Melbourne

That pretty much sums up what I think the overarching rule here should be. If we adopt that as the complete community guidelines it would also allow me to remove posts with the comment "your comment was totally bogus, dude" which would be sort of fun too.

I've been doing some reading about how to develop guidelines for a forum, and definitely prefer the "values-based" approach over "rules-based". Which is basically having things like "be helpful and relevant" and tends to be more positive.

The Aussie.zone itself does have rules to be respectful, no bigotry, and "don't be a dick", so we have a good start there already.

I also think that reposts shouldn’t be gone after as hard as they were. I mean, I get it with things like sunset posts and major events (earthquakes, etc), but to be honest, people asking for advice on what suburb to move to is just half the point of a forum such as this.

Honestly whenever I needed to search something on Google and Reddit was one of the first options usually it was a reposted question. So I'm not so much against the same question because also if you ask "where's the best bruger joint" and then seven years later someone asks the same question, some of those businesses are probably gone. So yeah, I think some reposts can be annoying (i.e. earthquakes, helicopters, sunsets, etc.) but there are times where it's not so bad.

eli5 what is DT?

I hope we have at least a bit of a honeymoon period here without the toxic people. My personal suspicion is that a lot of the people who are negative prefer the easy route of taking pot-shots at what everyone else has created, and will stay away until there is something more substantial here to come and denigrate. Hopefully we will have built a more resilient community, based on the culture in the DT - I think it's pretty obvious that it is largely DT regulars that are here now, so there is no reason the nice vibe can't extend to the whole community.

It's why I want to start discussing this sort of thing now though, I have no idea if/when problems are going to start cropping up, and want to have some sort of plan in place first as to how to deal with it.

I think everyone here likes the DT vibe. Possibly the biggest risk right now is that everything goes in the daily thread and nothing in the main community!

It will be interesting to see what happens with things like sunset pictures, given the increased ability to post pictures within the comments. It might make it easier to consolidate things in one post - like sunset pictures developing into a thread full of pictures, which is good. It also has the potential to overwhelm comments with picture/meme content instead of discussion - "sky pretty" in the DT is good, 28 individual sunset pictures takes the focus away from discussion and has the potential to change the feel of the thread. Hopefully people can self-moderate enough that it won't be an issue.

I think the DT is pretty much sacred - it is also why most of us are here, so what is happening there obviously works. I'm definitely not contemplating introducing lots of rules or trying to tie everything up with restrictions, my main concern is that I understand what everyone else wants so I don't end up just pushing my own preferences onto everyone else.

The other side of things like the earthquake posts is that having them all there tends to fragment the discussion into lots of posts, and makes it hard to find posts about anything else. I'm not sure there is a perfect solution, at least with the current technology. A slightly more hierachical structure with sub-groups would probably work well for larger groups, if it was possible.

It's Melbournonians just FYI

Same! It's one of the things I hated on Reddit, was that the main ADHD subreddit was just post after post of depressive shit. And I'm not saying that we need a toxic positivity train going, like yeah ADHD is hard, people suck. But it felt like constantly "no one understands me", "my x took my meds", "doctor doesn't think adhd is real". etc. And then most of the people are American which is fine, but there were so many posts that didn't concern me at all, thus you'd think the Australian ADHD subreddit was a good idea but nope, it was so dead.

So basically, yes, I too would like something related to ADHD (whether it's its own space or combined with ASD, I don't mind). There is a lemmy group for ADHD (adhd@lemmy.world, I don't know if I'm doing that right), but obviously it's slow right now.

It sounds like an area that really deserves it's own community, hopefully a decent one will develop in time.

In the meantime I'm thinking about trying to use a system with either a pinned meta-thread or links in the sidebar to direct people to specific interest posts, which can then work as sub-groups for ongoing discussions. The way the Reddit sub worked meant that trending and new content was always prioritised and ongoing discussions struggled to get a foothold, but I think if we can keep specific posts linked from the top then there is no reason why a post on something like ADHD discussions could not stay active working like a sub-group for years.

I am creating a post to index ongoing discussion groups, so if a general ADHD discussion post is started I will link it there. I can also add any recommended resources to a a reference list, if you would like to suggest any you can either message me directly or tag me in the comment they come up in.

I think the Wordle scores were really only an issue when they were new and flooded the DT. Having a few all contained in one comment is something you can skip over fairly easily. I think a few people have PTSD from the initial flood and get triggered by green boxes, but a few deep breaths and moving on should fix that.

As to food emojis, that is the DT love language! Removing food emojis would be like hacking off a limb.

Where do you stand on "what was that bang!?" and "does anyone know why there are police cars/fire trucks/ambulances at.." posts?

We will have to see what actually happens, but I am definitely doing it because I am interested in learning how - both in terms of planning how to operate a group and in how to do coding/automation. And just in case the little sewing group I created takes off it could be handy there too - you never know when a darning discussion could get out of control 🤣

My philosophy at the moment is it is better to assume this is long term and prepare for it than have it happen unexpectedly and have to scramble to try to catch up. A good structure and setup can't hurt anything, but not having it potentially could.