Hello! Long post incoming, but please do read and we’ll get it all over and done with in one go 😅
So a lot of you already know that I’ve been appointed at least temporary mod while our community owner is inactive. I’ll do my best to keep things ticking along while they’re away, and we’ll just see how things develop from here. Happy to report my mod status has now actually federated out to my own server so I’m able to pin things, hurrah!
For those I’ve not already chatted with, hi! My name’s Michelle, I learned to knit in about 2013 and quickly became obsessed, and now do all kinds of crafts (including but not limited to the stitchy ones). I am also chronically online since about 2001, so should be able to deal with any mod reports within a reasonable timeframe, but as we grow if it’s still just me I’ll probably need to look for help from folks in other timezones.
You’ll see me posting both from this account and from Mastodon as @thegiddystitcher@artisan.chat because being able to interact cross-platform is really cool, and also it helps spread the word about this place to the larger Mastodon knitting community!
Now, one thing that’s been missing from the community so far is any actual rules being set (yes I can hear you booing me from all the way back there). I figure even though we’re all lovely and self-governing at the moment, it’s probably best to just have the common-sense stuff written down for future reference.
So here are my thoughts, feel free to chime in with your own:
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All instance rules apply: see mastodon.world/about <-- these can be summed up as “don’t be awful and don’t spam”
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WIP/FO Posts should include a pattern link or at least the name of the pattern & designer. <-- this isn’t always possible and I’m not gonna give people too much grief for forgetting but it is quite helpful for people seeing the pics and thinking “ooh, pretty”
And that’s about it! I’d like to know what you all think about allowing commercial posts, too. For example designers posting about their own patterns, the sticker shop post we had the other day, etc etc. Allow? Ban? Some rule that lands somewhere in the middle?
Suggestions welcome on this, as well as what you’d like to see from the community in general. Go forth and have your say!
Hey there! Thanks for taking this over, I’ve not been able to post much recently but really glad this community is here. I love sharing knitting patterns and tips.
I’m not a huge fan of self promotion posts really, but there is that blurred line where someone is sharing their own WIP/FO from their own design, etc. What about if we have a self promote day a week? Would something like that work?
Hiya! Please never feel pressured to create ✨ CONTENT ✨ , knitting is a relaxing mindful activity and we have things to post about when we have things to post about. The community doesn’t need to grow big to be successful 🙂
Anyway you’ve hit the nail on the head in terms of where the line between normal post and self-promo starts to get blurry, for sure. I think probably while we’re this small and have only had one or two self promo posts ever the weekly thread type setup wouldn’t be needed, but it’s definitely something to keep in our back pocket for if such things start to be a problem.
You’re all giving me a lot to think about here, keep it coming! 😅
Wow I really went in on the emojis in this comment.
I love it! 🤩 It feels like emojis are allowed here and I think they’re fun 💃🕺👯
Hi there! It’s great that you took over.
Personally, I don’t mind the occasional commercial post, as long as they don’t take over the community. It would be nice to have them clearly indicated as such, though. BTW: Is there something like post flair on Lemmy?
There isn’t yet, sadly. I know it’s a feature request that’s been knocking about but obviously the devs have had more urgent things on their plate. Hopefully we’ll get flairs eventually though 🤞
If others agree and find it useful, we could take the old-fashioned approach of [keyword] at the beginning of the post title, e.g. [fo], [wip], [question], [ad] etc.
Yeah this is the sort of thing I was thinking of. We don’t have tools like automods and whatnot to enforce anything so I’m not gonna get all draconian, but maybe if a couple of us start doing it it’ll just become sort of a cultural thing. Obviously not quite as important when we’re still small but if we get into good habits now it’ll be easier as we grow! :)
I’m pretty cranky about commercial posts, although I do think there’s a big difference between someone who is an active community member sharing a pattern they are selling and someone that just posts when they’ve got something to sell. The sticker post seemed to me to fall into the second camp - posted twice (different but similar usernames), posted across many different communities, etc. Honestly I don’t know how you write rules for that, though - get out the calculator and check ratio of helpful posts to commercial? Sounds like the Reddit minimum karma for posting rules that end up prompting a bunch of generic comments just so people could get their numbers up.
I left an in-person knitting group a while back after it seemed it was just becoming a captive audience for member’s MLM sales, so maybe I’m more sensitive than most. There’s always the block button, though.
On the other hand, banning commercial posts can end up with those “covert ads” - people posting products and then acting coy when asked for the source - “can’t say here, but I’ll send you a DM”, etc.
I bought a book about overthinking this morning… (that is not a covert ad)
Honestly I’m right there cranking (and overthinking) with you, that’s exactly why I thought it was best to get this sorted out sooner rather than later. I don’t think you’re overly sensitive at all, there’s a tendency for spaces that do allow self-promo to end up becoming basically all self-promo over time.
Whatever we decide it’s going to take some careful wording and probably a few judgement calls, some of which will end up being right and others wrong, and we’ll just tweak things over time.
Thanks for the input, I’m gonna leave this up for a couple of days before even thinking about making any decisions so we’ll see what the consensus ends up being!
I agree with the proposed rules. As a suggestion, maybe we could have some sort of contest/poll to choose a banner? I just noticed it’s a stock photo lol.
Oh heck I’d not even thought about checking where things like the graphics came from! Thanks for the reminder! I immediately have what seems like a cool idea for this, but since it’s bedtime now I’ll sleep on it and make sure it wasn’t actually a terrible idea before saying anything…
A contest would be fun. Maybe we could do seasonal updates.
Thanks for stepping up! I took over modding for a large and potentially contentious subject matter, so I relate to jumping in head first with establishing some rules. I actually first out up a mod post asking for what the community wanted out of the space, then another mod on the team compiled the responses. Our team is now debating with more nuance the presentation of those community rules, but it was very important to me that the rules were co-created by the community and the mods.
Anyway, all that to say welcome and thanks for stepping up.
I see you have a plan for pulling in from Mastadon, which I’m both fairly ignorant of and also not interested in using because Twitter-like formats seem to me to be a place to disseminate information to a wide opt-in audience whereas forum structures (like threads in kbin/Lemmy) seem to be where dialogue and community building can happen.
You sound a lot more experienced about the Fediverse than I feel. Can you speak to any vision you have about getting higher user engagement for this community in the threads (not microblog)? My m/sub feed already doesn’t even show the craft communities I’m subscribed to for whatever reason - I’ve assumed because of trickling thread/photo/link submissions.
Ooh you’ve got your work cut out for you over there! Looks like you have a solid team though, and totally agree it’s best to tackle these things head-on. Best of luck, and respect for taking it on.
I think there’s maybe a bit of a Lemmy/Kbin misunderstanding going on there with the Mastodon thing. On Kbin I believe magazines have a separate “microblog” tab where Mastodon toots are automatically pulled in? We don’t have anything like that on Lemmy. But Mastodon users can make normal posts and comments in Lemmy communities, so I was basically just giving a heads up that you’ll see me around under two similar names.
As far as vision goes. I think the Threadiverse in general is in a bit of a precarious spot at the moment. So many people set up communities and magazines, were active moderators for a week or two, and then left. And when they left and stopped actively encouraging discussion in their communities, engagement naturally dropped. Now we have a wave of people like you and me attempting to pick up the pieces, which in some spaces is going to work and in others I imagine it’ll already be too late.
That said, while I come armed to the teeth with discussion prompts and a bullet-point list of ideas in general to reverse that process, growth for the sake of growth shouldn’t ever be the goal especially for a community based around something naturally slower paced like knitting. The last thing we want is people feeling pressured to make more things to post, in a hobby that just naturally takes a lot of time.
The issue with the feed algorithm is also a problem for us on Lemmy, I know our devs have a number of discussions going on about how best to surface posts from the smaller communities we’re subscribed to so I expect Ernest is having those exact same discussions on your side too. Given the rate of change in both of our platforms, I’m hopeful that issue gets the attention it deserves soon!
