, since we have the freedom to choose our instance (with the consent of the host of the instance of course), trying to get an instance that doesn’t already defederate from lemmy.ml to do so approaches pointless since all of the major instances have been around for a while now, and have already taken part in that debate. Maybe you could change someone’s mind with yet another rehash of the same debate, it does happen. But, again, all the major instances have had this debate multiple times, and the hosts don’t seem open to changing just because someone brings it up again.

New instances? Absolutely have to decide if they want to federate with any of the “iffy” instances. And every user has to decide if they’d rather stick with a given instance that doesn’t match their preferences regarding federation. But, uh, the instance this was posted on isn’t new. The user that posted it isn’t exactly new either. So the fact that they haven’t already made a choice, but instead decided to beat a dead horse (again, using the “pointless” rather than “impossible” usage of the phrase) seems a bit meh.

southsamurai , 16 days ago

True, it was a very healthy bm ;)

southsamurai , 16 days ago

Fwiw (our disagreement aside), moderating a community anywhere online can be a very rewarding, and very thankless job. And it really can be a thing that feels like a job if the community is active enough.

But I would still recommend at least trying it for a few months to see if whatever subject matter you make it around draws users. That’s when you get a real feel for moderation, and have the best chance at helping the overall fediverse work well.

I also think that moderating a big community would change your mind at least partially regarding vote numbers as a measure of anything significant. There’s behind the curtain stuff that usually gives a better indication of how a given post/subject is being received by the individual community. It depends on the tools available, and lemmy is a wee bit scant on tools to help moderators gain understanding of the population of their C/; but it’s still eye opening.

The biggest thing I think you’d notice in comparing people interacting with a given post is that most votes happen because of a title. People scroll past, see a title, and vote based on that. And that’s the ones that bother to vote. A lot of people don’t. They’ll click a link, maybe open that post and read comments, but just not care enough to do anything else at all. Back on reddit, that was a majority of posts, and I know it was the case on other forums back in the day.

So, yeah, disagreement about the numbers in this case aside, if you’re this interested in how a vote using forum works, moderating your own would be a very cool experience on top of diversifying the instance/community balance.

southsamurai , 16 days ago

I don’t have access to traffic data to make a good argument on this specific post. Without the ability to compare total interactions vs votes, as well as the ratio of up vs down, it’s a matter of general principle in my opinion.

It is also my opinion, having moderated off and on since the nineties on various types of forums that pretty much any post is ignored by a majority of users that come across it. Voting really only shows which people are willing to use the effort to hit a button. If a majority of users don’t engage, I think that it is indeed a direct representation of how many people care. Again, I can’t see those numbers, so it’s kind of a moot point to make at all, but I suspect this post is like most posts anywhere.

But I still maintain that votes are meaningless across the board because they’re a horrible metric for anything at all, especially when they’re the only metric available.

Edit: again, fwiw, in the time it took me to type that up, the number of positive votes went down by 3. And, iirc, at the point where this tangent about the value of votes started, or was over 400, which is still meaningless, but taken in isolation would point to a general trend where there’s significant disagreement with whatever it is about the post drawing votes.