This is a thought I had mostly to do with Lemmy but I feel likes it’s relevant elsewhere in Fediverse.

As far as I know Lemmy doesn’t lock posts after a set amount of time like Reddit does and I feel like this is a good thing for smaller niche communities. For example if I created one for a one off video game or cancelled TV show it could be hard to generate new content to post to really help it take off. It would be nice to see people engaging with old posts when they stumble across a community and subscribe to it.

I feel like I haven’t see it a ton yet but I hope it’s a way Lemmy and the Fediverse can be different from sites like Reddit.

  • The Picard Maneuver@startrek.website
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    10 months ago

    I’ve noticed that some people do use other filters than “Hot” or they scroll back in smaller communities, because I’ll occasionally get comment replies to posts I made months ago. It’s cool to see.

  • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Let’s all agree right now that we’re not going to be a community that necro-shames.

    EDIT: JUST TO BE CLEAR I MEAN MAKING PEOPLE FEEL BAD FOR POSTING IN OLD THREADS AND ONLY THAT ONE USAGE OF THE TERM

  • amanaftermidnight@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    We don’t know how the fediverse would play out in the long term but I expect a few things:

    • Lemmy devs will implement locking old posts in the future
    • instance owners will decide on their post locking policies
    • Many instances will not survive for as long as Reddit survived till today
    • Third party archivers (perhaps archive.org among others) will need to step in and archive posts. Ofc archived posts is not interactible.
    • Corroded@leminal.spaceOP
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      10 months ago

      I agree with your points. Especially the third one. I do hope a majority of instances op-out of locking posts but I could see large instances like lemmy.world definitely jumping to do it and focus more on new content and expansion

  • finthechat@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    This is the way it should be.

    I’ve never understood the people who get upset over ‘necroing’ a thread, whether it is on an old school forum or something formatted like Reddit.

    • Corroded@leminal.spaceOP
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      10 months ago

      I think it necroing posts on Reddit makes sense. There’s a lot of very specific posts that can vary slightly from each other but I find with forums you can get a general post for a topic that has 30+ pages of responses and it can be a bit of a pain to comb through all of them at times. In my experience I see a lot of people linking to other comments in the forum because something has already been brought up a few times.

      This is basically what @technomad@slrpnk.net said about beating a dead horse but I feel like it’s slightly more tolerable with a Reddit style system where there’s more posts with at least minor differences. It’s a bit easier to follow.

      This could also just be the forums that I have used shaping my opinion

    • technomad@slrpnk.net
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      10 months ago

      Maybe something similar to do with ‘beating a dead horse’

      the problem/issue was (potentially) already discussed, and renewing the issue is tiresome for the regulars who see it repetitively brought up? This is just my guess.

      • finthechat@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        For technical discussion, sure. I’ll be one of the first people to say look at the sticky, look at the pins, look at the megathread, read the FAQ, read the wiki.

        For purely social discussion like casual chat, entertainment discussion, or random musings, I would say it doesn’t make sense.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        10 months ago

        If it is about a problem they had and the thread didn’t have an answer, then they should be obliged to necro if they found a solution.

  • GarytheSnail@programming.dev
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    10 months ago

    Oddly enough, just last week I got a reddit notification that someone had replied to a comment I made… 11 years ago.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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    10 months ago

    One thing standing in the way of this is the inability to move identities in Lemmy/Kbin. This is my 3rd time with a “Maximum Derek” user in the Threadiverse; my first was on Kbin back in June when it was really struggling, then I went to a Lemmy instance that just disappeared one day. If you try to engage with any of my posts I made while on those servers, I’ll never know it.

  • Papanca@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I’ve had it happen that i joined a community and commented in some interesting thread and only then noticed that it was 3 or even 6 months old

  • Maxnmy's@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Perfectly fine in my opinion. It isn’t like oldschool forums where a reply bumps a thread to page 1.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    I’ve seen comments and replies on my posts, that came weeks or months after I made them. I’ll respond to them if they are anything more than “Haha yeah that’s cool!”

    There has to be more to add to the conversation, otherwise it will be like posting a 3 year old article to the news community.

    I definitely encourage people not to be shy to post and comment on stale communities that haven’t seen recent activity, that can get the ball rolling to revive it.

  • MBM@lemmings.world
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    10 months ago

    Hm I always avoid replying to anything older than, say, 2 days because I assume it’s pointless and/or it annoys people

    • Land_Strider@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Pointless part I can understand, but annoying? What’s more, it should prove what you make effort to post can still get engagement over time, and not scattered to winds.

    • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      Depends on the content and context. Some older post, even years old, might totally okay for discussion. Just like those traditional forums with years of ongoing threads.

  • Prouvaire@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    It would be nice to see people engaging with old posts when they stumble across a community and subscribe to it.

    One barrier that will make this difficult is that instances only get a community’s feed from the moment they first subscribe to it, if that community’s home instance is on another server. So if you’re a user on - say - leminal.space and you’re the first person on that server to subscribe to - say - Musicals@kbin.social then you will not see any of that community’s old posts, only posts created (or boosted) after you’ve subscribed. This makes it difficult to engage with old content unless other people on your instance have been members of that community for much longer.

    This is one of the issues with the fediverse model that doesn’t exist in a centralised model like reddit. And - sadly - smaller, niche communities are the ones most likely to be affected by this limitation, because they’re the ones least likely to be federated to a large number of instances. It makes smaller, less active communities look even more inactive than they actually are.

    • smeg@feddit.uk
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      10 months ago

      I thought you still got all the posts, just not any of the comments?

    • Shyfer@ttrpg.network
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      10 months ago

      This can’t be true, right? I swear I’ve subscribed to communities or magazines and have seen older posts on them before. Otherwise, they’d always be blank.

          • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            You can pull posts and comments into an instance by searching their original link in the search bar. It’s a bit clunky and doesn’t transfer vote counts but it works.

            I do hope it’s fixed in the future since it is annoying, though since all the APub services have this issue, even the very polished ones it might be a while.