literally this. i see a lot of mods of niche communities working their ass off trying to generate content with 0 help, including me. and all people do is complain that they aren’t doing enough, it’s not active enough, while doing nothing to help it grow.
be the change you want to see. contribute to your communities, especially niche ones.
I would like to do this but I’m basically a waste of space, and not really capable of either thought provoking questions or funny/engaging content for the things I want to be part of. I can engage with others, but I’m not unique or creative enough for starting the conversation (same in person actually).
I know this because I tried several times many years ago to run my own Facebook pages for… well I tried various things and got very little engagement on any of it when Facebook pages were peak social media.
I know random facts about random science things that most people don’t understand (I probably don’t either, but I think I do!), but nothing that would actually grow any of the communities I’d like to see grow.
So while it is exactly that easy, it’s not necessarily that easy.
Honestly, even just making lame comments and upvoting is helpful. It shows the people creating things that what they are doing is working which will encourage them and others to post more.
And this is what I do (though I try to add to the conversation mostly), I’ve even started upvoting actual posts if I read them and learned or whatever, which is something I only did on reddit when sorting by new. The new habits are super difficult.
I’ve been way way more active here in way more diverse places than I maybe should be (I usually browse -all- right now to sub/block communities, and chime in on a ton of posts I don’t sub) so I hope it helps the posters, and I know it helps the statistics, but it isn’t the same as raw new content.
Fwiw, I’m not even deleting my comments every other day like I did on reddit. I know the content on fedi comes up randomly because sort bugs now and then so I’m being more careful about what I comment and leaving almost all of it completely intact. It’s very very difficult to do that 😅 I interact while intoxicated and am a ball of anxiety, and those don’t mix well. Purging my interactions was catharsis.
I told my friend about your community. Also the whole infosec instance since he does infosec, and that seems like it might be a good local feed.. idk if it’s up his alley, but hopefully!
Solarpunk for tech? I dig it. I followed the community, you seem to really care about it, and while I don’t understand a lot of what you posted, I dig it.
I’ll try to participate when I can, but I can’t promise a whole lot. :)
No pressure! I have so many more links and ideas to share. The fediverse is the perfect place for this kind of idealogical shift. If we can co-opt the tribalist information delivery mechanisms of mainstream media and centralized social media, we have a chance to provide people with the knowledge they need to become better, more prepared citizens of the world.
I hope you are prepared for very noob questions cuz ima probs throw some at you, it being what I know.
I’m a science and tech communicator by training (drastically underemployed as tech customer service, but if someone would just give me documentation to do, damn..) so no dummy; don’t know shit about software dev/coding but I learn very well. :)
Awesome! I'm clawing back more time from work and working towards some open source hardware and software stuff. Will be fun to post once I have things underway. Mostly, I'm aiming at free and open FPGA libraries and actually useful AR/mobile computing stuff that fits in with the positive technological side of cyberpunk, rather than the dystopian. Absolutely want to dig into doing LoRa at some point as well, myself.
EDIT: Just realized that I misread the community name but, I'm still into it.
You should look into RISC-V as well. Someone posted something about a formally-verified OS that runs on an fpga emulation of risc v. it’s called lion. Super interesting stuff and some among us figure it could be a foundation for an end-to-end formally verified machine. Perhaps virtually zero attack surface area…
I am indeed very interested in RISC-V. It's one of the reasons that I got an FPGA board in the first place and why I decided to spend a bit extra to get a "grown-up" Xilinx 7 series instead of the cheap Lattice FPGAs. Just wish it were possible to get anywhere near "real" CPU clock speeds on an FPGA and that large enough FPGAs to run some of the really cool designs weren't so expensive so that I could build my dream, fully-open-source computer.
Perhaps the cynical side of me would argue that you have to start from a place of righteous idealism and work your way backward. I’m old enough to know that nothing much will change but I’m also tech savvy enough to realize that we’re in the golden age of being able to create open source tools and software that enable more freedom and safety from tyranny than any other time in history.
Also, I’d appreciate someone who wants to play devil’s advocate. I’m often overly exuberant about ideas and I need someone to tell me what I’m missing.