Hey folks -
The seemingly never-ending flood of Musk/Twitter news and commentary is getting to some of our users (and some of the mods, too), so we’ve decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter.
This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we’re including news about Musk acting the fool as related to any of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring). News about those companies that don’t involve Elon can be posted outside this thread.
I agree with others that the concept of “mega threads” are fundamentally broken and not something I’m interested in carrying over from Reddit.
This is a place for discussion where users vote to decide what rises or stays obscure. Let the system work how it is designed. If there are too many posts about a particular topic, it’s either extremely relevant at the time or there are other moderation rules that could be considered to make sure low-effort posts are not dominating more substantial posts.
I agree. Even when the megathread included a list of posts relevant to a topic, whatever nuance was there gets lost in the grand comment thread. We really need a tagging and filtering system so that users can opt out of topics.
That way, it’s not incumbent on mods to make a Megathread, or make a judgement call on whether there are too many posts on any one topic.
Tagging. Flair. Hashtags. Some kind of meta information.
Even in reddit posts can have flair. Lemmy have come to the edge of not having a filtering system, and need one asap. community specific tags or lemmy-wide tags or organic loose tagging, something is needed.
Here’s the issue for this feature : https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/317
It doesn’t exist yet.
Tags with mods having tag powers feels like the best option long term. Any sorting system can be applied without worrying about compatibility.
No one is going to post news/articles here and then discuss them as they would in a regular post. It won’t get bumped up on the subscribed page if something interesting happens. Most of the comments here are going be about the megathread itself.
So this is effectively banning all the discussion concerning all of his companies. Which might be something you want to do, every community can decide for itself what kind of stuff they want to forbid after all. But I feel like it should be said directly, not via making a catch-all megathread.
Great, a megathread, let’s bring over one of the worst parts of Reddit and moderation 😒
I’m sorry if it’s frustrating to you to have megathreads like this. I’m not enthused about the extra effort in redirecting posts to the Megathread, either, but I’m not aware of a better way to handle topics that are flooding a community other than gathering them up in a thread like this. It annoys users (and mods) when dozens of articles about the same topic are dominating a community, so we’d like to do something to alleviate that when possible. I’ve seen similar concepts used in a number of different places (old-school forums, reddit alternatives like Tildes) because, as far as I’ve seen, there’s not a better alternative for wrangling topics that might otherwise clutter the feed.
If you have any ideas about better ways to handle this type of thing in the future, I’d love to hear them (and I genuinely mean that - I think we’re open to suggestions if a better way exists).
Seems to me that these threads keep coming up and rising up because people want to talk about them.
The better solution reddit had was to let posts be sorted by tags so that people who don’t want to see a certain topic can turn it off, rather than that decision being made for everyone else.
Unfortunately tags are not currently a Lemmy feature, so this isn’t an option
So despite the fact that a ton of current tech news revolves around Elon musk and his companies, the solution is to bury any and all discussion about him in a megathread we all know people will never read or comment on?
News about the companies that don’t involve him are still allowed outside the thread. The idea here is more to contain stuff about the man himself, as it gets spammy and repetitive after a while
News about the companies that don’t involve him are still allowed outside the thread.
That is not entirely correct.
so we’ve decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter.
This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we’re including news about Musk acting the fool as related to any of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring).
So 1) ALL things X/Twitter/Musk, 2) you can only talk about his other companies if it doesn’t involve him (which are the vast majority of stories about his companies).
This is functionally banning Musk and his companies from being discussed. No one will check the megathread. We both know this.
I hope you can appreciate and understand that the decision was made, in part, because we had users asking for it. I recognize the shortcomings of a megathread. However it won’t be possible to make every user here happy. We’ve taken the actions that we thought were best based on the desires of some of our users.
We appreciate feedback, and are welcoming any suggestions on how this could be handled better
You know you’re commenting on it now though right?
Day 3 and not a single post/comment about Musk, just you taking a needless jab at me because it’s funny to you. This thread is dead except for you and me right now.
Y’all have functionally banned all news related to Elon musk, Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Some see this as a feature, not a bug.
Whether you do or don’t, it’s a flagrant attempt to end the topics without owning up to it. It’s window dressing.
As others have suggested maybe having a sub for trending news, that might be good actually. That way people can easily sub and unsub to this stuff without having to worry. (An on-going catch all for this kind of news, I think it would be better than focussing on a single current topic)
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Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great. It’s also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum while still providing an outlet for people to discuss.
If your goal is to idly consume content, then a megathread probably sucks. Same if you want to be an influencer, it’ll cut down on your exposure. Megathreads also can hide major developments that can hide behind a thread that people should be notified about. And if there wasn’t much content on a platform to begin with… A megathread can force a ghost town.
There are definitely both good and bad things about Megathreads and there’s a ton of depth and nuance that could be had.
In this case, I’m not sure whether a megathread was warranted or not though
Well it depends on your goals with the platform. If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great.
Nobody on Reddit, Lemmy, etc. behaves that way. Nobody checks megathreads unless it’s an ongoing, high profile situation. I guarantee you this megathread is going to get essentially no engagement within 48 hours and now for some odd reason all news about SpaceX, Twitter, and Tesla is functionally banned.
If you want a one stop shop to get all the necessary information in an efficient time then megathreads are great.
Strong disagree. My experience with megathreads is primarily being full of memes and puns, with so many hundreds of root comments that even using extra tools it was impossible to follow any real conversation or updates.
It’s also good at stopping a specific type of content from taking over a forum…
That is the only thing megathreads accomplish, IMO.
I don’t think I really need to tell y’all that megathreads are, as a general rule, worthless. The only way they are even moderately useful is if they are recurring, such as a weekly megathread for beginner questions on a technical/hobbyist sub. A static, one time megathread means that no one will ever talk about it at all. That is not the right call.
Anybody who has been a mod for more than a week knows that a megathread only stifles discussion unless it’s some major event happening in real time, such as Jan 6th. I get you don’t want musk spam but you’re over correcting.
An alternative that may address the concerns in comments would be temporary sub communities for loud events
- Create community technology_elon_bs@
- Mods of parent community inherit sub
- Create a pinned post in parent community announcing.
- Close sub community when noise goes down.
I like this compromise solution.
Or, if one wanted a more permanent community instead, we could split a, idk, “Corporate and Billionaire Drama” or “Web Drama” community (something along those lines) off for this type of thing going forward, so “Technology” could stay more specifically about tech and not about all the crap around it. But maybe that line would be too hard to draw I guess.
What would be more helpful I think would be a “hide post” option.
That way you could hide stuff you’re not interested in, or posts you have already read. (Something good from reddit)
I like the idea of a megathread wrt to Musk. Seeing my front page composed of 50% Musk threads all of which are roughly the same, is frustrating. Or, hell, maybe make a Musk News sub and confine posts of it there that people can subscribe to if they want. It’s just too much of a whack a mole right now because there’s so much going on with it.
However, I do wish we had a “hide post” option. There was a post a while back that involved animal harm, and seeing that in the middle of my feed for 2 days straight was extremely upsetting, and there was nothing I could do about it.
While people have made some interesting comments on the downsides of megathreads, I’m glad we have a way of containing the Musk stuff. It gets a bit much.
To people who do have concerns though, if you’re tech minded maybe look at contributing to a way of improving the functionality of Lemmy. It’s in our gift to improve this place so if we can do something about it then we should, rather than passively complain when things aren’t how we want them to be.
To people who do have concerns though, if you’re tech minded maybe look at contributing to a way of improving the functionality of Lemmy. It’s in our gift to improve this place so if we can do something about it then we should, rather than passively complain when things aren’t how we want them to be.
This has literally nothing to do with whether or not relegating topics to megathreads is a good thing. In order to fix the issues with megathreads, we’d have to fundamentally change how these forums work, which no one is going to do and users aren’t going to follow unless most, if not all, instances follow suit. It has to be baked into the platform. The entire cycle of content sites like reddit, lemmy, etc. depend on is antithetical to megathreads outside of extreme high profile events, such as a presidential election or (yet another) still ongoing school shooting or something.
A++ title. Megathread is a great idea too.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808331/twitter-x-ads-advertising-incentives-verification-brands
another change to Twitter’s ad policy. Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.
Lemmy/Kbin really don’t function in a way that make megathreads work though. This won’t work here and we can’t be thinking about trying to adopt Reddit behaviors in a platform that works very differently. Unlike Reddit, there isn’t a singular community around Technology. There are dozens that we can all see built across every instance. I had to scroll just to see I was looking at the Beehaw one.
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Terrible idea.
If only containing Elon Musk and his immature drivel to a single location was as easy in real life…
I’m cool with this, I don’t need these articles telling me about musk/zucc/spez running the old platforms into the ground anymore. It’s stuck in the past and ragebait. I think it’s best to look forward. Walking away from old platforms completely means not letting them live rent-free in our heads anymore.
Huh
I haven’t seen official sourcing on it yet but apparently a QAnon guy got suspended for posting notoriously bad child sexual abuse materials and then Musk reinstated the account. I’m frankly afraid to look it up because I don’t want to see the materials. https://twitter.com/faineg/status/1684329030500098048?t=747mnnSVncGD8OBd0Vhddg&s=19
It would be nice if we could filter out items by regex or something so people that don’t want to see Elon/twitter whatever can just blacklist certain terms. Then the megathread wouldn’t really be needed of the value is just to declutter the feed.
