After checking out Kbin for the first time, I think it’s possible for me to use it as a post mirror as well. I don’t think it’ll do much in the way of driving engagement, but at least it’ll fill it up with some content for the time being. Let me know if you think that’ll be a helpful for Kbin.

Seems like the server was down for a bit (or there was packet loss mentioned above) earlier. I tried checking the Kbin and Matrix space for any updates on whether it was down for maintenance, but both also failed to load. Do the Lemmy, Kbin, and Matrix space all sit on the same box/server (such that an outage on one causes all three to go down), or could the issue have been on my end?

For some reason I didn’t receive a notification about this reply, but thanks for making the changes!

Thanks for taking the time to wrangle and update it, I think your updating of the banner text is definitely the right step.

For the 2 visitor UX changes that were generally supported (not auto-expanding NSFW posts and blurring thumbnails), I’m admittedly not familiar with Git myself. Based on the Github discussion of this, would changing both settings at the backend to “false” help to change the default/visitor view? If it’s just changing these two settings, would that constitute a fork that needs long-term maintenance, or could it just be a one-and-done setting change?

If it’s a fork that needs long-term maintenance, I’ll try asking around and see if anyone has the necessary skills to maintain a UI fork with these two changes made. I do think it’s important, it seems to be broadly supported based on the comments in discussions thus far, and the current problem seems to be a lack of capacity rather than will, so if that can be overcome, it may be possible to enact the changes.

That’s a fair statement. Imo there would still be gradations of fetish content (with some being more extreme than others), and I think if the main concern (which led to the changes) is increasing the userbase, having the more extreme content equally as visible as the less extreme content would be counterproductive to that end.

That said, I think this has been covered to death already, and much of it is just discussing hypotheticals without any data to lead to a conclusive conclusion, so I’ll leave it at that.

By showing NSFW posts by default, new users would get an accurate measure of how active it is here and would be more likely to stay (and (hopefully) less of them would be scared off by extreme content than would leave due to lack of content).

Yea, that’s ultimately the question. I think reinstating blurs and removing auto-expansion (for the visitor view) would help mitigate the former somewhat… it remains to be seen whether that’s possible, even if it seems to be broadly supported here.

NSFW Lemmy UI removes the blur and auto-expands posts in the first place

From a convenience/UX perspective, it makes sense. It brings the experience closer to Instagram/Tik Tok “card” style posts where the content is displayed without needing an extra click. That said, I think their content there is relatively tame compared to some of the content hosted here, so it might work for them but not so well for us.

Reverting these is a no-brainer IMO, and it would bring the experience in line with vanilla Lemmy after creating an account (and enabling NSFW posts).

I agree - it would also be in line with Reddit’s approach of “Yea you can see NSFW as a lurking visitor, but the thumbnail is hidden and you get a red warning that it’s NSFW”. I think it’s a fair way to go about it.

Thanks for creating this pinned feedback post. I think the post linked covers my thoughts, so there’s no point pasting it again here. Since that post, I think the suggestions by RA2lover (“blurred NSFW thumbnails” and “non auto-expanded images” for visitors/non-registered users) would be a good compromise. This seems to be broadly supported from those that replied in the thread, and it would be on par with Reddit’s approach towards NSFW content visibility for visitors.

However, I’m not sure if this requires modifications that have been covered above - if it does and it isn’t possible, then I’m in favor of a reversion to the original login/registration-gated NSFW posts and communities.

It might be a ghost-town (for now), but I suspect that’s better than rolling the dice on whether a visitor and potential joinee sees something they quite dislike splashed across their screen on their first visit, and associates that with the entire branch as a whole. Given the ratio of NSFW to SFW posts already noted, I reckon that dice doesn’t need too many rolls for that outcome. This place might still end up ghost-town, but with a significantly worse off reputation among those that hear horror stories of “Could you believe I saw ___ on the front page? God only know what they’re hiding behind locked doors for registered members if that’s what they show to the public” and visit for themselves to find out it’s true.

Thanks for the pinned thread, hopefully there’ll be some engagement from lurkers as you’ve mentioned.

Admittedly I haven’t been on for the past two weeks when it was implemented, so it’s hard to tell whether there’s been more posts from new users resulting from the changes.* Maybe those are stats that the admins might have access to, or not at all.

*If there are, I’m curious how they’ve discovered this place.

Agreed, the booru-style filter for default view would be good if it exists in the future. I think RA2lover’s suggestions of non-auto expand and blurred thumbnails for NSFW posts would line up with your “disable auto-expand posts from more extreme communities.” Might be hard to get agreement or to draw a line in the sand and say “This is extreme and this isn’t”, so if it comes to that I’m in favor of erring on the side of caution and non-auto expanding + blurring all NSFW posts for the visitor view (since these posts aren’t gated behind logins). And tailoring the CW popup is a great idea as well, though I’m not sure whether mention should be made of the more extreme content at the pop-up or left for them to discover upon actually hitting the site.

I’m not sure if the concerns of the “ghost town” in the original post can be resolved by having non-registered viewers see a bunch of NSFW posts. If one believes the 1% rule that says 99% of people generally lurk and it is a small minority of 1% (and maybe 9% who contribute once in a while) that actually create content, it feels like growth and discussion comes from hitting a critical mass of users (which this community might not have hit yet, but may hit in time), rather than “look, here are more NSFW posts, but you can’t comment until you register an account with us.”

Though it’s not quite the same as hiding away NSFW posts behind registration (since a flood of “wtf” NSFW posts relative to the viewer could flood the front page), I guess that can also be a function of post content as well (SFW vs. NSFW and so on.) With that, I would support your suggestion on the UI changes, since it would give them the same view as registered users (albeit an expanded view of non-blocked communities). At the very least, having the “wtf” content be blurred and not auto-expanded might help avoid insta-reject reactions (or delay it for a few seconds until they click on one out of curiosity and go AHHH MY EYES WHAT IS THIS) 😅

It’s a bit late, but I don’t think showing NSFW posts publicly is a good idea. I’ve started a discussion thread on this.

Just realized there was a “how about you” question, lol. I came over to Lemmy in the great Reddit API Migration and looked around for Lemmy servers/branches/instances. This server was advertised back then as being loli-friendly, so I thought it would be a great place to post memes (including those that Reddit wouldn’t like to see in their push to be advertiser-friendly).

Hello! How did you find out about this place? :O