Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I’m not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.

The data

I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:

query {  
  monthlystats {  
    date_checked  
    softwarename  
    total_posts  
    total_users  
    total_comments  
  }  
}

Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:

jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'

(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I’ll put the graph for that in comments)

Then did a good old’ chart

What to think of it

I don’t know. Users’ activity is on the rise and I find it nice

  • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    9 hours ago

    this place is never going to be good for any discussions where people disagree strongly.

    Most users downvote what they dont agree with. Its a circle jerk echo chamber where we all agree or get downvoted.

    So true, and so sad. This has been such a disappointment to me, and even a bit of a surprise. I just didn’t realize how badly most people respond to seeing viewpoints they don’t fully share. Personally I don’t get the point of discussion where everyone agrees, but apparently that is quite a rare attitude. So I share your pessimism, but with one glimmer of hope. There is at least one forum which has cracked this problem: Hacker News. The issue being that it’s frequented by exactly the kind of techie Spock-like personalities that aren’t representative of the general population.

    • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
      3·
      9 hours ago

      Yeah exactly, they dont have downvotes and any upvote also requires karma, so you cant just create new accounts and bot upvote things.

      But yes, its also a much more mature audience at that site. Many are older computer nerds. Lemmy has some of that too though.

      They also have a moderator that is full time working on keeping the site clean, so there is that.

      But yeah, I really miss discussions where you see unpopular opinions and they are not downvoted, because I can handle seeing that. I may not agree and then I will just ignore or comment, not downvote it.

      Without good moderation, it will turn into 4chan though. So yeah, the extremes are not good, have to be in the middle.

      • TehWorld@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        That’s the old Slashdot model. It does change how echo-y the chambers become when you limit how things get amplified. Those with higher engagement get to push things a lot harder and I’d actually fear the opposite. An Ai model would certainly be able to echo the general feeling of a place and then slowly turn the dial toward a goal, and do it more effectively in that case as it can comment on everything anyway.