anon6789

I don’t want to have to deal with the mod stuff, exactly like OP said. I’m just here to promote owls, conservation, and wildlife rehab. I do have a great mod that lets me do pretty much anything I want and will do stickies and banner changes and such for me, and I just keep giving good content.

I do look to have made it to your feed now! It deleted my 3 posts that were photos with short blurbs and kept my news article that is mostly text.

We rarely get the meme type posts, but if your setup is looking at anything like text:photo ratio, that could be doing it.

I have most meme communities block myself, so I understand how overtaking they can be to a feed. 😁

I’m interested in what you’re doing because I am interested in news and politics, but it would be nice to get rid of most of the garbage US news and the dupe posts, and let a better variety of news come in. I’ve gone to keyword blocking, but while I have “Trump” blocked, I’d still like to see things from other countries about their responses to his actions., for example.

I was curious what would happen to the ratio of political posts, specifically Trump/Elon, to other communities, but it feels >= the amount as All on lemmy.world.

None of my superb owls look to have made it through, but I didn’t see them removed in the mod log. We’re a pretty large community, so I’d have thought some would have gotten through. I don’t recall if I saw stuff from any of the animal comms.

I seriously worry about coming off creepy or insincere, or else I would shower you with praise more constantly! Your app has made my experience here so much better, and I’m grateful for the things you’ve added to it, sometimes I’m sure, just for me.

You’ve always been really friendly and helpful and lightning fast fixing any issues, and you obviously put a lot of time and work into developing and maintaining the app, and you don’t ask for money or have ads or anything.

None of the other apps are bad or anything, but I still think yours offers the most and the best for me, and how I don’t see Summit near the top of every best Lemmy app posts is crazy to me.

Fair enough reasons. If you’re doing custom ublock filters and such, you’re likely able to tweak a lot to how you want it without any outside help from an app.

I see in you rother comment to someone you haven’t tried Voyager in a year. I haven’t tried that one recently, but I will say even over the last 6-8 months, so many of these apps have really matured from where they were a year or so ago. Very significantly so IMO. I think Summit is really the sleeper champ of the apps for my use case, and the dev is super helpful and responsive.

To each their own though. I love we have such great variety in UI here. At this point, there should be a couple viable options for near anyone.

I’ve tried almost every Android app for Lemmy, and holy heck, do I love Summit the most. It does everything I need it to and more. It looks great. It’s responsive. And the dev is amazing. They respond to bugs, issues, and feature requests lightning fast. No ads. Not FOSS, which is the only thing I’ve seen anyone gripe about.

Been using it almost exclusively for a year or so now, and I can’t praise it enough.

What is wrong with apps? I get a lot of great features from the one I use that I don’t get with the web client.

• multi-communities
• user tagging
• drafts
• keyword blocking
• themes
• customizeable ui
• etc

It feels much more social being here not despite the smaller audience, but because of it.

People have time to respond to me if I have a question, and I have time to give really good and complete responses to anyone that asks me about something I post.

I’m thinking the little circle with the name is their actual “sign” that is/was in compliance with the ordinance.

Pre-mural photos show a plain building, but the circle sign has shadow, which looks like it’s separate from the mural but I’m not sure.

I’m pro n this mural. It looks fun, and if the local kids did it, they like it too, and it’s their town as much as anyone’s.

Uhhh…no need to check my post history for a potential stray bird post or so…

I can neither confirm nor deny that… 🦉

Birds are such amazing animals. There seems to be no end to the wonderous abilities they have!

Yup, my questions in the Maori article have been up for 24 hours now, so time for people in that part of the world with direct knowledge had time to see it. My comments and questions got 7 upvotes, so other people seem interested in some more elaboration, but the thread is probably dead.

Someone’s leaving an audience that wants more hanging, and nobody even gave a yes or no saying if my understanding of the article was right. 😮‍💨

Oh for sure. It’s going to be what ultimately makes or breaks this as a platform. You can’t force a userbase to interact, but as OP states, like many before them, for some people there’s not going to be much going on here. For people that want to at least be mildly active participants though, I haven’t had this much fun since forums were the big thing. I just imagine since that was a decent while ago now that either those of us old enough to have enjoyed them are rusty at it, and the yoots are too young to have seen how it used to work.

not a lot of people even bother opening posts

I’m a bit inclined to agree with this. I try to do the equivalent of the XKCD hover text, where you have to click through to get some of the good stuff. If you aren’t clicking through to the comments, you’re going to miss a lot of good stuff. Photo sets, photography tips, stories, fun facts. I try not to have the pic and title be the whole thing. But I’ll have 100 upvotes on the post pic, and maybe 10 on any bonus pics inside.

With some news posts, they feel like a RSS feed. Just a link to an article and nothing else. I may read it or I may not. There’s no initial comment or question to interact with. I don’t even know if it’s a bot posting or not that way. If all you offer is a Reuters link, I could have just gone to Reuters and gotten the headline myself. I feel these posts have little value until they start collecting comments.

“Yes I agree, nothing to add”

This is a common response I get when I try to get people to comment more. There can still be value to add to something like this though. Why do you agree? Did you agree before you read the post/comment? Do you have any caveats to your agreement? If you haven’t always agreed, what changed your mind? What part of what they said, or the chart/pic/stat they shared really stood out or was unexpected? You may agree, but you’re still a different person with a different background and different adjacent ideas.

Example from today: Pic of flying owl. Comment was basically I like all these recent pics of flying owls. On the surface, not the deepest comment ever. Buuuuuut, someone took the time to respond to a post, so I know they liked it enough to make effort. Makes me feel good knowing I motivated someone enough to respond, keeps me motivated to post again. I also learned that a specific type of content really got them interested. I know to look for more of it. Then I took the time to respond in kind, because their effort deserves recognition. I said I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I also said that even though I see hundreds of owl pics every week, that I was still surprised by something I saw in one of the recent photos, so that gives them or anyone else reading the response something to go back and look at. They might not have noticed the unique thing about the photo the first time.

Example going the other way: Maori rights in New Zealand. You can’t get much further from NZ than where I am. I know basically nothing about it. This topic really caught my attention though. I read the article to see what was going on, and I thought I understood the basics of it. I commented and said, hey, I read this, and this is my understanding. Am I correct in my understanding or am I missing some significant parts of the story not in this article? If so, can someone explain it or point me in the direction of some more reading? So I know nothing, but I showed them the story was making me interested in something they shared. Anyone familiar with NZ can chime in to talk to me. I hopefully get more things to talk about from that, and we have some conversation. I don’t have to know anything, I just show interest in the topic, and in interacting with someone.

Not every interaction is going to result in more upvotes, comments, or conversation, but if nobody is going to be willing to make the first move, it’s gonna be boring. We’re not big enough for the 1% rule (1% creators, 9% commenters, 90% lurkers) to carry us. It kills the creators having to force the momentum all the time, and if you disagree/agree too much with the small pool of comments, you’re going to say this place is boring. We need to participate, we need to show our individual personalities, and we need to interact. That’s the “social” part of social media. Have fun with it!

For me, the upvotes are ok. I use them more to gauge overall traffic. I have an idea the typical number of votes things will get, and I can see what deviates to see what is a hit, what’s typical, and what isn’t resonating. But without comments, there’s no “why” anything is good or bad. I’m not really any better off than before to give you what you want. I can take a guess, but you could have also taken a moment to tell me. It doesn’t tell me everyone’s opinion, but it gives another things for the people that do vote to either add upvotes to that comment or ignore it.

Also, as someone providing the content, it’s nice to have an interaction, even if it’s minimal. Creating posts can eat up a lot of time, and I’m doing it to talk to you all. If nobody stops by to even say, yo, nice work, or whatever, even if I have a lot of upvotes, it still feels like I’m not talking to anyone. It feels like a chore. But if I get one person that says, hey, seeing this really made my morning, now I feel awesome and I want to post more.

A lot of focus is put onto posting, but I like to encourage commenters. I’ll post and respond all day, but if nobody is interacting, it’s going to stay quiet. Put the quiet to your advantage by doing things like:

If you like an image, say what you like about it. Lately, I’ve been having people talk about how they really have been enjoying dawn/dusk pictures, so I’ve been collecting more of that so I can post what people are in the mood for. It gives me good feedback, it gives people a chance to agree or disagree with you, and you got to participate.

Do you ask anyone any question? Take advantage of the relative quiet. With not having a million comments on every post, I have plenty of time to give you really detailed answers. I got asked how to differentiate between 2 animals yesterday, and I had time to make a nice visual guide, highlighting key differences and giving multiple visual examples of potential variations while still simplifying the process of identification. If there’s a million people talking like on Reddit, it’s hard to give people that much attention, but here it’s easy. I pretty much take time to respond to every comment.

Don’t be afraid to go off topic. Rules seem to be looser in many communities because of the low post count. This week, I posted something from a country with a different language, and I ended up having 3 days of conversation with a native speaker who filled me in on tons of subtleties of the language pertaining to our niche topic. I got to learn so much, and they got to learn a few things about English.

I feel you have to do something to have a good time here, but it needn’t be to post multiple things every day, but it’s more than just up or downvoting something like you can get away with on Reddit. We’re too small for you to have a free ride. But make someone laugh. Let them know that you liked their post with a short comment. If you don’t like it, say hey, do you have any content on such and such instead. Make a post saying, hey, what’s your thoughts on this? It doesn’t need to be something groundbreaking or insightful, you just need to give a sign of life so we know you’re here, and one of us will probably talk back to you.

Interact enough like that, and you may find what you enjoy doing, if that turns out to be posting, or you become the resident expert on a topic even if you’re not an expert, being a serial commenter, or whatever it may be. It’s a great opportunity if you make it one because it is so easy to get attention here if you try.

I’m not typically a social person, but being here has let me talk about what I want, when I want, and somebody will listen to it, and I can ask about things I want to know and get answers. There’s much less shouting into the void like at Reddit. Play Lemmy to its strengths and you will find enjoyment. And if you don’t like it, go to where you’re happy. Nobody’s going to hate you if you split time between here and Reddit.

A few apps have multi-community support where you can group whatever you want, how you want, in one stream. I’m using Summit, but I feel a few other of the bigger apps support it now. I group the AskLemmys, tv/movie communities and different art communities into groups so I can view by category.

Even the smallest owls have to stay fierce!

It was hard to post today, but I told myself that I still wanted to try to give you guys what I could, so I put up some of the best I had in my stash of posts.

I try to keep politics out of it, but as I focus on habitat preservation and animal protections, it’s hard to stay totally out of it.

I do have stuff ready to start Owl of the Year. I was going to do a preliminary round this week, but I’m going to let people deal with their emotions for a couple days, I think.

To anyone feeling nervous by the results, know I care about of all you guys, and most of the people I love are potentially affected as well. Anyone who cares about nature is always welcome to come and enjoy the owls with me.