TL;DR: I wonder why we always have the same 2 posts as top posts of the day.
They appear a bit unnecessary and mildly annoying to me.
Do you think the same? Or do you like them, and can explain me why, so I can change my view?
Please don’t just blindly downvote, writing this post took a lot of time. And if you feel the need to do it anyway, tell me why first.
Maybe I am the only person who thinks that.
I probably am, at least according to numbers.
Basically, I’ve got the feeling that every top post of the day for the last weeks is something like “I’ve freed myself from evil Windows’ shackles and finally switched to Linux.”, or “What distro do you recommend?”.
Don’t get me wrong.
I feel super happy for every newcomer discovering the wonderful world of Linux and FOSS.
I, just like most others here, always try to help them in finding their right distro and guiding them in their first steps.
We all have been there.
And I’m super proud of us all, as a community, that we happily embrace every new member. We definitely have to keep that behaviour, it’s what connects us and makes us strong.
I just think we should redirect them a bit onto the specific communities.
Not by banning or censoring, just as friendly reminder, e.g. by a sticky post, comments like “Hey, check out !linux4noobs@lemmy.ml” or something else.
It doesn’t help much if there are the same threads every day, with people circlejerking on hating Windows and recommending Mint a hundred times, just like 100 people before did on the same thread.
I hate Windows too, but it feels like we’re identifying and comparing ourselves with the bitter ex-partner we had a while ago. No, not being Windows shouldn’t be the main reason Linux is great.
There are so many great posts and discussions, that are all going missing in this swamp of “Winblows bad, hehe”.
We should focus on what makes our software great, and not what the “bad ex-partner” did wrong.
Same with newcomer posts.
I think if the posters get redirected to the correct sub, they will receive more help, since the people partaking in the community are there because they wanna see exactly that.
At the same time, I’m afraid this would undermine our openness and friendliness of this community, and result in being as shitty as Reddits’ sub.
!Just as an anecdote, when I was a noob, I posted a question there, and, like 5 minutes later, I got a dozen of non-constructive, offensive comments. 10 minutes later, my post got removed. This was my first contact to the Linux world btw. Guess who switched back to Windows for another half year because of that?
We have to prevent this at any costs.
Anyway… !<
I really enjoy this community here and wanna keep it this great.
I just wanted to ask you, what you think about those everyday-top-posts.
If you like them, please try to change my mind and explain me why :)
I don’t think it’s anyone’s job to make sure newcomers do not leave Linux because “muh post was removed”. If you can’t take 2 minutes to find the correct sub to post your question, you won’t be able to use Linux either.
Lemmy has this problem where everything is upvoted no matter what. I’ve posted some dumb questions myself expecting them to get removed but they received upvotes instead. I’m thinking its either bots to drive engagement or people are very welcoming here or they’re just happy that Lemmy isn’t dead yet so they’ll upvote anything.
I have to admit, the RTFM-mentality or “you’re too dumb to read”-thing is very unwelcoming in general and would drive anyone away, no matter whom.
And then the whole community becomes more toxic over time.
I’d rather tell someone nicely that he may have more success in the specialised community than here, but still try to answer the question if I can.
It’s not only important to be friendly/ supportive for keeping the community alive, no, it’s mainly for keeping the morale alive.
I asked many really dumb questions in the past too, and I always got very happy people took their time to answer them in detail. That made my day in the end!
About the blind upvoting: I also upvote many posts where I see any value in or where the poster put work into, even if I don’t care much.
But conversation is more important imo, it’s what drives this platform.
I’d rather have 5 upvotes and some helpful comments than 500 upvotes and nothing else in my post.
Downvoting on the other hand should only be used if something is very low effort or should be filtered out in some way, not as dislike or disagree button.