Gonna just say it. As a longtime Lemmy user I'm really not a fan of a lot of the people coming over from Reddit. It's probably just a small but vocal minority and confirmation bias on my part, but I get the impression that they are trying to turn Lemmy into Reddit, toxicity, entitlement, stupid challenges and all.
When we've had two major debacles before Reddit even opened back up, one about "how dare these unpaid admins try to lessen their workload with sign up questions", and the other about "how dare instances block other instances that are being used as proxies for forwarding spam and bot content into their own instances." The people from reddit seem to still think they're on Reddit and any perceived inferiority that Lemmy has compared to Reddit is seen as just as bad as Reddit's corporate decisions. A few people even trying to go to an instance with the intent of "converting" the existing users who may be socialist or communist, by commenting abuse on their posts of course, just like how they presumably do it on Reddit.
People also seem to be refusing to learn what federation is and how that works, despite it being literally the most important aspects of Lemmy. This is evident in people telling instances who block spam or troll ridden instances to "mind their own business" as if that content doesn't get forwarded over to and show up on the main pages of other instances, you know, what the fediverse was designed to do.
FYI, Reddit has opened back up. Spez has made it clear that he will never tolerate subreddits shutting down and inconveniencing you again. If you're so unwilling to even adopt a different mindset and perspective when coming to Lemmy, I think it's best if you went back. Plenty of us came here because we didn't want to be on Reddit.
Last thing and a pet peeve of mine: stop calling yourself a refugee. You left a meme website for another meme website because you didn't like one aspect of the management, the entire decision and migration probably took less than an hour of you sitting in your comfortable house in front of a computer. To compare that to being a refugee speaks volumes about your entitlement and privilege. And it's especially ironic considering what real refugees go through to save themselves and their families, that you won't even answer a few registration questions.
As one of the folks who came from Reddit when everyone else did, sorry. :(
It makes sense that any mass exedous from some other community will greatly change the destination community, and much of value will be lost in the process.
So, is there anything I can do to help preserve and embody what I've helped destroy? I'll definitely keep in mind what you've said here about "toxicity, entitlement, and stupid challenges," and I'll learn more about federation and keep an open mind. Any other advice how we former Redditors can help keep what made Lemmy great before hordes of Redditors flooded it?
Any advice how we can help even enrich the Lemmy community and make it better than we first found it?
I don't want to go back to Reddit. And I don't want to be a pariah or paracite here. And I accept that those who were on Lemmy have wisdom to share that newcomers can benefit from.
Ive been here longer then this guy, and submitted feature requests and bugs that got fixed/implemented.
It's fine, don't let anyone make you feel guilty, it's OK to ask questions, voice your opinions and suggest criticism.
You can donate to lemmy, i heard there is more work to be done on moderation tools and maybe that can help.
Also on reddit there is a subreddit called linux4noobs , maybe there should be a lemmy4noobs, if you are willing to moderate that could help.
I realized now just how much I sounded like some kind of Lemmy early adopter supremacist in this thread, for that I apologize. I didn't mean to be a dick.
I guess just take a good look at Reddit and Lemmy, and try and identify toxic elements to be avoided. Things like attacking mods and admins for perceived underperformance, plenty of people have talked about Reddit's switch from discussion to fast content and how that culture can clash with Lemmy which is still discussion oriented, trying to push for stupid challenges, stuff like that. Things that shouldn't be done on any social media platform. I'm not saying to make Lemmy its absolutely unique thing or an exclusive thing or preserve its 'culture' or anything, just very not excited that toxic elements from Reddit which Lemmy had more or less avoided until now are being brought to Lemmy. Not to say that Lemmy is free of its own toxicity, hell I'm probably part of the problem and also need to work on that, but being our own toxic elements is no excuse to keep them either. Don't pick them up.
God I love this about the Fediverse lol. On Twitter or Reddit you don't get actual human interactions like this.
It's cool that you want to be open minded and respectful but you really don't need to lick this guy's boots or anyone else proclaiming some kind of exceptionalism for participating on some web forums before you or I did. I can appreciate it probably feels unwelcome seeing a community you were comfortable in change with an influx of new people but there's some glaring ironies to what this guy is saying and it pretty much just boils down to gatekeeping.
It's particularly amusing how he has managed to engineer vicarious offence at people calling themselves refugees because of the lack of real hardship compared to real refugees yet cannot see the "go back to where you came from" written between and sometimes even on the lines of every sneering paragraph. There's an overall lack of awareness that's sadly ironic for the author of this polemic against newcomers and their supposed lack of awareness.
No, I think you'll be just fine being yourself and not walking on eggshells for people like this, frankly they needs a cold shower and a dose of reality.