What are some of your favorite communities that feature topics like literature, science, ecology, aerospace, technology, politics, history, arts, culture, theory, and debate?
Where do responsible, respectful adults go for discussions and for substantive, high quality posts and comments by decent human beings?
(Not just limited to academic/intellectual topics, could be anything from hobbies to defense contracts to careers to skills. Just looking for respectful, reasonably intelligent, informed, relatively engaged communities.)
Also, are forum aggregators like Lemmy and Reddit even the best places to find such communities outside of listservers, universities, and academic conferences?
Where do responsible, respectful adults go for discussions and for substantive, high quality posts and comments by decent human beings?
I don’t think you will find this Utopia online
That’s been my experience for 95% of Lemmy communities right now, though. I don’t know if it will last but for now, it seems pretty high quality.
Yeah i feel like this is how the early redditors must’ve felt. I don’t want this to get huge frankly
It was. But there were interesting effects from Reddit getting huge, like more niche subreddits and random encounters, like someone posting a proposal pictures and the targets of it being able to find it online. That probably wouldn’t happen on Lemmy.
Probably a worthy trade for better discussion and less bots, though.
I thoroughly enjoy MetaFilter (one of the last surviving community blogs from the 90s) and Tildes (a more recent attempt at capturing the same feel). Text-heavy discourse, minimalist design, human-scale moderation, and moderately gatekept (MeFi has a $5 fee, Tildes is invite-only). PM me if you’re interested.
This is what small forums with good moderators used to be, back in “the old days”. Modern forums (and Lemmy) just don’t have quite the same feel any more.
There used to be a website called WiserEarth (and then later Wiser.org). This was an internet utopia for intellectual, empathetic discussion about sociopolitical, environmental, ecological, and economic discussion. Really miss that community. But yeah, few. And far between.
Haven’t found IRL either
nor I found it in my dreams
So, check out communities on mander.xyz for science topics and slrpnk.net for ecology.
I don’t know yet of any good munis on lemmy for theology, philosophy, or wild theorycrafting, but I’m interested if anyone has recommendations.
Myself being very new to Lemmy, would you possibly be able to explain how to search by instance? Is it about finding the right app, or is it simpler to just sign up via different instances?
This website is very helpful for finding communities and instances
Did not know of this! Gratitude and sincere thanks 🙏
This is where apps are nice. You could also just go to the instance’s website and view their local community list.
Yeah lets get some social science running in this b**** Ü Perspective this techie fest (<3) could use some of
As a techie, yes please, we definitely need different points of view
looking for… reasonably intelligent…
Fair question, sure, but then you reply with?
…theology…
You’re why we can’t have nice things. 🤌🏼
Maybe we should allow all kind of discussion in online communities? Theology is a valid discussion topic.
Allow it, sure, but insinuate is anything more than the study of systemic superstition that’s hobbled the species and upheld exploitation since the dawn of mankind? That’s irresponsible at best.
Bruh I listed it alongside “wild theorycrafting”, calm down.
“Bruh”, by that logic: you listed it before philosophy. Simmer, child.
Maybe theology is discussions about OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt.
Linux vs BSD holy war incoming
I like your brains, citizen. Nicely done. Please continue.
- !digitalbioacoustics@lemmy.world
- !shortstories@literature.cafe
- !archeology@mander.xyz
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biohacking@mander.xyz
- !history@ theres like 5 of these
- !humanities@beehaw.org
- !interestingshares@lemmy.zip
- !longreads@ like 5 different ones
- !nameit@sopuli.xyz
- !paleontology@mander.xyz
- !permacomputing@slrpnk.net
- !permaculture@lem.ee
- !philosophy@ 5 of these
- !poetry@ 5
- !psychadelictherapy@lemmy.world
- !roboticsandai@mander.xyz
- !science@ 5
- !soillessagriculture@discuss.tchncs.de
- !solarpunk@slrpnk.net
- !space@ 5
- !strangetimes@lemmy.world
Shameless plug:
Try scrolling through local on a few instances or look at top subscribed communities and you’ll find descent stuff.
I don’t wanna make a list of a 100. Some of these you’ll like, some you won’t, find what suits you.
Instances:
- slrpnk.net
- literature.cafe
- beehaw.org
- mander.xyz
Wow, thank you my friend. This is a wonderful list. Subscribing to most of these!
Edit: also, “InMyMind” is wonderful! Thank you for curating some fascinating content. 👍
Thanks!
Nice list! Shoutout to digitalbioaccoustics it’s a real hidden gem.
- Bullet points
- aren’t hard
- to format,
- as new lines
- =/=
- line breaks
You should probably get off .world and go make an account over at mander.xyz. That way your home instance will be full of the kind of communities you seek and you can just supplement it with others.
Also, we’re still building this thing. Feel free to come browse c/13thFloor@kbin.social, the very inactive but super cool arts community started by @Arotrios and currently being looked after by me until he gets back. Proper link in my bio.
If you use exclamation, links work ;) !13thfloor@kbin.social
Only for Lemmy. I think Kbin accounts access magazines a different way, but not sure. Sometimes I hear an @ sign works, sometimes I hear it doesn’t, so I’ll throw it in anyway:
@13thfloor@kbin.social (for people on Kbin)
Thanks. It doesn’t work for me to type that with the way kbin formats (we use two lots of @ so what you typed is just plain text to me) so I have to do it with urls and was being lazy.
I have both lemmy and kbin formats for everything in my bio but I’m not sure if Lemmings can read my bio.
Yep, just did, because I happen to agree with this being a good idea 👍
That’s a very cool art community btw. Eclectic, museworthy tastes without excessive pretense.
In my own experience I found that .world communities are usually the ones to stay away from. Most of the comments devolve into petty bickering and go off topic quickly. It was a great improvement when I made a new sub list of topics from other instances. They arent as active, but the quality of discussions is higher and respectful.
Where do responsible, respectful adults go for discussions and for substantive, high quality posts and comments by decent human beings?
In my experience, these are specific communities / websites with their own forums.
The paradox introduced by threads like these is that they flood the communities with shit.
It’s like when you build a really good road or freeway. Everyone starts using it and now it’s not good anymore.
To me, real excellence is self evident and doesn’t need to be recommended outright
I take this point to heart. I have no problem with respectful individuals trying to better themselves through enrichment, and hope that the diversity of Lemmy communities translates to bastions of high quality standards not possible on centralized platforms like Reddit. Like anything innovative and somewhat disruptive, Lemmy is another social experiment. Personally I’m optimistic that moderators of many communities will maintain high QC and exclusivity.
The thing is everyone has a limit with what they can deal with, are shaped by repeated interactions, etc etc.
We need solid systems in place that work and secure integrity of operation inherently - with or without “good” moderators or admins or owners etc
I don’t disagree. I believe that systems not relying on trust, if cleverly designed, can be simultaneously robust, selective, and autonomously correcting. That being said, the forum format itself, while having inherent drawbacks, is my preferred version of the modern commons for different reasons. It’s not the Platonic ideal of the digital commons, nor, hopefully its last iteration, but I’m hoping Lemmy produces superior communities to Reddit, for instance, simply due to their diversity and decentralized governance.
I applaud your optimism. And you’re right. The design of the fediverse encourages these properties. But there are also other dynamics at play.
I wouldn’t describe Lemmy as an intellectual place. It’s more a cross-sectional take on society. It’s a diverse place of common folks, a few nerds, people posting the news, sharing memes or asking questions…
It depends a bit on the specific community. Some have nice people and active conversation, some don’t. Especially niche topics are a mixed bag. We’re just 50.000 active users so that means for some smaller hobbies you can’t really get a conversation going. But you included some broad topics. I’m sure some of them work well here.
!technology@beehaw.org regularly has good posts. Debate and politics work very well all across the platform… I’m not really an expert on the communities here, I hope other people can give good recommendations. Art, literature and ecology also have healthy communities. Sometimes entire instaces dedicated to it.
I think if you’re willing to share this place with a diverse group of people, you can get happy here.
Yep go to now there i just made two posts and you know i only post “high quality”
plugging !cfb@fanaticus.social. I know that college football probably isn’t the most popular activity for those of us in the fedi, but honestly we’ve got a decent community going, even if a little small.
Femcel memes
Phew… good question. It very much depends on your perspective I guess.
As an IT person I like it science, jokes and news but I also enjoy other things, not necessarily „professional“ but definitely not shitposting. If thats what you‘re after, you might want to look at everything on programming.dev, some stuff on lemmy.ml, a little bit on world and so on.
If you need even more formal I think you‘re out of luck atm since we‘re only at the discussion phase about a federated xing/linkedin. That would probably be more business oriented and rather formal/respectful.
Besides that, we are in a somewhat good situation atm - although my blocklist is now over 100 people so your mileage may vary.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Whatever is related to science, technology and art. Usually those communities have respectful people and genuinely want to share knowledge and engage in debate.
You might like Tildes …
If it’s still closed you can email em.
deleted by creator
