cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5110168

As a moderator of a Lemmy instance, you currently have two options to take: pushing users first to your local content or content from all instances you federate with. These options come with the costs seen in the picture. The moderator of another instance has the same choice. However, in this scenario, they will both always switch to promoting the local-feed. I don’t want to say its wrong - it’s just the most sensible way to act on Lemmy currently. However, if everybody does it, it is bad for the overall discussion quality of the Threadiverse.

Its a classical prisoner’s dilemma from game theory, which sometimes happen in society, for example with supply shortage during lockdowns. A way to solve it is by making action B more positive and option A more negative. This would lead to more moderators choosing Action B over A.

Mastodon solved this with an Explore-Feed, which consolidates the Local- and All-Feed. I think this could also be a solution for Lemmy. It would result in less engagement decrease AND an overall positive effect on discussion quality.

Additionally, a general acknowledgement that instance protectionism is a problem and should be avoided could help to make A more negative. In other words: increasing the pressure by the community. This would put a negative social effect on option A. So: start talking about it with your moderators.

Do you think these two measure would do (additionally to more powerful moderation tools, which would only enable a working explore-feed in the first place)? Is this a problem on other services on the Fediverse too (at least Mastodon seems to have handled it quite well)?

  • @TropicalDingdong
    5•1 year ago

    I’m honestly on the side of “This is fediverse 1.0” right now. Its obvious to me that there are some fundamental issues with the design of both activity hub and lemmy that aren’t clearly fixable in the current version of things. I also think that its ‘somewhat’ fine. I think of this as an opportunity to find those pinch points and hot spots, patch and glue in fixes, and then when its time for activity hub “2.0” or whatever, we can resolve them at a design level. Fixing the issues around discovery, toxic engagement, de-federation; they are tough issues to solve for and its clear that to some extent, the design of the system is to blame. However, its not worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. We should stick with the current system for as long as it take before it becomes very uncomfortable, mainly to continue to find issues and blemmishes. This will heavily inform “the next big thing” that comes from the fediverse.

    Basically, do nothing other than have discussions like these. Collect the notes, have informed conversations, and maybe experiment a bit on fixes. But don’t worry about getting it all perfect and right. Just try. We can incorporate the good ideas into a new version down the line.