I think it's great that so many people want to build and grow Lemmy, but why are we doing it by copying over Reddit content? It didn't seem as bad when it was funny pics or memes or whatever, but now I'm seeing discussion threads, which doesn't make sense to me.
I can kind of see it if a Reddit mod decides to move their forum from there to here, and wants to start with their existing content, but otherwise I'm not sure this is a good thing.
The importance of jump starting can't be understated. Most people will go to the community that has content. If a community is empty, a lot of people won't even start participating in it. Plenty of people who make posts want them to be discussed, so they're only looking for active communities.
I think I have a bit of a bias against trying to make Lemmy a copy of Reddit, but I also feel like it doesn't make sense to copy old discussion threads. Someone asked a question on Reddit and got an answer. We don't need that duplicated here, in my opinion.
Again, i think a mod relocating their community is a different situation.
Although when I see such communities not having any replies to reddit share/RSS/bot on Lemmy communities`, work days or a week it starts to feel like that fire 🔥 isn't starting.
I'm personally archiving some of the great content from my community on Reddit because it meant so much to me, and to lose it would be a shame. I think it's important for us to preserve the foundational content of our communities.
Curious what tooling you're using. I think they all have the 1000 post limit but I at least found BDFRX easy to use to back up my sub's 1000 most recent posts and am just looking to host that and link to it in a future community here on lemmy
I am PMing users on Reddit to ask permission to reshare their OC, and then manually posting here once I obtain it. It gives me the chance to give the posts a pass for typos and such, which is nice.
If it was a user who posted content there and decided they'd rather have it here, that would make sense. But this appears to be bots scraping Reddit subs for content and copying big chunks here. I don't know about you, but I'm not likely to respond to that kind of post. I don't think it fosters discussion or helps us.
I'm doing it with communities that need a jump-start, and it seems to be sparking conversation in those posts. However, I'm not grabbing discussions, only links/title/description.
Edit: also trying not to spam, it checks top posts once an hour, and only will post one link an hour to each sub, and checks if the link was already posted to make sure it's not duplicating.
They want to try to attract more people to a community by bootstrapping content.
They are trying to artificially inflate their instance for nefarious reasons.
Personally, I think adding some of your favorite Reddit posts is fine as long as you don't blindly copy over everything from a subreddit. I have a couple communities that I brought over that I like, but without content, they mean nothing.
I think it's a great way to get things started. People coming to check things out and seeing content are more likely to stay and create their own content.
And there is so much knowledge deposited in reddit that it would be unwise to let its future on the hands of gold seekers. I wish we had more time for the backups, and that those that overwrote their posts and comments can share that lost info here.
Most content driven platforms have the same problem and initial practice due to the chicken-and-egg problem. If you don’t have content, users not gonna come; if users aren’t there, they won’t be submitting content. So to kick start a community, you’d need a group of vocal users contributing a lot of content and interacting with them.
Same reason I want more forums like Fedora Discussion, Ask Ubuntu, and Stack Overflow on the Fediverse. I like the Fediverse as a way to see information and have discussion on it. More good content, the better. Without good content, I would never have used Reddit in the first place.
I'm with you. There are certain kinds of things I could see as being a benefit here. Like a recent news item upvoted there and posted in a news community here makes sense - it's a good seed post that people here can comment on. But I'm seeing discussion threads copied that I doubt many people are going to comment on here. Reams of discussion posts that have no activity are doing nothing to help grow Lemmy.
When googling information i usually end the search with “reddit” as Reddit makes it harder to view without signing in to the app i want to be able to google with the word lemmy instead so having the information here is helpful
I don't know about this one. I mean Reddit memes don't always originate from Reddit, time and time again id see old internet content from 12 years ago from ifunny or 9gag etc.
I also think that if a lot of the users have been in a Reddit tunnel for a long time, of course they're going to think similarly... questions even on Reddit get repeated ad nauseum (e.g "redditors, what is the most nsfw thing that's happened to you" and people commenting about actual OHSA stuff instead of sexy stuff= haha).
I'm not entirely sure humans are capable of have original thoughts 100% of the time. Probably not even 20%. That's especially true if they're getting all their info/humor from the same places.
Slightly off topic, but OMG I would absolutely love a community that's "NSFW, but actually OSHA violations." It would probably be a pain in the buns to mod, though.
So it's entirely fair to take all our clothes and furniture and appliances and the carpets and light fixtures and wallpaper along with us when we split up. We paid for all that in the first place, after all.
I'm not making an ethical criticism, I'm saying coping over a bunch of discussion threads from another site isn't the kind of content most people here are going to engage with. We see post after post copied from a bot - why would we go into the thread and make a comment?
I used to mod quite a few subreddits I created and some others. There are a few worth dumping and reimporting to preserve work of others which is valuable.
I've been deleting my content on Reddit, and while I'm sad to see some of it go, I would not be happy to find it's been copied over to Lemmy without my permission. Also, a lot of what I post on any forum is meant to be part of the conversation happening when I post, and having it sit around getting stale for 10+ years isn't necessarily a good thing. If people liked what I wrote and wanted to hold onto it in their own records, that's fine, but that's not the same as migrating my content to a different platform, context, and audience. Reposting takes control of the content out of my hands, and puts it in theirs, and possibly makes my content benefit people I don't like. (Fortunately, it is extremely unlikely anyone does want to repost my content, lol).
As far as whether it's good for Lemmy... I think it depends on whether or not we want to recreate a subreddit. Putting up the same content as a particular sub is going to tend to recreate the vibe of that sub. IMO that could be either very good or very bad, depending on the sub.
Recently I was reading on r/modcoord about the r/canning mod team being served the adminmail of doom. The top mod there explained that they are a few individuals willing to moderate that particular sub because they are savvy enough to moderate it properly. As in, if you say something wrong on this sub it could end up with people dead of botulism because of bad advice.
Another example which I'm more involded in is r/electronic_cigarette. The sub has a ton of relevant advice, reviews and recipes so moving its content would instantaneously bring up its knowledge base to the fediverse.
Now if it's just to fill the place with casual chitchat oh well, it'll happen soon anyway. Won't be a major game changer if some of it is imported from reddit.
There is one thing though we probably should pay attention to: is it legal? How far does reddit "own" the content we bring and can they cause mischief and lawsuits for plagiarism for such imported content?
I mean a good portion of us aren't leaving reddit because we dislike reddit's content or userbase. We left to get away from the abusive admins. If we can smuggle the community and content in our coat pockets on our way out the door, that's just stealing back what is rightfully ours to begin with.
I'm overly pedantic I know, I know, but something about calling it Reddit content rubs me the wrong way, like it implies ownership. Reddit Inc. the Profit-Driven Company doesn't have a copyright on threads like "What's the best live band you've ever seen?", and if folks want to have that discussion, but not on Reddit, I think it's great to offer options.
I copy content for /m/DunderMifflin, which is a tiny magazine for The Office that I founded and moderate. It's easier to copy stuff over than to think it up yourself, natch, and having some new content there gives people a reason to subscribe and possibly comment. It's not a long-term plan. I see it as a temporary measure to increase the legitimacy of the site.
While I'm not a fan of seeing duplicate content / discussed ripped some elsewhere, we're still in the wild west / expansion phase, so that's to be expected. Until we start getting mass adoption it's pretty normal to expect the content to be "hey look what Reddit did not" or "look at this interesting Reddit post"
I guess that's my main point: I don't think it does. Have you found yourself wanting to make a comment in any of the discussion threads copied from Reddit by a bot? I haven't.
I don't agree. So many fantastic subs are based on discussions with no links. HobbyDrama, BestOfRedditorUpdates, AskHistorians, ExplainItLikeImFive, TIFU, AmITheAsshole, etc.