what is the concern? vote manipulation? if so, limiting votes is a really naive approach.

I don’t talk politics with my dad other than when I have to tell him he’s drifting into racism. My brother likes to tease him by leading him to see the benefit of some bit of Dem proposed legislation and as soon as he agrees he says “well than vote for some Democrats because that’s what you actually believe in!” Then he gets all pissy and doesn’t want to talk stupid political takes for a while.

Here’s a good example of a cowbee information post. It has the like to the suggested reading list, which is nicely formatted, a long comparison of social democracy vs communism, and an infographic. Again, no implied support for anything they say, but impeccable presentation.

I gave you a sub for PoliciesForAll. I’ll have to read through your posts. I skimmed through the library one a bit and it seemed like good stuff. Things like that that give everyone a baseline access to necessities I think is crucial to having a fair, just, thriving society.

I’m traveling, so that study took me a while to read all the way through. Thanks for linking it. It had quite a bit of interesting stuff in it. Many things in it made me think conservatives are potential future leftists (distrust of mainstream media, want safety/security/health for their community, etc.). In my view/experience, they realize things aren’t working/are broken, they just have been given a bad solution(s).

Haha. Yeah, I get you. It’s tough to discuss anything with someone who can just declare “god decided it should be this way” and that’s basically the end of the discussion.

I have had some good experiences/responses of discussing things with conservatives by ‘abstracting’ the discussion. As in I don’t discuss current policy or people, but abstract group A interacting with group/person, and also make sure they feel no pressure in the discussion and can end the talk at any time with no issues. I find it helps them not just “regurgitate” things they’ve heard for their information sources.

With you on the execution of the communist/anarchist ideas. Anarchism has an “evolutionary” branch that presupposes that anarchism can be brought around by nonviolence and policy changes. That’s a version I can potentially get behind and might be worth looking at, if you have interest.

Yeah, when someone asks me my political orientation, I say “I’m at least for social democracy”. Not sure where exact I land after that.

Can’t say I’ve every talked with cowbee (name sounds familiar), but that’s good they aren’t combative and explains their views. Also, didn’t know they had a FAQ (knew about the anarchist FAQ), might have to look for the communist version.

I can kind of see cowbee’s point, but that’s so far from how I see the situation and how they could get to what they want, its tough to understand.

Haha. I think I tried the discworld books, but they didn’t grab me

If you want to check out some potential policies that could be implemented in the US, you might want to check out the community I created (PoliciesForAll). I tried to come up with policies that could be enacted locally that would reduce authoritarianism and improve people’s lives. The polices are supposed to be “boring” so that no one would really object to enacting them.

The comment you’re responding to shows this.

Someone posted this article about a study of US conservatives, but the thread must have derailed because it was deleted by the time I got to read the actual study and was ready to comment. Much of my family and my wife’s are conservatives, while we aren’t. It’s so strange in trying to understand where that disconnect is between how people treat their in-group vs those they don’t know. What they are willing to do to help people who are questionable of their own group can be amazing, but yet they have a hard time giving that forgiveness or benefit of the doubt to someone they don’t know baffles me. Like they have adopted black family members, severely mentally and physically disabled family members, lesbian family members, and super intellectual science people, and while they are either very cool to most of them or at least find them a little strange but not offensively so, they can’t find any of that sympathy or compassion for others in those same scenarios.

I was reading the study and I had the same initial feelings of understanding where these people are coming from and why they are upset, but then they just go off the deep end on finding some crazy reason why it’s the Left’s fault, or because people don’t believe in God enough or whatever. Like, I was on your side, and then you just lose it. But if I’d try to explain things, that switch turns off and they won’t hear it.

I feel the same way here with a lot of people. There are a number of things I could get behind with the anarchists and the communists both, but they just seem to lose me at the execution of these ideas. I feel their end goal is kinda the same of having consensus and cooperation of the majority of people running things, but every time I try to listen to them, the communists are fine with uses threats of force to make people try to function together, which I’m not cool with, and as much as I see the anarchists fight among themselves, they can’t build a consensus when everyone is already presorted into a group of claimed anarchists, so what are you going to do when you need to incorporate a ton of non-anarchists into society should a place suddenly become an anarchist state. I just don’t see how it would ever scale, at least not without also becoming authoritarian.

So I don’t really know what I am or could pick a “team” I’m really happy with. If I were forced, I’d probably say Social Democrat, as it at least seems practical in the US. It’s still a capitalist position, which doesn’t thrill me, but it’s the system we live in and can be reformed should we so desire, and it wouldn’t require a violent revolution to achieve. I’d rather have something more bottom up than top down, but we seem a long way away from that. If wealth inequality and the expanded unchecked power of the federal government could be even out, it wouldn’t be so bad. We just let money dictate way too much instead of the voices of the people and workers creating that wealth.

I’d gladly listen to what some of these people have to say though, especially if they keep it calm and more educational than like they’re picking a fight. Cowbee is always my example. I don’t really agree with much of what they say, but they generally stay calm, are more than willing to talk, they have legit FAQs about their beliefs prepared with a huge load of sources provided… I really feel they are taking much the same approach I do teaching people about owls and animal rehab things, but with their ML beliefs. I enjoyed reading the other day when they responded to an AskLemmy about why support Russia when it isn’t really communist or something like that, and it basically sounded like the reason many US left people basically side with Democrats: it’s far from what we want, but it’s easier to reform this thing that has a bit of what we support than to start from scratch. Do I agree? Questionable, but it at least makes some sense and would be a decent place to start talking should I be interested. And it was stated calmly and with some discussion about differences between the USSR, modern Russia, and some of China/Korea. The way they conduct themselves always has me on their side, at least in a “I may not agree with what you say, but I support your right to say it” type of way. I don’t know if I’ve really seen that from the anarchists here. I used to listen to a lot of the anarchist people on the It Could Happen Here podcasts, but there was just too much depressing stuff with corruption and hurting immigrants I stopped checking in and have been listening to Discworld audiobooks instead. I’ve been much, much happier with the Disc’s politics.

But if you want to check out the conservative study, you may enjoy it. I thought it was very well written and thought provoking. Here’s a link. Some people make better points than others, and others turn to blaming demons, so it’s a wild ride even if you hate everyone in the interviews.

1. Unemployed people. Not really worried about this as a political force.
2. People who believe in the threadiverse. I actually think this is good. I want people who believe to have more power.
3. A group of friends. This is actually the worrying one. If the high voters are all friends, then Rimu’s claim that a special clique controls what you see on Piefed is true.
   So I’ll worry about this distribution if there’s any evidence that the people who do most of the voting are friends with each other.

Yeah, I hoped after that stuff happened a few months back and Rimu said he was going to step back and not be so active as an admin, things would get better. Maybe those events made him more ridgid, but either way, he doesn’t seem to be open to potentially being wrong about something. Tough to work/collaborate with people like that.

Hmm, not sure. I think you’re right and it was calmer then, but the world was in a significantly different place then too (people are very stressed now, often rightfully so).

I get you, I generally stay away from the politics (large block list), but after listening to the “Revolutions” podcast by Mike Duncan, with the season he did on the Russian revolution (season 10), I can’t take any marx-Leninist (ml) or Stalinist seriously. They were so ridiculously incompetent and corrupt, and they only took power because people were exhausted and thought they were a joke (so didn’t push them out when they could have).

Side note, if you like History, the “Revolutions” podcast is amazing. Real hits its stride in season 3 (French revolution). The earlier (English and American) revolutions don’t have the depth of the other seasons (starting at season 3). Mike talks about how he had an idea for the podcast and it just wasn’t working for season 1 and 2 so he changed things up and it works great.

Haha. I get you, half my post upvotes go to animal pictures.

I feel like I recall the political discourse being much more civil 3 years ago, but it could just be rose colored glasses by now. I have no idea what I am politically anymore, so I seem to get along pretty well with all sides, but they also greatly drive me insane with what I feel are bad takes at the same time. I just stick to talking about animals and maybe books and TV anymore.

The discussion seems like it’s ended with, to me, him not actually engaging with what I’m saying and the data I’m showing him. He’s repeating roughly the same thing over and over. I explain that that’s not accurate and why, then we repeat…

Sadly, it’s pretty much what I expected from following along with his previous controversial moves.

I think if the anarchists ever get a proper piefed fork working, it may help temper Rimu’s actions and help him be more receptive and collaborative.

I’m having a discussion with Rimu in another thread about it at the moment. To the data I’m pulling, it looks like the cap severely reduces posts and comments…

I agree, a better voting system seems like it should be possible. Even if it just separates subscriber votes vs non-subscribers, I think it would be an improvement.

I already ran out of votes (took me under an hour, upvoting comments makes it go real quick). So, maybe I can come back tomorrow upvote you, to show anyone who may come to this thread later that I thought your comment was worthwhile.

I’m not going to change my voting habits so, maybe I’ll switch back to Lemmy or maybe the Piefed fork the anarchists are working on. I’m going to see if .zip admins will change/remove the limit before I make any decisions.

I’m more than fine with “ooh I like this” comments from people who have never commented on my stuff before. I just like to see who is checking in really. I browse the lemvotes lists from time to time to see who my regular lurkers are. I still appreciate them, and would of course love them to interact with me, but I’m still happy that they’re here having fun even if it’s just observing. I try to stay positive and encouraging though to show it’s safe to comment with questions or simple and silly things. I started off knowing nothing about the owls, and I’m still no real expert, so I want the community to be as approachable as possible. I try to keep it clear it’s our group, not my group. That said, as you say, there is something to not talking just for the sake of talking. If everything went: i love this owl - i also love this guy’s owl - this! - etc, that would be pretty lame.

I also waited until I was back at my laptop to reply since the response was going to be longer! I have a lot of down time during the day, so that lets me do more in depth responses. I don’t want to short change people on info!

We have a real simplistic voting system, which makes it approachable, but IMO, not the most useful. There are lots of posts I wish I could upvote in a “thanks for sharing” way, but also downvote in a “I hate this thing is happening” way. I feel weird upvoting something that gets me riled up! Similarly, it feels conflicting to upvote a post where I think the bulk of the comments are bad takes. The OP did a good job, but fervent people with different and often what I feel ignorant or incitive views overrun the comments, and I don’t want to steer people to that kind of mess. But at that point the voting would take up as much time as reading the posts if it were so granular.

I did make an effort to upvote more people yesterday, so we’ve had a positive effect on each other! Supporting each other is what makes a small place like the Fediverse work and feel real in an age of mega-sites.

One of the reasons I don’t comment much is usually someone has already written a similar thing to what I would say. So, instead of essentially duplicating the comment or putting a (in my opinion) worthless comment like “This” or similar, I’ll just upvote and move on. As Squirrel and OpenStars already wrote something covering my perspective, I wouldn’t have commented on this post, if you have asked specifically about high upvoters.

As I’m writing this I just realized part of the reason why I don’t comment/post more is that usually I’m using an app on a phone and its a pain to go back and forth to reference information in different posts/sources/links.

I get your point about blocking, but I feel there are enough posts and comment in the threadiverse that wading through everything on an off chance something, in a usually uninteresting (to me) community, isn’t worth it. I’m alright missing some good content to better weed out the (to me) irritating/negative/bad (elon vs melon). I would rather spend my limited time supporting good content where I know I’m more likely to find it.

Also, one of the reasons I use “New” in the “All” feed is so I can support/encourage new or inconsistent communities (and find new subscribed).

I think you are definitely right about a good comment being worth more than an upvote, and pretty much follow your behavior with regards to posters who haven’t provided any commentary on a link. While I may appreciate the link, I’m not going to try and kickstart a discussion with someone who I see as not having put in the effort to start a discussion on their own post. Again, I see it as my time could be better spent elsewhere.

I would say every voting methodology should be welcome in the fediverse (except for downvoting things you aren’t interested in, asshole move in my opinion). Agree they are complementary approaches

As I say a few paragraphs above, if I’m going to post or comment I want it to be something that contributes and people will appreciate (not duplicating other peoples comments or posts). As it definitely sucks to put a bunch of effort into something and then not have anyone upvote or comment on it. See my second (inactive) modded community PolicesForAll for what happens with little to no support.

Haha. Our conversation has made make a few more comments than I normally would

I’m pretty sure I’m somewhere in the top 2 dozen posters, and from scrolling .World’s top communities, I think I have the largest community having posts from primarily a single user, and it’s a topic I consider rather niche, owls. Nobody else here needs to know about owls. Most will not randomly encounter one or need to know any of the things I share about them.

I attempt to make other users ignore all that, not just to entertain or educate, but to make a mysterious creature most will never see feel like a part of your neighborhood, and one that they will value and want to protect.

It makes me a bit sad when I hear people block communities that they have no interest in. Maybe if it’s something political or vaguely/explicity sexual, I get blocking that stuff, but some of my favorite comments are from people who don’t consider themselves animal/bird people that end up enjoying what I do. I think that probably outweighs either upvotes or comments for me. Upvotes I think are fairly simple to get and can be games, comments require more effort, but getting someone to appreciate something for the first time feels like a milestone for both parties. I opened someone’s mind to a new perspective, and they either were moved by my passion on the subject or I found and shared something so unique it very mildly changed someone. I think that’s really special and if too many people just say “what do I care about some birds for?” and shut me out, I feel that’s a loss for them more than it is for me.

I used to block a few keywords, mostly trump, elon, and musk, but one day I noticed I couldn’t see my own post. Someone helped me figure out the keyword blocker wasn’t so smart, and my post contained something along the lines of “melons” and it saw the “elon” in there and blocked my own post. So I scrapped the keyword blocks after that. If you block “slam” and all variations, you might miss one of my favorite videos of a Great Horned Owl slamming into a Bald Eagle in a surprise attack over territory. Not saying you’re in the wrong for doing it, those “so and so slams whoshisface” are dumb, I just worry about missing the exceptions to the rules.

That’s the same reason I’m a Top 6 Hour scroller. I go pretty far down to see newer stuff. I used to browse New earlier on when we were much smaller and do like you do of trying to get people off the 1 mark. I’d try to leave a comment wherever I could, since I think an engaging comment is more powerful than a like.

I try to comment in places I think can get dialog going. If a post is just an article or headline with no commentary, I tend to pass by. I guess I’m here more to actually connect with other people. For actual news and information, I tend to just go to primary sources myself. For the Fediverse, I want to interact with you guys, so if someone just plops something down without adding something of themselves, it’s much less interesting for me. I typically reserve likes for things I interact with. Even if it isn’t something I have something to say about, if it makes me actually chuckle or makes me think deeper about a topic, then I vote. So I feel somewhat backwards with how your comment makes me see your method working.

It sounds like you upvote for participation that is fostering further activity. You seem less likely to react with in depth comments since they take time away from you upvoting other people’s activity. Finally, at least on this account, your post count looks low, so that seems to be your least used avenue of building up things.

I don’t disagree with any of that, even though it’s the opposite of my approach of sharing with you what I think you’d like of my interests first, sharing what I like about others’ interests second, and finally a few thumbs up for people that made me smile but I really have nothing to say about. It’s honestly most likely a good thing, as this way we’re complimentary to each other’s respective style. You’re doing what I’m not.

Maybe I feel we’re bigger than we are, as I tend to have people come to me here now, as I’m kicking off conversations. I’m pretty top-down these days, while you’re still building up folks from the ground up. That’s a more graspable concept for me that I hadn’t been considering. I do it for the people that are doing it for me, to show I appreciate them, but maybe I should be spreading that wealth a bit further. I had been picturing hue upvote counts as something that diluted the experience, but if you’re casting them far and wide, I do think that has the positive impact you mention. I’ll have to mind myself a bit better and make sure I’m doing my part to see your POV a bit more like I used to. After all, since my normal stance is upvotes are simple and low effort, I’d be a bit lacking if I wasn’t doing a good bit of it myself.

Thanks for reminding me a bit of the importance of small gestures!

Yeah, there was an announcement about the update being scheduled on .zip. I asked if they were going to implement the quota or not.

Haven’t heard back yet, but it could take some time if they are discussing it amongst themselves first.

And thank you for your contributions. Fedilytics is a great tool for discovery.

I post 2-3 a week now, and comment about once a day. I mod 2 communities (1 active, but the only poster: fedilytics).

I’ve been in the threadiverse since the Reddit 3rd party exodus. I heavily curate my feeds (viewed by “New”):

• Subscribed feed: “I want to see everything that some one posts to the community” because I’m generally going to like all of it (lots of animal communities, but also some more niche tech communities and general fediverse information communities).

• All feed: I block all the communities I’m not interested in and will never be interested in (a quick rough estimate is I’ve blocked ~1000 communities and ~20 instances, also the keywords “Slam”, “Slammed”, “Slams”, “Slamming”). This leaves me with a “I will often like some of what this community has” as a ‘second’ subscribed feed.

• Just quickly looked in the past 24 hours I upvoted 70 posts in my subscribed feed, probably another 40 in the all feed. Then there’s the comment upvotes. I don’t have an estimate on that, but probably a bigger total. Basically, if someone is positively contributing, they get an upvote. I especially like moving people from “1” to “2” to show someone saw their contribution and liked it, in the hopes they will get encouraged to comment/post more.

• Honestly, I would upvote more, but if someone posts a link, I have to read or at least skim the linked content before I will upvote them (some good comments don’t get upvoted because I don’t want to read or skim a bunch of links at the time).

I’m not in favor of the voting limit. I think OpenStars@piefed.social and squirrel@cake.kobel.fyi articulate the reasons well. I am a little biased in favor of squirrel though. They always upvote my fedilytics community posts and my posts don’t get many votes, so I appreciate that someone looked at the effort I made and signaled they appreciated it. Which I suppose does go to some of the points they are making in their comments.

Let me know if you have any follow up questions.

How do you feel about a tiny group having this much influence over what news you receive?

Imo, if people that don’t vote get bothered, they should start voting themselves.