Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
User engagement is important, yes, but since we do not have ad targets here, I think most people are okay with less content as the cost of the overall quality being higher. At least that is my hope.
Maybe one free award you can give out a month. The award doesn’t do anything. Just a token someone keeps tallied on their account forever.
As a giver of that award I would be a lot more picky about handing it out than an upvote since I only get one a month and can’t even buy anymore to give if I wanted. No one would hand that out for a generic, cliché comment or a pun thread. (Unless you REALLY like puns)
Ideally if you see someone with multiple awards you know they are someone who contributes hopefully quality content.
I guess someone could bot themselves a bunch of awards… but what can you do?.