Theres been some discussion recently about the content allowed in this community so I wanted to make a quick poll to gauge what is wanted in terms of what people see here
The current description of the community is a bit ambiguous so this will determine whether everything is allowed here or if only more general programming topics are
You can just dm me with options ranked based on your preference (its ranked voting) to vote and ill share the results in a day of the overall vote tallies
1: Allow all posts relevant to the instance (main community)
This will let pretty much any post be able to be posted in here whether that be a help question, discussion, news, etc.
Allowed:
What is your favorite music to listen to while programming?
Has anyone else seen this interesting “challenge site” when googling a programming topic?
Intellij and docker on vm memory issues
[HELP][Python] How to use Selenium correctly
Announcing TypeScript 5.2 Beta
Discussion ES6 Classes. Good or Evil?
Disallowed
Things not relevant to the instance
2: Allow any posts and direct people in the comments to more specific communities for their future posts (people catching community)
This will also let any post be able to be posted in here like the previous option but will guide people towards the more specific communities in the future to make them then post the content in those
Allowed:
What is your favorite music to listen to while programming?
Has anyone else seen this interesting “challenge site” when googling a programming topic?
Intellij and docker on vm memory issues
[HELP][Python] How to use Selenium correctly
Announcing TypeScript 5.2 Beta
Discussion ES6 Classes. Good or Evil?
Disallowed
Things not relevant to the instance
3: Only allow topics that arent limited to one language, library, etc. (general topic community)
This will let posts such as: what is your favorite music to listen to while coding? or Here is some details about functional programming be able to be posted while something like a library for python will instead be posted in the python community
Allowed:
What is your favorite music to listen to while programming?
Has anyone else seen this interesting “challenge site” when googling a programming topic?
Disallowed
Things not relevant to the instance
Intellij and docker on vm memory issues
[HELP][Python] How to use Selenium correctly
Announcing TypeScript 5.2 Beta
Discussion ES6 Classes. Good or Evil?
4: Dont allow questions of how to do X in X language but allow actual discussions or news about the language in addition to general topics (general & discussion community)
Like above but also allows conversations about specific languages in the community as long as its not a question on how to do X in the language
Allowed:
What is your favorite music to listen to while programming?
Has anyone else seen this interesting “challenge site” when googling a programming topic?
Announcing TypeScript 5.2 Beta
Discussion ES6 Classes. Good or Evil?
Disallowed
Things not relevant to the instance
Intellij and docker on vm memory issues
[HELP][Python] How to use Selenium correctly
5: Only allow crossposts into the community with things like news being posted in the specific community first (crosspost community)
This will ONLY let crossposts be made. All other options also allow crossposts but this makes it so that the post will fill up the specific community while c/programming is a main post feed for people who want to see many different topics from the specific communities
I think people catching will transition well for us the best, especially once mods can migrate posts to better suited communities.
General discussion would nicely reduce junior help questions, and improve the SNR for real discussions.
Cross posting would really encourage growth of the long tale of smaller communities here,
but Lemmy mods can’t (yet) manual/auto merge threads over instance cross-posts (technical missing feature?)
so keeping with a conventional main community is a bit better for now in avoiding too many duplicate posts across the instance, or splintering of discussions.
General topic only is a bit too restrictive, and could harm post traffic, while still making it difficult to moderate consistently.
for help posts yeah we can require tagging. Im trying to build up a flair system for lemmy that should help eventually but I can see if I can get help posts for now started with [HELP] in the title or something similar
I’ve already voted in a DM, so this is just general commentary.
I like a combination of welcoming, general discussion mixed with instructive and helpful discussion of specific topics.
To that end, I think that this specific community should welcome everyone and everything relevant to the instance, but direct people to more relevant communities as necessary. Where “as necessary” might evolve over time as this and other communities develop.
I think the second option captures that nicely. I think the first option captures the welcoming, but at the expense of possibly burying things in details that would be more effectively handled by dedicated communities.
Despite providing a ranking for the other options, I think they are all either weak compromises on what I’d like to see or outright unwelcoming. The only real reason for providing those rankings was to put the first option at the bottom :)
I think it’s best to tend toward more permissive, so I vote for option 2.
One thing I would suggest is this that while “help me” posts might not be appropriate, “this is how I fixed it” posts can be cool. So if someone decides to write a post or link an article about “how I fixed my remote docker debugger”, I think that’s great. But not so much “please help me fix my remote docker debugger”.
alright noted it down. Yeah how I fixed X posts are nice. I tend to group that sort of thing into discussion since youre discussing a way to do something in the language
I would start out allowing mostly everything programming related and only creating more specific communities once the posts for a specific topic start spamming this one.
All nice organization doesn’t help if the created communities are not used by anyone as the seem to small to be worth the bother. That’s at least how I think about it. Just leave it open for most posts until the need arises to split specific topics off.
The thing with having that as the rule is it can create some inconsistency in the eyes of someone posting. If theres communities for c and nim, and c posts start spamming the programming community so its split off. C posters will basically just be relegated to their own corner while they see occasional nim posts popping up in the main community
Theres also the factor of if the community is built up with specific topics other conversation points wont have a chance to take hold
We get the advantage in the instance of every community being basically on topic so if someone wants to see all of the topics (including the smaller ones) they can just browse the local posts. And that seems to be one of the most common sorts people are using here
It’s a really hard thing to decide and I’m not sure what the right thing to do is.
I feel like if the main goal is to make this instance as good as possible for local users making many small specific communities would be best.
But form how I understand lemmy that would also make it more annoying for people from other instances to get all programming related topics from here if they don’t want to leave their home instance. That would also include people that run their own private instances.
Although that my second point could be addressed if lemmy adds a “all” feed so that one could subscribe to all communities of an instance or untill that is available a automatic repost bot could be set up to collect all posts on an instance into one feed.
But I don’t really know what the best way would be just writing down my thoughts on the subject. I’m sure whatever way you go lemmy users will find a way to enjoy this instance and community!
I’m not familiar yet with the Lemmy API, but isn’t there a possibility to move posts around?
For example someone posts “[HELP][Python] How to use Selenium correctly” in /c/Programming… A moderator could suggest the user to move their post to /c/Python instead
As I mentioned in a post that presumably sparked this vote - communities are theoretically a node-tree - (/c/Python being a child of /c/Programming)
so option #2 here would help people find the correct community for their next post, but that seems like a weird “sorting algorithm” - “this post is in the wrong spot, hopefully you’ll do better next time” - why not just move stuff around this time, instead of next time
true moving posts could be something that could be done if lemmy is set to deal with that. I can check to see how difficult that would be to put into lemmy and possibly push a patch out.
If we get that functionality in we can do another poll to determine whether it should switch to that but for now im just polling these options since I assume it wont be a thing for a bit (I tried to push another patch out to the site to make the request community more prominent but it seemed to be having issues with certain aspects of the changes so that needs to be fixed before we can get some updates out)
I see where you’re coming from but to me anything related to programming goes.
If you don’t want that then point people to the right communities and delete unfitting posts. I guess that’s the only way to keep it clean.
As a side effect, this may actually help other more specific communities in the long run.
yeah thats one of the possible options in the vote (option 1 is anything goes, option 2 is same but also guides people for their future posts on that topic after they posted something) if you want I can note one of those down as your vote
thanks noted it down. You can delete that reply if you want if you want to keep your vote anonymous
you can also give your second choice, third choice etc if you want if that doesnt get enough votes since its ranked voting
(preferably in a dm to me to keep anonymity in the voting)
sorry for the two deleted messages there, thought it was a dm in my notifs
I don’t care much about anonymity in this scenario.
My ranked choices would be as follows:
Allow any posts and direct people in the comments to more specific communities for their future posts (people catching community)
Allow all posts relevant to the instance (main community)
Only allow crossposts into the community with things like news being posted in the specific community first (crosspost community)
Dont allow questions of how to do X in X language but allow actual discussions or news about the language in addition to general topics (general & discussion community)
Only allow topics that arent limited to one language, library, etc. (general topic community)
Edit to add: if you set up some free third-party ranked choice survey, you might get more responses as there would be less friction to “vote”. But maybe that’s the opposite of what you want. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
yeah in the past ive tried to use different third party sites but havent found one that really works
rcv123 is the best option but its very easy to cheat in it by opening a new browser. snowe has been setting up a native voting system in lemmy that we might be able to use eventually
thanks noted it down. note that if you want to keep it anonymous you can delete that
You can also send your second choice, third choice, etc. in case that doesnt get enough votes as its ranked voting (preferably in a dm to me for anonymity)
A more restrictive approach seems like a massive mistake while the Lemmy community landscape is still in its infancy.
With that in mind, Option 2 seems to offer the best flexibility for this community moving forward and best cross-pollination potential for Lemmy as a whole.
I know ranked voting is a good system, but the options are a bit confusing to me as they don’t seem mutually exclusive. Perhaps it is correct, but I have never seen a ranked vote like this. For example, I believe you could allow cross posting in addition to allowing topics that are not limited to one language.
yeah all of the options allow cross posting but that last one is for forcing only crossposts. I can try to rewrite them in a bit with some examples. They are mutually exclusive though even though some have a bit similar rules
edit: updated the post with some descriptions and examples in there to show whats allowed and disallowed
“3: Only allow topics that arent limited to one language, library, etc. (general topic community)”
“5: Only allow crossposts into the community with things like news being posted in the specific community first (crosspost community)”
“4: Dont allow questions of how to do X in X language but allow actual discussions or news about the language in addition to general topics (general & discussion community)”
“2: Allow any posts and direct people in the comments to more specific communities for their future posts (people catching community)”
“1: Allow all posts relevant to the instance (main community)”
Basically desiring that posts be in their respective communities with the main community acting as a catch-all for posts that don’t fit into any existing community or announcements like community launches.
My vote is 4 2 1 3 5. I DMed, just sharing my thoughts.
(I think the “or hyper specific towards it” part of option 4 needs to be removed because the rest of the description says it allows specific topics and that is the only thing separating it from option 3.)
I find 3 (don’t allow topics related to a single technology) to be foolish. How do you even begin to count? Take Rails, isn’t that two, Ruby and Rails? Or Spring being two? Even if there was a proper and reasonable way to count it would just be so odd.
Option 5 I rank the lowest because there doesn’t seem to be any cross posting functionality built in currently other than just sharing the URL. It just seems like an odd restriction.
One of the most off putting things on Reddit was always over zealous moderators. They’d get more concerned with the letter of the law than the spirit. It’s annoying putting effort into something only to ha e someone seemingly flippantly remove it. I understand the desire for less posts people don’t want to see but we’re still very small. I don’t think we should be so concerned with that yet. Better to have relaxed rules for now.
Just an anecdote, but on Reddit there were three communities for Java. r/java, r/learnjava, and r/javahelp. On top of that, r/java ONLY allows discussion of Java, not JVM languages or the JVM. It’s just exhausting. People just feel this need to organize things super rigidly I guess, but to contributors it just feels like people wanting to have dominion over their little sections of the internet.
I think option 4 is probably the best middle ground. It most closely reflects r/programming which is what I think most people want to be close to. I know I just complained about the idea of splitting communities too much but I think having !programming be for things directly related to programming and then a community akin to the random section of a forum for things like music people like is a pretty common sense split in my opinion. Call it like programming_chat or something.
My vote is 4 2 1 3 5. I DMed, just sharing my thoughts.
(I think the “or hyper specific towards it” part of option 4 needs to be removed because the rest of the description says it allows specific topics and that is the only thing separating it from option 3.)
I find 3 (don’t allow topics related to a single technology) to be foolish. How do you even begin to count? Take Rails, isn’t that two, Ruby and Rails? Or Spring being two? Even if there was a proper and reasonable way to count it would just be so odd.
Option 5 I rank the lowest because there doesn’t seem to be any cross posting functionality built in currently other than just sharing the URL. It just seems like an odd restriction.
One of the most off putting things on Reddit was always over zealous moderators. They’d get more concerned with the letter of the law than the spirit. It’s annoying putting effort into something only to ha e someone seemingly flippantly remove it. I understand the desire for less posts people don’t want to see but we’re still very small. I don’t think we should be so concerned with that yet. Better to have relaxed rules for now.
Just an anecdote, but on Reddit there were three communities for Java. r/java, r/learnjava, and r/javahelp. On top of that, r/java ONLY allows discussion of Java, not JVM languages or the JVM. It’s just exhausting. People just feel this need to organize things super rigidly I guess, but to contributors it just feels like people wanting to have dominion over their little sections of the internet.
I think option 4 is probably the best middle ground. It most closely reflects r/programming which is what I think most people want to be close to. I know I just complained about the idea of splitting communities too much but I think having !programming be for things directly related to programming and then a community akin to the random section of a forum for things like music people like is a pretty common sense split in my opinion. Call it like programming_chat or something.
Yeah that part of option 4 was mostly meant for stuff like “here is a hotkey for how to do X in X” that I would equate to help posts. I can remove it though to make it a bit more clear
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !programming@programming.dev
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person’s post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you’re posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don’t want to watch videos
My order of thoughts/preferences:
people catchingwill transition well for us the best, especially once mods can migrate posts to better suited communities.General discussionwould nicely reduce junior help questions, and improve the SNR for real discussions.Cross postingwould really encourage growth of the long tale of smaller communities here, but Lemmy mods can’t (yet) manual/auto merge threads over instance cross-posts (technical missing feature?) so keeping with a conventionalmaincommunity is a bit better for now in avoiding too many duplicate posts across the instance, or splintering of discussions.General topiconly is a bit too restrictive, and could harm post traffic, while still making it difficult to moderate consistently.I vote option 2
alright thanks noted it down
I was a big fan of /r/programming’s rules. I’m here to read about and discuss programming with like-minded persons.
I’m not here to be tech support, and my music tastes are for music communities.
Think I’m most keen on #1 But please require a tag on Help posts?
alright noted it down
for help posts yeah we can require tagging. Im trying to build up a flair system for lemmy that should help eventually but I can see if I can get help posts for now started with [HELP] in the title or something similar
I’ve already voted in a DM, so this is just general commentary.
I like a combination of welcoming, general discussion mixed with instructive and helpful discussion of specific topics.
To that end, I think that this specific community should welcome everyone and everything relevant to the instance, but direct people to more relevant communities as necessary. Where “as necessary” might evolve over time as this and other communities develop.
I think the second option captures that nicely. I think the first option captures the welcoming, but at the expense of possibly burying things in details that would be more effectively handled by dedicated communities.
Despite providing a ranking for the other options, I think they are all either weak compromises on what I’d like to see or outright unwelcoming. The only real reason for providing those rankings was to put the first option at the bottom :)
I think it’s best to tend toward more permissive, so I vote for option 2.
One thing I would suggest is this that while “help me” posts might not be appropriate, “this is how I fixed it” posts can be cool. So if someone decides to write a post or link an article about “how I fixed my remote docker debugger”, I think that’s great. But not so much “please help me fix my remote docker debugger”.
Just my 2 cents.
alright noted it down. Yeah how I fixed X posts are nice. I tend to group that sort of thing into discussion since youre discussing a way to do something in the language
I would start out allowing mostly everything programming related and only creating more specific communities once the posts for a specific topic start spamming this one.
All nice organization doesn’t help if the created communities are not used by anyone as the seem to small to be worth the bother. That’s at least how I think about it. Just leave it open for most posts until the need arises to split specific topics off.
The thing with having that as the rule is it can create some inconsistency in the eyes of someone posting. If theres communities for c and nim, and c posts start spamming the programming community so its split off. C posters will basically just be relegated to their own corner while they see occasional nim posts popping up in the main community
Theres also the factor of if the community is built up with specific topics other conversation points wont have a chance to take hold
We get the advantage in the instance of every community being basically on topic so if someone wants to see all of the topics (including the smaller ones) they can just browse the local posts. And that seems to be one of the most common sorts people are using here
It’s a really hard thing to decide and I’m not sure what the right thing to do is.
I feel like if the main goal is to make this instance as good as possible for local users making many small specific communities would be best.
But form how I understand lemmy that would also make it more annoying for people from other instances to get all programming related topics from here if they don’t want to leave their home instance. That would also include people that run their own private instances.
Although that my second point could be addressed if lemmy adds a “all” feed so that one could subscribe to all communities of an instance or untill that is available a automatic repost bot could be set up to collect all posts on an instance into one feed.
But I don’t really know what the best way would be just writing down my thoughts on the subject. I’m sure whatever way you go lemmy users will find a way to enjoy this instance and community!
I’m not familiar yet with the Lemmy API, but isn’t there a possibility to move posts around?
For example someone posts “[HELP][Python] How to use Selenium correctly” in /c/Programming… A moderator could suggest the user to move their post to /c/Python instead
As I mentioned in a post that presumably sparked this vote - communities are theoretically a node-tree - (/c/Python being a child of /c/Programming)
so option #2 here would help people find the correct community for their next post, but that seems like a weird “sorting algorithm” - “this post is in the wrong spot, hopefully you’ll do better next time” - why not just move stuff around this time, instead of next time
true moving posts could be something that could be done if lemmy is set to deal with that. I can check to see how difficult that would be to put into lemmy and possibly push a patch out.
If we get that functionality in we can do another poll to determine whether it should switch to that but for now im just polling these options since I assume it wont be a thing for a bit (I tried to push another patch out to the site to make the request community more prominent but it seemed to be having issues with certain aspects of the changes so that needs to be fixed before we can get some updates out)
I see where you’re coming from but to me anything related to programming goes.
If you don’t want that then point people to the right communities and delete unfitting posts. I guess that’s the only way to keep it clean. As a side effect, this may actually help other more specific communities in the long run.
yeah thats one of the possible options in the vote (option 1 is anything goes, option 2 is same but also guides people for their future posts on that topic after they posted something) if you want I can note one of those down as your vote
I don’t really have an opinion right now 🤷♂️
Allow any posts and direct people in the comments to more specific communities for their future posts (people catching community)
thanks noted it down. You can delete that reply if you want if you want to keep your vote anonymous
you can also give your second choice, third choice etc if you want if that doesnt get enough votes since its ranked voting (preferably in a dm to me to keep anonymity in the voting)
sorry for the two deleted messages there, thought it was a dm in my notifs
I don’t care much about anonymity in this scenario.
My ranked choices would be as follows:
Edit to add: if you set up some free third-party ranked choice survey, you might get more responses as there would be less friction to “vote”. But maybe that’s the opposite of what you want.
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯thanks noted it down
yeah in the past ive tried to use different third party sites but havent found one that really works
rcv123 is the best option but its very easy to cheat in it by opening a new browser. snowe has been setting up a native voting system in lemmy that we might be able to use eventually
Have you tried https://star.vote? It’s a better voting system https://www.equal.vote/star_vs_rcv
I sign myself up for this choice order 👆😎 it is a good choice order.
alright noted it down
thanks noted it down. note that if you want to keep it anonymous you can delete that
You can also send your second choice, third choice, etc. in case that doesnt get enough votes as its ranked voting (preferably in a dm to me for anonymity)
deleted by creator
A more restrictive approach seems like a massive mistake while the Lemmy community landscape is still in its infancy.
With that in mind, Option 2 seems to offer the best flexibility for this community moving forward and best cross-pollination potential for Lemmy as a whole.
alright noted it down
I know ranked voting is a good system, but the options are a bit confusing to me as they don’t seem mutually exclusive. Perhaps it is correct, but I have never seen a ranked vote like this. For example, I believe you could allow cross posting in addition to allowing topics that are not limited to one language.
yeah all of the options allow cross posting but that last one is for forcing only crossposts. I can try to rewrite them in a bit with some examples. They are mutually exclusive though even though some have a bit similar rules
edit: updated the post with some descriptions and examples in there to show whats allowed and disallowed
My ranking attempt
“3: Only allow topics that arent limited to one language, library, etc. (general topic community)” “5: Only allow crossposts into the community with things like news being posted in the specific community first (crosspost community)” “4: Dont allow questions of how to do X in X language but allow actual discussions or news about the language in addition to general topics (general & discussion community)” “2: Allow any posts and direct people in the comments to more specific communities for their future posts (people catching community)” “1: Allow all posts relevant to the instance (main community)”
Basically desiring that posts be in their respective communities with the main community acting as a catch-all for posts that don’t fit into any existing community or announcements like community launches.
alright thanks noted it down
My vote is 4 2 1 3 5. I DMed, just sharing my thoughts.
(I think the “or hyper specific towards it” part of option 4 needs to be removed because the rest of the description says it allows specific topics and that is the only thing separating it from option 3.)
I find 3 (don’t allow topics related to a single technology) to be foolish. How do you even begin to count? Take Rails, isn’t that two, Ruby and Rails? Or Spring being two? Even if there was a proper and reasonable way to count it would just be so odd.
Option 5 I rank the lowest because there doesn’t seem to be any cross posting functionality built in currently other than just sharing the URL. It just seems like an odd restriction.
One of the most off putting things on Reddit was always over zealous moderators. They’d get more concerned with the letter of the law than the spirit. It’s annoying putting effort into something only to ha e someone seemingly flippantly remove it. I understand the desire for less posts people don’t want to see but we’re still very small. I don’t think we should be so concerned with that yet. Better to have relaxed rules for now.
Just an anecdote, but on Reddit there were three communities for Java. r/java, r/learnjava, and r/javahelp. On top of that, r/java ONLY allows discussion of Java, not JVM languages or the JVM. It’s just exhausting. People just feel this need to organize things super rigidly I guess, but to contributors it just feels like people wanting to have dominion over their little sections of the internet.
I think option 4 is probably the best middle ground. It most closely reflects r/programming which is what I think most people want to be close to. I know I just complained about the idea of splitting communities too much but I think having !programming be for things directly related to programming and then a community akin to the random section of a forum for things like music people like is a pretty common sense split in my opinion. Call it like programming_chat or something.
My vote is 4 2 1 3 5. I DMed, just sharing my thoughts.
(I think the “or hyper specific towards it” part of option 4 needs to be removed because the rest of the description says it allows specific topics and that is the only thing separating it from option 3.)
I find 3 (don’t allow topics related to a single technology) to be foolish. How do you even begin to count? Take Rails, isn’t that two, Ruby and Rails? Or Spring being two? Even if there was a proper and reasonable way to count it would just be so odd.
Option 5 I rank the lowest because there doesn’t seem to be any cross posting functionality built in currently other than just sharing the URL. It just seems like an odd restriction.
One of the most off putting things on Reddit was always over zealous moderators. They’d get more concerned with the letter of the law than the spirit. It’s annoying putting effort into something only to ha e someone seemingly flippantly remove it. I understand the desire for less posts people don’t want to see but we’re still very small. I don’t think we should be so concerned with that yet. Better to have relaxed rules for now.
Just an anecdote, but on Reddit there were three communities for Java. r/java, r/learnjava, and r/javahelp. On top of that, r/java ONLY allows discussion of Java, not JVM languages or the JVM. It’s just exhausting. People just feel this need to organize things super rigidly I guess, but to contributors it just feels like people wanting to have dominion over their little sections of the internet.
I think option 4 is probably the best middle ground. It most closely reflects r/programming which is what I think most people want to be close to. I know I just complained about the idea of splitting communities too much but I think having !programming be for things directly related to programming and then a community akin to the random section of a forum for things like music people like is a pretty common sense split in my opinion. Call it like programming_chat or something.
Yeah that part of option 4 was mostly meant for stuff like “here is a hotkey for how to do X in X” that I would equate to help posts. I can remove it though to make it a bit more clear
Also btw you double replied