I’m looking to add some variety to my kbin subscriptions, so I would like to know: what’s your favorite magazine/instance or one you find yourself spending the most time on?
I’m looking to add some variety to my kbin subscriptions, so I would like to know: what’s your favorite magazine/instance or one you find yourself spending the most time on?
I’m still learning good communities for me so I clicked for suggestions for myself. Came to talk about different types of posts. When I saw your title I knew I’d want to read the whole discussion. Some posts are like that, and those are the ones I want to spend time on because every response contributes. Some posts are a practical question with a narrow set of answers. If it’s not a question I share, and it it already has several responses, there’s probably no point in me contributing. Some posts are open minded discussions where it’s so interesting to absorb the views that others share, and maybe join in. Some posts are fights. Those aren’t worth participating in.
I’m sure I’m leaving a lot out. And maybe others don’t make these calculations at all. I just happened to notice, as I was scrolling topics, the criteria I use for deciding whether or not to click and read.
Anyone else have these thoughts? Or disagree?
I find that I do click more on threads that I feel like I can actually contribute something to, or are interesting enough to me to see other individuals’ viewpoints. And when it does start to degrade into fight I back out, because I did not come here for negativity.
I don’t consciously make these calculations either, but what you just described sounds exactly like how I choose what to click on. Also came here for suggestions!
I’ll say that I’ve looked up hobbies I enjoy but don’t think about much so I can boost my engagement on the Fediverse. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but I want to help this place grow, so I’ve let in things that I have a milder interest in as well as my usual interests. This is also how I get variety in the posts I see, as I usually stick to /sub. When I wander out, it’s on purpose and to a specific known community, because /all usually has some depressing political news or ragebait that would get me to outrage-click. I’m here to have a good time, not to doomscroll or get angry. Kbin has no algorithm intended to keep us scrolling on it, but those things do generate the most engagement, so it’s only natural they end up on /all frequently enough (though not as frequently as they’d appear on the popular page on Reddit) that I feel a desire to avoid /all.
That’s actually one of the reasons I created this post, to kind of cast a wider net so I can engage more to help growth. I currently have around 20 or so subscriptions, but I’d say really only 2 or 3 are super active. Which isn’t a bad thing per se, but in the magazines I do post threads in, I sometimes seem to be the only person posting. But the content has got be there somehow!
After writing this post I reflected a bit more on types of conversations, and made a little graphic to illustrate my transportation metaphor for the internet: Some are walking, some jogging, some biking — traveling independently at varying speeds low enough to pay attention and stop to interact. Some are traveling at high speeds loudly polluting; they interact with others by honking, crashing, or running over. It is pointless for a pedestrian to converse with the blare of a car horn.