Just a little rant. When I first visited Lemmy Sites a couple of months ago it felt empty. Besides the really mainstream community pretty much everything else just felt empty.
Meanwhile though traffic has increased a lot and I feel well entertained by the traffic in c/hfy c/noncredibledefence c/keepwriting c/worldbuilding and so on. It is certainly less than Reddit but often quality is substancially higher and is “enough” to keep me entertained.
Also I like that you can actually post something without running into a bazillion deletes, bans and moderator shitshat because your post was two words to short, not NCD enough and so on.
Sure, the C64 community on Lemmy is laughable. So is the ARMA community. I still use REddit for that. Also I often check up stuff on r/hfy and r/NCD but since one week I have been prefering Lemmy for that.
Also my longer posts don’t get eaten up any more. God, three weeks ago most posts with 3k an more just got lost without feed back. Nowadays I have even manges posts around 20k without breaking them up. Though the editor is still lacking for longer posts. On Reddit I can copy-paste pretty much anything from Libreoffice into Reddits Editor (which is also pretty lacking but differently lacking). On Lemmy I have to run most text through a little perl script to get them even using correct line breaks perl -pe ‘s/\n/\n\n/’ and different sizes for Headlines are much to few to select from.
Not perfect, not even very good but definitely promising.
I’ve only seen one thread which felt completely like Reddit. The community was for the alien comics, and the comics were taking a dig at imperial units vs metric units. Nothing wrong with that, it was all in good fun and jest.
The comments though were toxic frankly. If you said you liked both systems and provided reasons, you were buried in downvotes. If you discussed some upsides of the imperial system, you were ridiculed to be a child. Even if you were an engineer and you provided a lengthy explanation, it was met with derision. And then there were all the logically inconsistent arguments and the notion that Americans were simultaneously idiots but also apparently complete geniuses with how complex they made the imperial system out to be.
I’m thankful it was just the one thread. All of the politics threads I’ve viewed have been more civil and open to discussion (and I consume a fair bit of political news). Lemmy, until that thread, felt like a place where nuanced opinions and discussions were encouraged and upvoted. I hope it’s just a one off.
I can imagine people who would get mad about imperial units are mad because that system already has had many people arguing for it. That’s how it still persists, despite causing problems. The fact is that metric is definitely more logical but that isn’t even its true strength. Its strength is in universal adoption, like all standards.
I’m guessing from experience that most people on lemmy are more collectivist in nature. Most people here seem to be anti-apple, against big business, and pro Linux and other systems meant to empower the common person, the underdog.
I have noticed repeatedly that people who seem hellbent on being “objective” rub me the wrong way. Not because I am against objectivity, but because they come across as condescending and in support of an argument I’ve heard a million times and I fully reject. So yeah, I’m guessing people might have thought you were in favor of the imperial system and just wanted to “seem” like you were being fair. /shrug
Of course the rebuttal you have could include something like “I’m just trying to provide information and encourage people to think for themselves”. Sure, you might totally be doing that. But for people who already know what you’re talking about, they might think you’re being disingenuous. On reddit I felt like that constantly. So far I luckily don’t feel that much here. I hope that sort of feeling stays on reddit as it really sucks.
I think the metric argument can be a logical discussion, but it can also devolve into a cultural argument, which is what I think has happened here. I’m obviously biased towards the imperial system since I grew up with it, but not so much to call it superior by any means. I think there’s places where it adds value is all.
I guess I could’ve said something about still liking the metric system and thinking it was perfect for science, but it honestly didn’t cross my mind to be that explicit. Since Lemmy is generally more intellectual and not as simplistic, I didn’t think I needed to be.
Perhaps my real mistake here wasn’t recognizing just how passionate some people get about this haha
See this is what I like about Lemmy. People actually seem open to dialogue. I appreciate your response.
I grew up with the imperial system, I just hate that it feels uselessly different to most of the world. I care more about interoperability. “What is that in Celsius?” Is a question I hate asking myself. “What’s the next larger size wrench to a 3/8 inch?” Is another. It’s not a huge deal, if I had to work with wrenches every day I’d get used to it… it’s the idea that standards have one job imo: making shit easier. Reducing cognitive load and communication issues. So since imperial is globally unpopular, I wish we’d just kill it. I am fine with people using it in niche cases they feel it makes sense, I just don’t enjoy it being everywhere in the US, it often feels like a barrier.
Yes exactly!
And I see what you mean, and it is a good point. I don’t see it as an important distinction in my field, so long as people label their units. But I can imagine in just common communication worldwide, it must be a pain point.
If the US were going to change, I think we’d have to first accept that it’s going to be a long process. We’d need a generation or two to be fluent in both, and we make it a norm for everyone to provide both units in communication. That’ll get us enough people where for everyday use at least, we can just do metric. Industry would be more challenging to change, especially since so much equipment is designed for imperial.
Edit: Oh and I just wanted to say, I really appreciate your open mind and politeness when it comes to discussing difference of opinion.