Due to the large number of reports we’ve received about recent posts, we’ve added Rule 7 stating “No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.”
In general, we allow a post’s fate to be determined by the amount of downvotes it receives. Sometimes, a post is so offensive to the community that removal seems appropriate. This new rule now allows such action to be taken.
We expect to fine-tune this approach as time goes on. Your patience is appreciated.
This is a tough one. “Low effort” is where engagement metrics start dictating what kind of discourse we get. I think the real metric should be whether someone read what came before and actually responded to it.
We built a project trying to measure public opinion through thoughtful email replies instead of hot takes and quick reactions. The pattern I see is that most “engagement” is people pasting headlines, quoting selectively, or dropping one-liners. The good stuff happens when people actually wrestle with an idea.
Moderation works best when it focuses on whether a contribution adds new information or perspective. A short comment can be high effort if it synthesizes well. A long ramble is low effort if it adds nothing.
This is fine if the post is something insanely low effort.
But I do worry if this ends up being too aggressive.
One of the things that made reddit so awful is how over moderated it was.
I don’t really take issue with dozens of posts by newbies asking the same basic question over and over. I used to be one and am occasionally back there again if I start a new hobby. Hopefully newcomers don’t get pushed off by overly sensitive moderation.
It would be helpful if you could provide a hypothetical example of what is considered a “low effort” post.
I don’t really take issue with dozens of posts by newbies asking the same basic question over and over. I used to be one and am occasionally back there again if I start a new hobby. Hopefully newcomers don’t get pushed off by overly sensitive moderation.
I’m not sure if I agree with this, unless you need clarification on something specific the forum like nature and search should allow you to find answers to previous questions without asking it again.
But I do agree overmoderation is bad. I swear if communities start implementing a karma system…
Lemmy apps already have karma systems.
What?? which ones?
Probably any with tags is what they mean, considering I have them tagged as a transphobe, I’m sure lots of people have.
My question was so bad I cannot understand what I ment by which ones.
Which apps for Lemmy have a form of karma.
Voyager, for example, tracks how much you have upvoted or downvoted each user, which is so highly localized I can’t consider it a karma system.
The person you replied to is probably mad because they get down voted a lot for being shitty.
Oh right I needed to click on the show context button 🤦
I couldn’t agree more, I join selfhosting communities all over and not just because I need more stuff to host, because of the community. I love getting to read through the questions and answers, even when they are questions that could be answered by just reading the man page… Maybe it just reminds me of the good old days as I’m getting older and remember asking a lot of similar questions.
Lemmy started off over moderated and has only gotten worse. Moderation here is honestly worse than Reddit already, since we can see the ridiculous comment removals and bans and their reasons.
I’ve seen slightly offtopic posts deleted here, even after some interesting conversation in the comments. I think Lemmy is small, and it could help the platform if conversations and posts are preserved even if they are not 100% on topic. But I respect the work of mods, it’s their decision how they run a community, even if I don’t agree with them all time.
But just as a backup, if things take an unexpected turn, here are some similar, but much less active communities:
This is also to the “low effort” posters, if you disagree with your post’s removal you can post it to other similar communities.
I’ve posted here and had it deleted. So I don’t bother.
The instance I’m a member of had an unused selfhosting comm, and I started using it. Other people did too. Thanks for the shout out.
Would you agree that a post written by a LLM is “low effort”?
This is a good point. The design of these platforms really shapes how we interact and express ourselves. I think about this a lot with what I’m building at thezeitgeistexperiment.com where we’re trying to use AI to understand public opinion from text, rather than just rely on engagement metrics. It’s an interesting challenge.
Didn’t downvote, tho I see someone downvoted both of your duplicate comments. Hilarious. That’s a rather interesting project. Is this a local LLM or commercially available?
This is a good point. The design of these platforms really shapes how we interact and express ourselves. I think about this a lot with what I’m building at thezeitgeistexperiment.com where we’re trying to use AI to understand public opinion from text, rather than just rely on engagement metrics. It’s an interesting challenge.
How much effort went into the OP? “Low”? Gotta love that irony.
Wouldn’t that rule drive more verbose drivel noise to evade appearing low effort?
Sometimes low effort’s all that’s called for. Methinks this is not the correct criteria found yet. Patiently awaiting the search for remedy to apparently continue.
Wait, is this about the posts from [email protected]? We don’t need a new rule for that, they were spamming.
Edit: I am also concerned that there are no mod responses so far. Seems like this is a proclamation, not a discussion.
Does this include Youtube videos? Or at least Youtube videos without a clear description and summary?
Those constant ad money farming posts really lower the quality of this sub.
Yes. Posting a fucking link to a yt video is low effort
Seems there are 2 kinds - video links with almost no text, just farming visits, and video links with a wall of text.
Both suck. Videos, in general, suck.
So much of what goes on here needs text, lots of it. Video is slow and cumbersome.
If the quality of the video is good, I like to see it here.
At minimum there should be a good description of what the video is about, with no clickbait.
Self-hosting is inherently not low effort. This isn’t memes or shitposts. This is people helping people that are trying to help themselves, a.k.a. people making an effort. Communities rely on the discretion of mods and rules specific to the community focus. If this community didn’t have some kind of bar to meet for low effort posts it would drive away participants and contributors more interested in higher effort and more interesting topics. It gets real old seeing people ask and answer the same basic questions about Plex, Jellyfin, *arrs, and docker all the time. Worrying about if this rule will be abused seems premature. Besides (as others have pointed out) there are other communities with similar interests, if you’re that concerned that your spammy no-context YouTube video got deleted, please go try your luck elsewhere.
Why? Why would you remove a post that some people deem “low effort”? People can just ignore the posts if they think it’s low effort.
More censorship and gate keeping has never been an good option.
Because it’s clutter and annoying to see “Heyyy, is jellyfin a good video app?” ad nauseam, when a simple search would answer their question faster and without wasting everyone’s time and energy.
Modlogs are visible, if there’s truly a censorship issue then we’re free to upsticks and move to another community. That’s the advantage of the Fediverse.
Imagine becoming upset over simple questions and resorting to reporting them. It’s similar to the current job market positions advertised as entry-level but requiring a minimum of five years of experience.
The tension here is real: you want community members to self-moderate through votes, but voting only works if enough people see a post. Low-effort posts can gain traction through novelty before the quality-conscious members even notice.
The “subjective” part is honest, at least. That beats pretending there’s an objective standard. Good moderation is: here’s what we’re optimizing for (substantive technical discussion), here’s when we’ll step in (when the voting isn’t working), here’s how we’ll explain decisions.
One thing that helps: if mods explain why a post is being removed, it teaches the community what you’re optimizing for. Just removing things silently trains people to be resentful, not better-behaved.
