Hello everyone,
There has been a lot of new traffic to Lemmy in the past few weeks due to the turmoil at Reddit. A lot of you may be Reddit refugees, like I am, and are missing their old favorite subs right about now.
I think it’s more important than ever for regular users to step up and take an active role in rebuilding their communities, and I wasn’t sure that things would ever get going unless somebody stepped up to the plate and made the effort, and I didn’t want to wait around for someone else to take the initiative when I already had a strong desire to see this sort of content brought over to Lemmy.
Now that the first step has been taken, I’m inviting others who might be interested in building or managing this community to join me in making this the best version of asksciencefiction possible.
I have never been affiliated with /r/asksciencefiction or even been a moderator at reddit before. Preferably, I would like to hand off ownership of this community to somebody who has a strong desire to build and grow the community and enforce the rules. If that sounds like something you are interested in, please don’t hesitate to send me a private message.
Thank you!
Hello there!
I’m actually really happy that this community got some attention from the mods at /r/asksciencefiction. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really want to be involved in the moderating process, and I figured somebody with a lot more drive than me would step in and create the framework for the community and run with it there. When that didn’t happen during the massive growth spike, I figured I could be the driving force behind creating the community if nothing else. I’m a lot better at asking and answering questions than I am at creating and enforcing rules.
Interestingly enough, I tried to copy the rules from the subreddit, but it was dark at the time that I made this community, so I had to rely on wayback machine to even see the subreddit page, but I still couldn’t get the accordion thing to show the actual rules from the latest accessible version. I actually went really far back in time to pre-reddit site redesigns and saw much older versions of the posted rules, plus a glimpse at how the rules had evolved over time. The origins of the subreddit were surprisingly hands-off, but as the community grew larger and larger, the need for more concrete structure arose.
If you’d like to keep me in the loop about the plans for the future of the subreddit, I would be more than happy to transition ownership of this community to the current moderation team of the subreddit who obviously work extremely hard at making it a fun place for everyone to enjoy. Feel free to PM me any time.
In re: the rules, they’ve evolved over time. The general trend over the last couple of years, starting even before I came on board, was towards increased accuracy. When I first came on board the rule was that you could give a “wrong” answer in-character if you flagged it as such, but so many people failed to do so that they just sort of gave up on it. Too many people were, for lack of a more diplomatic term, choosing to roleplay idiots who didn’t know what was going on in their own backyards.
As far as the future, we’re mostly eyeballing it. On the 10th we’re going to reopen, with the intention of having a week of standard operation alongside a poll to determine the next move. If the users opt for another blackout, then blackout we shall. Otherwise, we resume operations and open the discussion to other protest actions. The discord seems to be the primary “backup” at this point. We’re still sorting out how far we’re looking to spread out from Reddit, and it’s unclear if there will be much demand for a Lemmy instance if things go the way they’re currently going.