Enfield [he/him]

Admittedly, I agree with you in making the footprint leaner if it can be helped. The Lemmy UI and best practices working with that would ideally handle flagging the bot and let people make informed decisions from there.

I was trying to strike a balance between keeping it lean and keeping it visible. @rikudou’s concern was that spoiler folding would lead to people missing the bot as they scanned through the comments. At least with how Lemmy UI currently is, I have to concede that I think they have a point. Last I checked on the default Lemmy UI theme at least, the Bot flag is relatively easy to miss scanning through comments. Moderator and Administrator icons are already relatively low-key, but the Bot flag currently uses the more discrete body text color and no outlining. I didn’t even know bots had a name flag until you pointed it out.

It’s a delicate balance between keeping the comment reasonably slim but also reasonably visible. I think I was trying to come up with a solution that works with the limitations as-is, but your recommendation is definitely what we ought to go with in the long-term if we can make it happen. It seems to me like it would be better to solve a fair chunk of this through the UI itself rather than bulking up the copy.

I get what you’re getting at there, but I don’t think it would necessarily be an issue. I think that if you were to put the summary itself under the spoiler and nothing else, it would be reasonable to provide a couple more lines to explain the bot. I’d think that even with a couple of extra lines of copy it would take less real estate most of the time than if the bot continued to just provide the summary and two lines.

I’m also recalling that AutoTLDR on Reddit had some extra bits like an FAQ and providing extended summaries. Links to that stuff might also help to balance your visibility. I think the bulk of your screen real estate comes from the summary, so this content would be less of an issue in comparison.

🤖 I’m a bot that summarizes online articles! This summary is X% shorter than the article:

Summary in spoiler

[Filler text follows]
Oh, using ChatGPT to generate filler text, are we? How delightfully modern! Gone are the days of the monotonous "lorem ipsum" that Latin scholars might swoon over. Now, we can be graced with filler text in English, tailored to our whims by a machine that's fluent in more than just dead languages. Let's all take a moment to applaud the user's avant-garde approach to filling that empty space on a webpage.

But wait, there's more to this cutting-edge decision. Not only have we replaced a centuries-old tradition with a dash of AI flair, but we've also managed to make filler text even more inconsequential and pretentious. Why stick with the tried and true when you can have a machine generate something that's equally irrelevant but far more verbose? Truly, the future of procrastination is here, and it's dressed in a cloak of technological grandiosity. Bravo!

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My programming is open source on GitHub and developed by @[email protected]. Contact my developer on either platform to ask questions, send feedback, and report issues.

On the other hand, maybe it could be hidden by a spoiler tag? I think @[email protected] mentioned this being a possibility

Yep.

::: spoiler [Title]
[Content]
:::

If I want to talk about my hobby I should go make the content I want, but it takes… skill, and I just don’t have it. Also I’m new and don’t think I have a good grasp of what kinds of posts the community’ll like.

I’m mighty rusting at drawing myself; I’m admittedly a bit subpar at my drawing compared to my art peers, I’d wager. Getting back on the saddle and posting publicly feels a bit intimidating, but I think that’s less community specific and more just general jitters. Something I’d like to embrace and encourage around here, however, is an appreciation for amateur work, questions, and input. The vast majority of us by wide margins are by no means masters of what we do, and I’d love to see what we offer given motivation and appreciation. Breaking out of the mentality I’ve carried from other places is challenging, but considering Beehaw’s values, I’d hope that this is something I could put into action.
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As for what the community likes, I’m starting to come around to stop trying to read the community’s mind. I think the best way to find out what the community gets into might end up being to just start posting things and see for yourself. I’ll admit I find it easier said than done to get into that mindset, and it means there’s gonna be duds, but I also think it can help to stop that sort of content paralysis.

Edit (2023-08-07 T 08:50 Z): It occurred to me that I forgot to directly mention traits that might bias what I offer. On top of a general confidence and enthusiasm for Beehaw, I’m also a moderator for !creative and !askbeehaw. I strive to keep things balanced and outside of my biases, but it feels right for me to explicitly bring that up for transparency.

I can respect it’s a tough issue to put briefly, but I think I get what you’re putting down. “Our content isn’t diverse enough”, I suppose? “We have too much news and not enough anything else”? I 'unno, but I get the impression that you’d like to see more content that isn’t news. I’m not too sure what to make of conflating that with “a more positive, uplifting, inclusive place”, but I’d think it’s got something to do with “negative to downright doomscrolling doomerism.” Do let me know if I missed the mark here or there and I’d be down to talk that out, but I’m confident enough in that perspective to run with it at least for an initial comment.

And, welp, yeah. I think there’s some truth there. What’s up with that? I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s people with a better read of the room, and there’s definitely people that are more properly active than I am, but I’d like to say I’m passionate about Beehaw’s fundamentals and continued success. Hopefully that’s good enough to say I have some theories as to what’s up and what we can do about it.

1. I’d wager there was a sort of honeymoon phase with Beehaw and the Lemmy fediverse with the initial API scramble and Reddit following through on that. I’d also wager that honeymoon phase has been over for a few weeks now. So now we might be doing things like spending less time on Beehaw than we first were, or taking off the rose-tint shades that often come with a honeymoon phase and realizing that Beehaw’s means and ways has imperfections and drawbacks just like any other platform inevitably does.
   Put another way, finding a positive sounding community is easy. Engaging and creating that positive sounding community is harder.

2. I’d think that the Reddit migration is also going to bring elements of old habits from Reddit, both in Beehaw and in people accessing it through federation. I think that Reddit’s content leaned pretty heavily on news, so it wouldn’t surprise me if a fair chunk of Reddit migrants continue to lean into posting news content.
   I’d imagine that our federated activity amplifies that aspect. !technology is a pretty good example of this. Our site sidebar stats say we clock in around 12.7k registered users. !technology has 34.2k subscribers, and that’s not even considering federated users that might be lurking or posting without subscribing. There’s like a whole 'nother Beehaw and a half in there. Admittedly it wouldn’t surprise me if these federated users are less in touch with Beehaw’s values or intentions. That’s not a knock on those that go through the due diligence to inform themselves on how we like to do things, but Lemmy makes the barrier of entry for federated users a pretty low bar without granular ways to raise it.

This is all to say that we, as in Beehaw users, might not be as active as it seems, and that something is gonna take space.
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Regrettably I’m not so sure if there’s an easy answer to this. This runs the risk of coming off a bit like a smartass answer, especially because I wouldn’t call myself a bastion of activity, but I really do think it’s the best means to help resolve this issue: use the thing the way you’d like to see it used.

Create things and share your progress and end product. Share the cool stuff you excel at, but share the small and goofy stuff and the experiments in other things too. Share the successes, share the failures. Take pictures of neat things you see in person, get the links to cool stuff you see online, and bring us in the loop about it. Give people some discussion and context in your OP’s body—some hooks to help egg on conversation, if you will—and find ways to get in the conversation down in the comments.

I was hoping to get more active after my vacation at the top of the month, but I’ve been swamped with family errands and it’s been a bit of a bummer. But I got some neat photos burning a hole in my pocket, creative projects I’m itching to get back to, a few neat links to share, and ideas of topics to talk shop with in a community or two. It’s been a kind of epiphany rocking around my mind, thinking about how to generate community engagement. We could talk days on end about stuff like our philosophy, gray areas with content, community activities, or indulging in Tea. I’m starting to think that the most powerful solution to engagement and content issues is both the easiest and hardest: just get busy posting. Gotta plant flowers in the garden to bring in the bees, y’know? 🐝

i think my first personal action towards that is to stop giving a damn about trying to aim for “Prime Time” and just start posting, even when its O-Dark-Thirty by US hours 🥴

Almost makes me think that we have a fighting chance to make tags on Lemmy work. Part of me would want to see tags get some unique formatting like post flairs, but even just inline tags would be a leg-up.

Or maybe both in-line and post tags. Neat stuff to daydream 🤔.

There are a few examples that come to mind of rotating brand elements, both large and small, that make me think there’s a lot of potential to give a place and community some flavor and fun. I get the vibe you’re already on board with this kind of thing, but for the sake of putting it on record and giving everyone else a sense of what’s possible, I think it’d be cool to give a sense of the kind of things we can do in the future. Admittedly I’m 99% sure that these ideas are impractical, if not impossible, with Lemmy’s current UI abilities. Still, I think it may be good for the community to keep stuff like this in the backburner in case the potential opens up. This is spit balling, admittedly. Hopefully spit balling we’ll be able to act on eventually, though.

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I remember Apollo for Reddit had a massive library of app icons that users could independently choose from. There was what I would call the primary mark and a few color or smaller derivatives of that, but there were also some wildly different ideas that were loosely tied to one another. Some were closely aligned with the original Apollo, others were barely connected to that visual identity. Either way, Chris got a lot of artists involved in the app icons aspect to Apollo. I forgot if they were commissioned or if it was some part of a community volunteering bit, but it was a cool way to add another touch of customizing and involvement to the app.

Newgrounds is an example that I think goes even farther than Apollo. There are visual elements that remain consistent, like the logo, logotype, and site iconography. But every so often (IIRC, something like once a month or once a season,) they’ll bring in a community member to change up most of the site’s color scheme and the site’s padding graphics. I can’t seem to get the Wayback Machine to load a good capture on my end, so I went ahead and took a screenshot for archrival’s sake.

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I’m leaning toward saying that the new logo is an improvement, design wise. Digital icons, let alone content like tab icons, will always require some sacrifices in detail in order to be legible. This logo still has some legibility loss in smaller sizes (although I’ll admit asking for that not to happen is a mighty tall order,) but I’m tempted to argue that it maintains its legibility better than the Bee Rustler. Mentioning visual unity with the community icons series is something I’d say is a plus, but if seasonal or community variants to the site logo is something that’s explored later, it makes that point not quite as meaningful.

Bee Rustler was a cute lil’ thing and I loved her as much as anyone else, but admittedly I’m not so sure her graphic was a good fit for a logo. Chances are, however, that this is the kind of thing that would be most completely resolved with a comprehensive brand set that can accommodate community flavoring in aspects of it when the time comes. I’d think that’s getting well into long-term territory, however.

Issues aside with Bee Rustler being a catch-all logo solution, I doubt that Bee Rustler is going away entirely any time soon. Mascots, and more broadly the sense of characters within a community, have a way of maintaining staying power. There’s going to be means and ways for Bee Rustler to show herself and still be part of the community lore, whether that’s officially or through the user base. Like I’ve still gotta see the Bug Crusher through before I throw the towel, and I don’t think that’s gon’ be the end of it from me or anyone else either 🤠.

I love Tech Connections. Unnecessarily long deep dives, but that’s the kind of content I absolutely appreciate. His stuff is a treat that helps to highlight the rabbit holes that can be found in the mundane.

That might just be a differentiating choice of name for the same thing, but one that helps convey our values through the names’ connotations. Or it could be that we come up with our own ideas for communities that can cover a wide variety of topics.

c/Q&A? c/trivia? Those were possibilities that came to mind for what you mentioned in particular 🤔.

I certainly wouldn’t have an informed idea on how that could be handled, either. What I have to offer toward particulars amounts to spit balling 🤷‍♂️.

If I had to guess though, I’d bet you and @[email protected] are getting at it. A UN treaty could play a part in establishing a baseline to build up on. Perhaps the key could be to indirectly govern it rather than trying to directly govern happenings in international waters? Operations that depart from signing countries could guarantee that their vessels meet basic standards, even if those offshore operations are ultimately conducted in international waters.

I’d imagine that it may shift a noteworthy amount of operation departures to non-signing countries, but I’d also think that increasing the barrier of entry and making such standards highly visible would make a noteworthy difference regardless.

Done my civic duty 🗳.

The only question that tripped me up for some reason was whether I consider myself to be white or non-white. I’m Filipino American, and personally I have a kinda nebulous identity toward race. I suppose I could “pass” as white, but I find myself unsure of identifying absolutely as White or Non-White. I’m not educated in best practices here, but I think a “Mixed” answer could fill the gap well without getting overly specific.

Seeing the communities list is really exciting! Maybe one day we’ll have the activity to warrant all of them 😄. I have a boatload of photographs I’ve taken over the years but never really got around to posting anywhere. I’ll likely find my ways to sneak them in relevant communities if c/photography doesn’t come around, but if I had to pick One and Only One, that would be mine.

I forgot to mention in my earlier reply that this was a reminder that also helped change my perspective. Putting your own life in danger unfortunate, but ultimately your own decision. Making a negligent decision that affects a wider industry is unfortunate, but seems like a risk in business in general.

Willful negligence that costs the lives of others demands consideration for how things can be done differently. The first best time to have defined and enforced those standards would’ve been before we lost these lives. The second best time to do so is now.

Did paying customers fully understand the risks, though?

You know what, that’s a good question and getting to a perspective I somehow found hard to explore on my own 🤔.

Generally I’m quite strongly in favor of regulations precisely because of this kind of question. The lay customers likely didn’t fully understand the risk they were taking—fully and throughly understand as an expert would. Achieving that kind of understanding takes expertise in a field, and expertise takes years, if not a lifetime to build. I don’t it’s reasonable to expect everyone to have an expert and informed opinion on everything, so I think a society ought to have the responsibility of establishing regulation to protect people from that kind of valid and inevitable ignorance. Sure, the five on board were billed as brave adventurers, but can I confidently say they were informed? Save for the negligent CEO, I’m not so sure I can.

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I think my hesitation to extend that mindset to this is because the idea of underwater tourism, let alone deep sea tourism felt like uncharted territory to me. Not “against” mind you, more “hesitant.” I think we ought to make progress safely and responsibly, especially if we’re doing so with lay people tagging along, but part of me worries that putting up too many guard rails and too much red tape can stymy legitimate, good faith progress. A regrettable part of regulations is that a fair amount of them are written in blood. Sacrifice, in a way, is sometimes necessary to know just where those guard rails ought to be.

But I’m starting to realize that this is likely not as uncharted as I thought. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me on my first impressions, but of course we have the potential to make informed safety decisions here—submarines have been around a hot minute, we have the precedent to build an informed understanding of what’s safe and what isn’t. It’s starting to settle more in now, too, that we have more expert individuals and groups in this area than I thought that can help define informed standards.

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For the sake of those that were on board and their families, I still hope that this was indeed a risk that at least some of them legitimately wanted to take. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if you’re right in that most of them didn’t fully grasp the risk they were taking.

As for my stance on how this should be approached going forward, I dunno if it was your intention or just a side question, but I suppose I can say I changed my mind! I think we’re at a point where we can make informed decisions on how to regulate this, and we ought to do so sooner rather than later 🤝.

I still can’t get over how janky that tin can felt to me when I was looking into it. Not even getting into the safety cuts, the whole picture felt cheap. The Poop-Bucket a foot away and audibly masked with turning up the music; five people sitting cross-cross applesauce on basically an exercise mat in cramped real estate; working with two desktop monitors and a Logitech controller; the CEO explicitly bragging about cutting corners and breaking rules.

I think that even if the sub more closely resembled expectations and even if the CEO was on top of safety, the story would’ve still been a quick sell on mass media. A sub exploring the Titanic going missing invokes the kind of visuals and what-ifs that start to depart reality and arrive to movie territory. Add the schadenfreude to it and the minivan as described above and that movie becomes a sort of dark humor comedy blended with horror.

I think that this story makes for a good sideshow to gawk at. It’s also a good vehicle to laugh at the rich. The shipwreck in the Mediterranean, as much as it demands our attention in contrast, is much more grounded in reality—hard and painful realities—that I think a sizable chunk of society gets squeamish about. It demands we answer questions and take actions that certain someones would rather we don’t.

I’d say you’re right about all you said. It’s a shame and a bad look on our society that’s how it works out more often than not. I’d like to try and do my small part to leave things a bit better than how I found them, whether that’s in cultural values or in political action. But as you alluded to about the United States: that is much easier said than done.

You sound like you have a vital and focused framing to what I said, and admittedly more relevant to, well, This. I’m inclined to extend the sum of my takeaway to a broader scope, however. To try and extend generosity when we are in the circumstances to do so, in both large and small incidents and in large and small ways. It’s the kind of reminder that personally comes to mind whenever I hear about these kinds of rescue efforts.

It’s also admittedly getting outside of what this incident was and starting to get into more trivial manners, but I seem to get inclined to try and find something positive and/or productive to get from tragedy. Lamenting about the likes of capitalism and the US has definitely been a crucible that helped shaped my perspective for the better, but as crucibles go, it drains and exhausts me.

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All that said, I can’t deny what you said. It’s the state of affairs, and it’s a sorry one. Let’s see what we can do within our means to help change that 🤝.

Absolutely righteous of all of you to tackle that mountain and well appreciated by everyone here. Good luck with future rounds 🍻

I ought to concede I have plenty of disappointment around this. I feel like there were well established means to do this kind of thing safely, and I think because Seagate failed to meet that, five lives were needlessly lost. I wouldn’t be surprised if this story lives on for a while as a sort of fable in hubris. That’s not even getting to, say, the sense of injustice invoked in comparing how this was handled to the recent shipwreck in the Mediterranean. I think all of those thoughts distill down to the Eat The Rich flavored fan faire, and I think there’s already plenty of that here.

Still, the Rich and Foolish nature of this trip all said, I find it commendable that the likes of the US Coast Guard, the Navy, and international groups came together and put up a sizeable and respectable search and rescue effort. I think it would’ve been well in their right (and in fact realistic) for them to wave it off and say something like “they made the wine, they drink the cup.” But they didn’t. I can respect that the collective weight of the wallets on board likely played a big part in it to say the least, but I’d also wager that it also takes a mighty large amount of forgiveness in people being foolish to go through that kind of effort to try and save them. Similar can probably be said for rescue missions helping out others in equally foolish incidents.

There’s a lot directly and indirectly connected to this disaster that doesn’t reflect well on the bulk of society, but the effort to try and help others even if they don’t necessarily deserve it? I’ll admit it feels naive to say, but I’d rather live in that kind of society than one that errs toward extending a callous hand. I hope we’ll hear more often about us extending a hand to those who indeed deserve it, like those in the Mediterranean, but I’m also in the camp of continuing to extend that kind of forgiveness to The Foolish we’ll continue to stumble upon. I hope to have the will to do that, at least.

We’re all going to be foolish from time to time in life, and I sure know I’d sincerely appreciate a kind hand when it’s my turn.

I’m inclined to characterize this loss as reckless and needless, but I find myself agreeing with likewise here. Some opportunities are the once-or-so in a lifetime sort. There’s likely such opportunities out there that I’d love to take if I had the means, even if the risks were great.

I can completely understand people wishing ill on those lost here. As I said, I think there’s an element of hubris and needlessness in this disaster that makes it upsetting, and that doesn’t even get to the likes of the discrepancy in coverage between this incident and the greater loss near Greece this week.

Still, I suppose I hope this risk was worth it to at least a few of the souls on board.

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The people going down would have known the risks and accepted them for an opportunity for a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to the titanic.

I have to admit that a game controller, at least the ergonomics and controls of one, likely makes more sense than it would seem at first blush.

I think it’s more a problem with circumstances and optics. If all was well and this whole fiasco didn’t happen, I could see it being framed as a sort of goofy trivia piece, just like the US Navy’s use. But when things go wrong as they did here, it feels like the kind of bit that’s incredibly easy to reach and dunk on.

I’m not inclined to hinge my disappointment on the game controller, but I can’t blame anyone for doing that, either.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, at least. It definitely fits the naming convention I’m used to.

If so, yeah—that scratches a kind of itch real nice. I used to be really into RCT3. RCT2 was my introduction to tycoons and sim kinda games when I was in like kindergarten, and it probably played a big part in my video game tastes since. I’ve shifted over to Parkitect these days: it’s got a nice balance between the logistics/business end, building up a theme park, and the detailing. I try to get into Planet Coaster every once in a while, but I end up feeling like it gets tantalizingly close with letting me do stuff I want, but something would somehow feel lacking. Planet Coaster’s path building mechanic comes to mind.

Sometimes I’ll still boot up RCT3. Its mechanics aren’t quite as robust as modern games in the genre, but the rides and attractions set and the aesthetic somehow manages to feel evergreen to me.