Why you should stop unnecessarily making image posts on the fediverse
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I tend to feel the reverse. IME, high-quality links and original posts routinely underperform without the hook of a good image, and there’s no reason why you can’t provide a good title, as well.
An image can help sell / explain the concept, so I usually put some care in to choosing and sharing an appropriate image. That doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with low-effort, low-quality images and posts, which seem kind of self-explanatory.
An image can help sell / explain the concept,
They do, you’re right. But I think that is something we should try to resist. We should encourage people to put back some values into ‘mere’ words. Not suggesting images are bad, bu they’re only one leg, the other being words. And it’s not just a personal feeling that words are being… neglected, for images.
The same with YT and TikTok: I see a lot of people that won’t read a book when asked to, they will watch someone talk about the book, making a summary and some comment about it. One can replace ‘book’ with any other type of content that require some reading. That video maybe excellent and fascinating in itself it still is not the actual book. Reading matters. Or it should.
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An image can help sell / explain the concept,
They do, you’re right. But I think that is something we should try to resist. We should encourage people to put back some values into ‘mere’ words. Not suggesting images are bad, bu they’re only one leg, the other being words. And it’s not just a personal feeling that words are being… neglected, for images.
The same with YT and TikTok: I see a lot of people that won’t read a book when asked to, they will watch someone talk about the book, making a summary and some comment about it. One can replace ‘book’ with any other type of content that require some reading. That video maybe excellent and fascinating in itself it still is not the actual book. Reading matters. Or it should.
The problem for me is woulda-coulda-shoulda. I’d love for human habits and human behavior to be tweaked and improved in certain ways, but reality is reality, sadly or not.
I always lead with a good image as a hook, then usually include a mini-article in the post. That is what typically gets the most votes and engagement. I say that as someone who’s created well over 300 posts across 2.5yrs on the Fediverse, and then a bunch of earlier ones on Reddit.
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That’s not correct. You seem to have not read the OP.
I have actually implemented this on my personal instance, I don’t know exactly how this will look on lemmy, but you can see what I’ve done here:
https://scrapetacular.ydns.eu/latest
What do you think of it? A post of the type that JohnnyEnzyme describes would look like a text post, with an image url in the list of links at the top.
I have also replaced inline images in comments with a link plus the alt text.
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The problem for me is woulda-coulda-shoulda. I’d love for human habits and human behavior to be tweaked and improved in certain ways, but reality is reality, sadly or not.
I always lead with a good image as a hook, then usually include a mini-article in the post. That is what typically gets the most votes and engagement. I say that as someone who’s created well over 300 posts across 2.5yrs on the Fediverse, and then a bunch of earlier ones on Reddit.
The problem for me is woulda-coulda-shoulda. I’d love for human habits and human behavior to be tweaked and improved in certain ways, but reality is reality, sadly or not.
meaning there is no way trying? That’s not what I want to think. Because if that was so, there would be no way to try to correct what is not going fine, ever.
That is what typically gets the most votes and engagement.
I don’t care much about votes. And I say that as someone who doesn’t post much put comment a lot more
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Blorp dev here. I’m not saying I will add this, but I would be open to investigating respecting the instance hide image setting within Blorp.
There’s a good chance of upsetting everybody here
Do you go with, the instance setting, the community setting, the user instance preference, the Blorp default or the user app setting.
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The problem for me is woulda-coulda-shoulda. I’d love for human habits and human behavior to be tweaked and improved in certain ways, but reality is reality, sadly or not.
meaning there is no way trying? That’s not what I want to think. Because if that was so, there would be no way to try to correct what is not going fine, ever.
That is what typically gets the most votes and engagement.
I don’t care much about votes. And I say that as someone who doesn’t post much put comment a lot more
meaning there is no way trying? That’s not what I want to think. Because if that was so, there would be no way to try to correct what is not going fine, ever.
Meaning experimentation upon that kinda thing is what I’ve already done across many years and hundreds of posts. After awhile, I more or less settled in to what works best. YMMV, of course.
I don’t care much about votes.
I care about them as a rough counter upon what various audiences like and don’t like, which has helped me a lot over the years.
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cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58189605
What it looks like:
Here’s an example of such a post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58082125
They uploaded an image and then included a URL as the body/text.
On Lemmy, it looks like an image post, with a small expando to the right of the title that you can click to show the body:
Why you should stop doing it:
- It makes high-quality posts look the same as low-quality ones.
I automatically downvote most image/meme submissions and posts with bad/non-descriptive titles for quality control. Linking directly to a source is how you make a high-quality submission. You can include screenshots or quotes in the body of the post.
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I could start clicking the expando next to the title to check if a source was provided, but there’s going to be a user option to block image posts in the next lemmy update (v0.20), so that format is not good since lots of people will start to automatically block them.
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You can put images in the body of the posts.
Why should anyone care?
Low-quality, easy-to-digest content will dominate and drown out everything else if no one does anything to limit it. It degrades the internet and our brains.
A blog that elaborates:
The Cargo Cult of The Ennui Engine https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb
Don’t tell me what to do.
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It reflects very poorly on the user base that this comment is the most upvoted one. It ignores the history of low-quality meme content and nearly all the arguments in the OP.
Hello,
Can you edit your post and remove this part “unintelligent reponse” ? That’s a bit rude.
Thank you
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Replacing images with URLs makes viewing images slightly more difficult and doesn’t allow people to scroll endlessly through lots of images, so it could be a nudge in the right direction. But it’s probably inappropriate for most instances since it applies to all subs and basically ruins any sub where images are the main attraction.
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It reflects very poorly on the user base that this comment is the most upvoted one. It ignores the history of low-quality meme content and nearly all the arguments in the OP.
Not really, that’s just another normal reply as you shared your point of view. It may not be the reply you wanted to read but that’s a valid point of view.
In your example, it’s not a meme. For me, it’s screenshot of a newpaper article. There are pro and cons:
- Pro : it maybe used to avoid content detection from NY times. (Copyright)
- Cons : people with low vision can’t use screenreader and we are very bad with alt text.
As for myself, i prefer text over pic/video because:
- you can use screenreaders.
- you can do a search and find related text content.
- picture are heavier than text.
But i also like when there is a picture along text. The second example is a screenshot of a new browser for the fediverse. It showcases the browser’s ui.
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Hello,
Can you edit your post and remove this part “unintelligent reponse” ? That’s a bit rude.
Thank you
I couldn’t think of a way to rephrase it so I asked a chatbot and they couldn’t come up with a valid alternative either.
Are you saying that no one participating on this sub is capable of making unintelligent remarks? Or that people can make as many unintelligent remarks as they like and no one is ever allowed to point it out?
Anyway, I tried really hard and rephrased it.
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Not really, that’s just another normal reply as you shared your point of view. It may not be the reply you wanted to read but that’s a valid point of view.
In your example, it’s not a meme. For me, it’s screenshot of a newpaper article. There are pro and cons:
- Pro : it maybe used to avoid content detection from NY times. (Copyright)
- Cons : people with low vision can’t use screenreader and we are very bad with alt text.
As for myself, i prefer text over pic/video because:
- you can use screenreaders.
- you can do a search and find related text content.
- picture are heavier than text.
But i also like when there is a picture along text. The second example is a screenshot of a new browser for the fediverse. It showcases the browser’s ui.
This comment does not address any of the core arguments and thus seems largely unrelated/irrelevant.
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Replacing images with URLs makes viewing images slightly more difficult and doesn’t allow people to scroll endlessly through lots of images, so it could be a nudge in the right direction. But it’s probably inappropriate for most instances since it applies to all subs and basically ruins any sub where images are the main attraction.
Depends on the sub, the cooking subs are image based, but tend to have titles like:
“Homemade jumbo crumpet with baked strawberries topped with mascarpone”
https://media.piefed.social/posts/R9/I8/R9I8hg1C1D7qWrO.jpegwhich is enough for me to decide whether to click (I clicked this one). It ruins subs that already have poor accessibility, due to non-descriptive titles and missing alt text. Which is fine.
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This comment does not address any of the core arguments and thus seems largely unrelated/irrelevant.
I replied to the examples you chose in your arguments…
It makes high-quality posts look the same as low-quality ones.
No, i disagree, picture can showcase different kind of informations that text aren’t able to explain.
futhermore, I explained that the screenshoot showcased a browser UI and the other one is, maybe a trick to escape copyrighted content detection. So…for me it doesn’t lower their qualities.
Low-quality, easy-to-digest content will dominate and drown out everything else if no one does anything to limit it. It degrades the internet and our brains.
That’s not necessary true. It depends on the pics, and the text. There are some badly written text that could achieve the same result. It depends on lot factors.
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I couldn’t think of a way to rephrase it so I asked a chatbot and they couldn’t come up with a valid alternative either.
Are you saying that no one participating on this sub is capable of making unintelligent remarks? Or that people can make as many unintelligent remarks as they like and no one is ever allowed to point it out?
Anyway, I tried really hard and rephrased it.
Well, the problem is that you attack people with this sentence and they told you a valid point that you may not agree.
i think you should take it slow, reread them. You may not agree with us, but you shouldn’t attack them by : “unintelligent, low…”
Take a point in our argumentation for example :
“i disagree because this is not a screenshot of a browser. It degrades internet because it looks like a meme, a low quality post. High quality content are only written in a long hard to digest text”
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Well, the problem is that you attack people with this sentence and they told you a valid point that you may not agree.
i think you should take it slow, reread them. You may not agree with us, but you shouldn’t attack them by : “unintelligent, low…”
Take a point in our argumentation for example :
“i disagree because this is not a screenshot of a browser. It degrades internet because it looks like a meme, a low quality post. High quality content are only written in a long hard to digest text”
they told you a valid point
They didn’t. That’s the primary reason I criticized them. They didn’t address a single point in the OP. If someone lays out a bunch of arguments for something, and someone comes along and posts a simplistic dismissal without addressing any of the arguments, that’s unintelligent.
Take a point in our argumentation for example :
“i disagree because this is not a screenshot of a browser. It degrades internet because it looks the same of meme, low quality post. High quality content are only written in long hard digest text”
This seems completely nonsensical, and like it was written by someone illiterate, or at best by someone who speaks English very poorly. I looked to see if you were pharaphrasing something in another comment, I only see one thing similar, which I’ll reply to.
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I replied to the examples you chose in your arguments…
It makes high-quality posts look the same as low-quality ones.
No, i disagree, picture can showcase different kind of informations that text aren’t able to explain.
futhermore, I explained that the screenshoot showcased a browser UI and the other one is, maybe a trick to escape copyrighted content detection. So…for me it doesn’t lower their qualities.
Low-quality, easy-to-digest content will dominate and drown out everything else if no one does anything to limit it. It degrades the internet and our brains.
That’s not necessary true. It depends on the pics, and the text. There are some badly written text that could achieve the same result. It depends on lot factors.
It makes high-quality posts look the same as low-quality ones.No, i disagree, text and picture can showcase different kind of information that text are able to explain.
That’s bad English, and thus difficult to decipher, so I have to assume what you’re trying to say.
The OP is referring to memes and other screenshots of text (often social media posts). Nearly all of these are low-quality content. The “solution” offered by the Lemmy devs to block that stuff is blocking image submissions. I noted in other comments that it’s a flawed solution, but it’s the option we have. Of course it’s correct that text submissions can be poor quality too, but overwhelmingly, it’s images that are the problem.
futhernore I explained that the screenshoot showcased a browser UI
Images (and text) were included in the body of the post. It didn’t need to be submitted as an image post. I noted the future consequences of continuing to do that.
and the another one maybe a trick to escape copyrighted contend detection
Yes, there are instances where images are useful. I agreed that blocking all images is not a perfect solution, but I haven’t seen anyone present a better one.
Low-quality, easy-to-digest content will dominate and drown out everything else if no one does anything to limit it. It degrades the internet and our brains.
That’s not necessary true. It depends on the pics, and the text. There are some badly written text that could achieve the same result. It depends on lot factors.
This seems to display a lack of understanding of what the OP discussed. Did you read the link at the end that expounds?
There’s a long history of low-quality meme content ruining reddit subs. It’s become the norm on reddit; turning it from it’s former higher-quality content to just another low-quality facebook-like site. And it’s extremely common on Lemmy too.
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they told you a valid point
They didn’t. That’s the primary reason I criticized them. They didn’t address a single point in the OP. If someone lays out a bunch of arguments for something, and someone comes along and posts a simplistic dismissal without addressing any of the arguments, that’s unintelligent.
Take a point in our argumentation for example :
“i disagree because this is not a screenshot of a browser. It degrades internet because it looks the same of meme, low quality post. High quality content are only written in long hard digest text”
This seems completely nonsensical, and like it was written by someone illiterate, or at best by someone who speaks English very poorly. I looked to see if you were pharaphrasing something in another comment, I only see one thing similar, which I’ll reply to.
“Moderators should moderate their communities for quality” is a valid solution to the problem you outlined, and a valid line of discussion even if you disagree.
I consider instance level and user level image tools as secondary to good community moderation, for things that the mods miss, and I only follow communities that seem well run.
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they told you a valid point
They didn’t. That’s the primary reason I criticized them. They didn’t address a single point in the OP. If someone lays out a bunch of arguments for something, and someone comes along and posts a simplistic dismissal without addressing any of the arguments, that’s unintelligent.
Take a point in our argumentation for example :
“i disagree because this is not a screenshot of a browser. It degrades internet because it looks the same of meme, low quality post. High quality content are only written in long hard digest text”
This seems completely nonsensical, and like it was written by someone illiterate, or at best by someone who speaks English very poorly. I looked to see if you were pharaphrasing something in another comment, I only see one thing similar, which I’ll reply to.
This seems completely nonsensical, and like it was written by someone illiterate, or at best by someone who speaks English very poorly. I looked to see if you were pharaphrasing something in another comment, I only see one thing similar, which I’ll reply to.
Not everyone are fluent to english, however we do our best. We come from various background. I don’t write well in english, i do lot typos and correct them over time.
So you shouldn’t judge us.
Let’s imagine you go to !forumlibre@jlai.lu. You want to share your amazing experience in the french city Strasbourg and write a beautiful post in french.
It is so badly written that there is this guy that tell you :
you illeterate.
And that’s your behaviour.
I was paraphrasing the whole posts & comments you made because you didn’t develop your arguments and dismissed them all.
Let’s sum up how you answer to people :
“Nonsensical. Unintelligent. Illeterate.”
Do you think you know better than us ?
Imo, you should stop and developp your thoughts. Your new reply is better because you tell me what i didn’t understand.
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cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58189605
What it looks like:
Here’s an example of such a post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58082125
They uploaded an image and then included a URL as the body/text.
On Lemmy, it looks like an image post, with a small expando to the right of the title that you can click to show the body:
Why you should stop doing it:
- It makes high-quality posts look the same as low-quality ones.
I automatically downvote most image/meme submissions and posts with bad/non-descriptive titles for quality control. Linking directly to a source is how you make a high-quality submission. You can include screenshots or quotes in the body of the post.
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I could start clicking the expando next to the title to check if a source was provided, but there’s going to be a user option to block image posts in the next lemmy update (v0.20), so that format is not good since lots of people will start to automatically block them.
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You can put images in the body of the posts.
Why should anyone care?
Low-quality, easy-to-digest content will dominate and drown out everything else if no one does anything to limit it. It degrades the internet and our brains.
A blog that elaborates:
The Cargo Cult of The Ennui Engine https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb
If any PieFed users want to hide image and video posts from their feed, add this CSS to your ‘Additional CSS’ field in your settings: https://piefed.social/c/piefed_css/p/1973407/hide-image-and-video-posts-from-home-page
