I feel like it would be an interesting learning tool cuz I learn a ton on here and it gets me writing without anyone having to hold a gun to my head. I mean like even essay-length or at least essay-worthy treatments of things I respond to in longer-form, and even for the shorter-form stuff
You should probably speak to your heads of IT and safeguarding because there’s plenty of ways it could go wrong. You’d probably want to disable DMs for starters. The poor moderation tools might also be an issue.
I’d suggest you go with software designed with schools in mind as they’ll have worked through a lot of the potential Issues that could come up.
Ya but is there a truly dialectical-type platform/product that replicates this important aspect of forums like Lemmy?
One of the key reasons you’d use Lemmy over standard forum software is federation. That makes some of the rougher edges something you can live with. In a corporate or educational (eg university)setting you’d need to really assess if the pluses outweighed the minuses. If the users are going to be children you’d want it bolted down hard and I can’t see why you wouldn’t use a more conventional forum (where you have a lot more control over everything) or something tailored made for education.
But do they really allow for the dialectical UI/approach?
Lemmy is, at it’s core just light forum software, the only difference (other than it being bolted onto ActivityPub) is that it is lacking in features, some of which would be key to creating a safe online environment for school kids (in this case a full suite of moderation tools).
The dialectical format/facillitation is the most important part in my view. Like being able to interrogate and cross-examine everything and having lots of nesting levels is a profound thing
That is more a product of the user than the platform. If you want nested discussion you can get that from a range of forums.
I sort of agree but I also don’t think platforms like FB etc really lend well to the dialectical format for some reason. Like, I would never try to have a serious discussion there, not to mention all the niceties with Lemmy like markdown, links, nesting levels
Canvas