I think it’s great that so many people want to build and grow Lemmy, but why are we doing it by copying over Reddit content? It didn’t seem as bad when it was funny pics or memes or whatever, but now I’m seeing discussion threads, which doesn’t make sense to me.

I can kind of see it if a Reddit mod decides to move their forum from there to here, and wants to start with their existing content, but otherwise I’m not sure this is a good thing.

What do you guys think?

  • NoiseColor
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    872 years ago

    You have to jump-start communities. Copying is a simple way to do it.

    • CoderKat
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      162 years ago

      The importance of jump starting can’t be understated. Most people will go to the community that has content. If a community is empty, a lot of people won’t even start participating in it. Plenty of people who make posts want them to be discussed, so they’re only looking for active communities.

    • AFK BRB ChocolateOP
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      42 years ago

      I think I have a bit of a bias against trying to make Lemmy a copy of Reddit, but I also feel like it doesn’t make sense to copy old discussion threads. Someone asked a question on Reddit and got an answer. We don’t need that duplicated here, in my opinion.

      Again, i think a mod relocating their community is a different situation.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Although when I see such communities not having any replies to reddit share/RSS/bot on Lemmy communities`, work days or a week it starts to feel like that fire 🔥 isn’t starting.

      • lozunn
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        42 years ago

        Don’t forget that the real migration has not even started, assuming there is going to be one - one week to go for that to begin.

  • @[email protected]
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    412 years ago

    I’m personally archiving some of the great content from my community on Reddit because it meant so much to me, and to lose it would be a shame. I think it’s important for us to preserve the foundational content of our communities.

    • @[email protected]
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      102 years ago

      Curious what tooling you’re using. I think they all have the 1000 post limit but I at least found BDFRX easy to use to back up my sub’s 1000 most recent posts and am just looking to host that and link to it in a future community here on lemmy

      • @[email protected]
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        162 years ago

        I am PMing users on Reddit to ask permission to reshare their OC, and then manually posting here once I obtain it. It gives me the chance to give the posts a pass for typos and such, which is nice.

  • @whygohomie
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    2 years ago

    Reddit never produced any content. The users did.

    Users move. Content moves.

    • AFK BRB ChocolateOP
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      32 years ago

      If it was a user who posted content there and decided they’d rather have it here, that would make sense. But this appears to be bots scraping Reddit subs for content and copying big chunks here. I don’t know about you, but I’m not likely to respond to that kind of post. I don’t think it fosters discussion or helps us.

      • @L3s
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        2 years ago

        I’m doing it with communities that need a jump-start, and it seems to be sparking conversation in those posts. However, I’m not grabbing discussions, only links/title/description.

        https://github.com/daniel-lxs/BotIt this is the devs git for anyone else who wants to help jump-start communities.

        Edit: also trying not to spam, it checks top posts once an hour, and only will post one link an hour to each sub, and checks if the link was already posted to make sure it’s not duplicating.

  • Tugg
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    212 years ago

    There could be a few reasons.

    • They want to copy over their favorite content.
    • They want to try to attract more people to a community by bootstrapping content.
    • They are trying to artificially inflate their instance for nefarious reasons.

    Personally, I think adding some of your favorite Reddit posts is fine as long as you don’t blindly copy over everything from a subreddit. I have a couple communities that I brought over that I like, but without content, they mean nothing.

    • AFK BRB ChocolateOP
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      12 years ago

      I agree. What I was seeing looked like bots doing mass content, but I can’t be positive.

  • @[email protected]B
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    192 years ago

    I think it’s a great way to get things started. People coming to check things out and seeing content are more likely to stay and create their own content.

  • @[email protected]
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    182 years ago

    Lots of people like to collect things. When they move, they want to take their collections with them.

    • @assa123
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      22 years ago

      And there is so much knowledge deposited in reddit that it would be unwise to let its future on the hands of gold seekers. I wish we had more time for the backups, and that those that overwrote their posts and comments can share that lost info here.

    • croobat
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      12 years ago

      You are always right Steve

  • @ic33
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    162 years ago

    It’s a factor that supports getting to critical mass, but should be used in moderation.

    Reddit founders incessantly posted stuff from Digg and created fake conversation threads.

    • chiisana
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      52 years ago

      Most content driven platforms have the same problem and initial practice due to the chicken-and-egg problem. If you don’t have content, users not gonna come; if users aren’t there, they won’t be submitting content. So to kick start a community, you’d need a group of vocal users contributing a lot of content and interacting with them.

  • @RightHandOfIkaros
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    142 years ago

    I would imagine so that the information is not lost forever when many accounts get deleted or they nuke their comments and then delete their account.

  • Old Man Fire
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    112 years ago

    because it’s our content, not reddit’s.

    • @linearchaos
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      32 years ago

      This was even true before they even copied it out from Reddit.

  • NXL
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    72 years ago

    When googling information i usually end the search with “reddit” as Reddit makes it harder to view without signing in to the app i want to be able to google with the word lemmy instead so having the information here is helpful

    • Kwik
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      22 years ago

      @nxlemmy
      Only difference here is maybe some posts don’t originate on an instance with the word Lemmy in it. It could be kbin or feddit or beehaw, etc.

      We gotta find out whatever the best search term would be for the Fediverse.

      • zekiz
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        12 years ago

        But there probably is a instance with Lemmy in its name that has it indexed

  • @[email protected]
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    72 years ago

    Same reason I want more forums like Fedora Discussion, Ask Ubuntu, and Stack Overflow on the Fediverse. I like the Fediverse as a way to see information and have discussion on it. More good content, the better. Without good content, I would never have used Reddit in the first place.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 years ago

    I’m not loving the RSS/Reddit bot posts really, I’m personally blocking a lot of such lemmy-bots.

    I’m a fan of people sharing links and starting conversations or showing off an interesting/shiny thing with the communities themselves.

    To…maybe be not Reddit for a change. 🤔

    Then again I’m an elder Millennial and remember live journal and myspace.

    I mean I’m here weening off reddit as well.

    Could see the benefit of temporarily posting reddit moderator/pin posts or such. Emphasis on temporary.

    But the daily influx of such stuff when I attempt to view All as New is certainly a journey.

    • AFK BRB ChocolateOP
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      12 years ago

      I’m with you. There are certain kinds of things I could see as being a benefit here. Like a recent news item upvoted there and posted in a news community here makes sense - it’s a good seed post that people here can comment on. But I’m seeing discussion threads copied that I doubt many people are going to comment on here. Reams of discussion posts that have no activity are doing nothing to help grow Lemmy.