deleted by creator

Admin approval with some text that needs a little bit of thought to fill out is surprisingly effective and definitely slows down spammers a lot.

I had to do that on dbzer0 and I think beehaw, they were both a fun exercise and took no time at all. Hell, I ended up submitting a wall of text about Sacco and Vanzetti on dbzer0 if I remember correctly, lol. But if nothing else they knew that it was 1) a human, and 2) I really believe what I was saying.

If the point is to get regular users who are thoughtful participants in online communities, requiring an email address and the typing of a few coherent words on their own behalf is NOT a barrier to entry, or even a much of a bar. After all, these people are applying to join a forum in which they are presumably going to spend unlimited time typing statements of their own creation in the future. Instance owners are just requiring a bit of that up front, and it’s not a huge ask.

It is, however, a very frustrating requirement for people who want to open multiple accounts for spamming and trolling purposes, and for that reason alone is a great filter for applicants.

Awesome. Joined. Thank you.

Holy shit. I hadn’t seen that one. Thanks for the link.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

I think that’s a bit of an overreaction.

It’s neither reaction nor overreaction; it is simply a statement of possibility. One of many, because Meta has not told us what their real intentions are, and no one could believe them even if they did.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

New to Linux, this is fantastic. Thank you.

That IS very similar to Goodreads, and then I was able to follow a random reviewer link to more content to browse. Thank you.

There are a lot of lists that are public too so don’t worry about that.

Cool, but if I need an account to see them then they’re not really public. Maybe it’s me but I did not see any link to any actual open content. If you could point me to one I’d be happy to look again.

Could you get into BookWyrm if it no longer required an account to view books?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I used to like Goodreads and would linger on the site, but the reviews themselves started to get weird a couple few years ago and now I only go when I need a link. A Federated, open version of it (with effective but non-corporate moderation) would be great, because it would have the honest range of reviews Goodreads used to have, hopefully without corporate attempts at manipulating the content.

I have nothing against AA or Goodreads, and have never heard of BookWyrm before today, but the main thing I use Goodreads for is providing a link for a publication that has accurate info (full correct name, correct name of author, date of publishing, ISBN, etc) that does not involve an Amazon or other sales link.

So BookWyrm could never replace Goodreads for me anyway, and then there’s this:

Write reviews or post casual commentary as you go, and control who gets to see your posts with granular privacy settings.

From https://joinbookwyrm.com/

It’s like Facebook for book reviews. I couldn’t even see a book myself because it’s all locked down. And like Facebook if you have to create a private account to use it I’d never go there anyway without seeing it first, or specific interest in what it offers. (I’m one of those rare never-Facebook people you sometimes see in the wild, lol.) If I had been unable to browse Lemmy before joining, I’d never have joined.

Facebook overcame its initial participation hump by being .edu only, very exclusive, and word of mouth. They have coasted on that word of mouth factor ever since, because now it’s baked into the media and daily online life. But they couldn’t do it from scratch again today. So unless you unlock BookWyrm in some way, or its exclusivity becomes a major draw in itself, I don’t know how it will overcome that initial participation hurdle.

I upvoted your post and absolutely support your goal in theory, but as someone who never joined Facebook, you could never get me to join a Facebook for book reviews, sorry.

Thank you for taking the time to write that, because I still have a few more distros to try and getting used to the various repos and installers is part of what I look at: having broad access to whatever apps I may need in the future is a big deal, so that is very valuable information for me anyway; and Fedora having access to all things Arch was a main selling point when I was trying Fedora spins and also EndeavourOS. This is much appreciated. Thanks!