Welcome everyone to our new Melbourne-flavoured slice of the internet! I am RustyRaven one of the moderators of this community (AKA BrightFadedDog). I am working to develop some community guidelines so we can make sure that the community stays a productive and welcoming place, and would like to hear what you want. What would you like the group to focus on? Do you like to dip into the group for a quick update on the latest local news and carrot man sightings, or do you want to spend time with deeper ongoing discussions? Would you prefer to keep the posts strictly to things concerning Melbourne, or would you prefer to be able to be able to get a local perspective on wider issues? Suggestions for the best way to arrange posts are also welcome – particularly if we should separate some areas of discussion into separate regular or ongoing posts. We could for example have a post for restaurant recommendations or activity suggestions.
I’d also like to know whether you would value having a wiki or other reference source connected to the community.
Feel free to add any ideas, suggestions or things to aim for.

  • 🇦🇺BakuEnglish
    10•1 year ago

    I’d really like to see the culture outside of the DT develop nicer compared to the sub. I might get dovoted into oblivion for saying this, but everytime I dared to step foot out of the DT, it felt like stepping into a toxic hell hole. I know that’s not always something mod can influence/control, since intonation can be just as important for the vibe as what’s actually being said. Also, there seemed to be some resident bridge trolls that would downvoted literally everything initially. Even the most popular and upvoted posts were initially downvoted. That can be discouraging for newbies to see their post being downvoted in droves, even if the score does pop back up later on.

    I also think that reposts shouldn’t be gone after as hard as they were. I mean, I get it with things like sunset posts and major events (earthquakes, etc), but to be honest, people asking for advice on what suburb to move to is just half the point of a forum such as this. You can go off as much as you want at the people that were too lazy to do the most basic of searches, but two thoughts on that: firstly, it’s a bit of confirmation bias. The people who did search before posting no longer need to post because their question was answered in previous posts, even if you go hard out and completely ban anybody who doesn’t search before posting, that still won’t fix it. And secondly: if absolutely nobody ever reposted anything, the sub would probably be empty and boring. Plus, some people that do read posts will think their situation is somehow unique or different. The last post may be asking whether Fitzroy is a good place to move to as a family with two kids and two incomes, but then the other person doesn’t feel confident in that answer because they have four kids, not two.

    Again, this isn’t necessarily something the mods can change since it’s often the community itself being a bit toxic, but I think if that’s the sort of community the mods try to build and foster, and they lead by example, it could work out really well

    • @[email protected]English
      4•1 year ago

      I also think that reposts shouldn’t be gone after as hard as they were. I mean, I get it with things like sunset posts and major events (earthquakes, etc), but to be honest, people asking for advice on what suburb to move to is just half the point of a forum such as this.

      Honestly whenever I needed to search something on Google and Reddit was one of the first options usually it was a reposted question. So I’m not so much against the same question because also if you ask “where’s the best bruger joint” and then seven years later someone asks the same question, some of those businesses are probably gone. So yeah, I think some reposts can be annoying (i.e. earthquakes, helicopters, sunsets, etc.) but there are times where it’s not so bad.

      • Rusty Raven OPMEnglish
        5•1 year ago

        Normal conversations tend to cover the same ground over and over. If people are jumping in to join the discussion it is probably a good indication it is acceptable. I would tend to lean towards the idea that if there is an active post about a topic people should be directed to that to continue the conversation, but if the last post has died down then starting a new one seems reasonable.

        One of my concerns is that longer-term conversations can tend to get lost amoung new posts. Sometimes good discussions on the internet can take place over weeks or even years, if they don’t get lost in the flow of new posts.

    • Rusty Raven OPMEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      I hope we have at least a bit of a honeymoon period here without the toxic people. My personal suspicion is that a lot of the people who are negative prefer the easy route of taking pot-shots at what everyone else has created, and will stay away until there is something more substantial here to come and denigrate. Hopefully we will have built a more resilient community, based on the culture in the DT - I think it’s pretty obvious that it is largely DT regulars that are here now, so there is no reason the nice vibe can’t extend to the whole community.

      It’s why I want to start discussing this sort of thing now though, I have no idea if/when problems are going to start cropping up, and want to have some sort of plan in place first as to how to deal with it.