I was just thinking about this, when I’m facing an issue, the first thing I do is go to a search engine and usually there’s a Reddit post. But I don’t want to ask there. And the only way we’re going to build up the info for folks to find us and come here is for us to just start asking here. On the Fediverse. We need to build up that mountain of knowledge that Reddit has and will always have. So we should be championing ANYONE asking questions here. Even if we think it’s obvious and we think you can just Google it. There was a time where you literally couldn’t just Google it. That was built over time. We need to build that here. So start asking your questions here! Find the answers and then post your answer to your own question. Or let someone do it for you. We need to build the knowledge here to be found. It’s not just about people looking for alternatives. We need our knowledge to be more valuable than their knowledge.
There is one worry I have about Lemmy being the knowledge of anything and it’s what happened on reddit. Many people went through and nuked their comments, essentially making many posts useless. There are already people here on lemmy that delete their profiles, comments and start over every few months. Not really sure what that means for all the federation, but I assume different instances may have different versions of deleted information in the long run?
the whole point is a living breathing community, not a wiki
when somethings alive things die and go away forever, when everythings perserved it feels like a tomb, a place to record stuff not actively engage, im hella exagerating, I just like that ppl own their own content a bit more than reddit
Which is fine, if that’s what the general consensus ends up being (I generally disagree with deleting knowledge, but that’s my own opinion and not up to me really), but then this should/will never be a place for knowledge and only just casual conversation. A lot of people on lemmy want it to replace reddit in terms of search results, but it may never be that.
On the flip side, keeping your personal online footprint small is definitely more secure.
Maybe we need a soft kill switch to disassociate content with an account after x amount of time. Like for me personally, I’ve put zero effort into mopping up old content, and as often as I post, I’m sure someone with the desire could put the pieces together and dox me.
I’ve left it up anyway cuz I don’t want to do to Lemmy what you’re concerned about, but if I could nuke all my content older than a few months into an anonymous version, I’d be all for that. Leave the info up for anyone who might benefit from it, but scrub my username.
That said, for community building sake, I’d hate to see posts go anonymous right out the gate like some 4chan shit; and posts should be associated with an account at least long enough for mods to have a reasonable amount of time to take action against an account that breaks the rules. But again, posts that are months old? The conversation there is over - my personal involvement is moot at that point, it’s just data now.
Disassociating with old comments and posts would be a good way to go, but I’m not really sure that’s an option for the fediverse? In theory couldn’t someone in the future set up an instance whose sole purpose is just back up and collect data? How would someone even go about trying to erase themselves from a situation like that?
I don’t think there would be any way to protect from that, but you’d have the same issue with full deletion.
You’re absolutely right, somebody totally could do that (instances that don’t respect post/reply deletion requests are already a known issue), and there’s very little you could do about that sort of thing once it’s already happened.
Which is why I think people on lemmy need to get used to the fact that their data isn’t theirs to own on something that is so public facing like this. Instead we should reteach people to be conscious of what information they post. Once upon a time even A/S/L was too much info.
We can make a Fedi-Wiki that requires you to agree to the terms that everything you publish is considered public, kinda like a source code under GPL.
Edit: Lol I just remembered it’s called Creative Commons. Its what Wikipedia uses.
One of the lemmy devs is also working on a federated wiki. On mobile, so no link, but i think it’s Ibis?
You can’t stop people changing their mind about deleting stuff. That can and should happen for any number of reasons, both good and bad. There are servers that would still have the information, but it feels like there’s less incentive to fully delete an account on the Fediverse as you can literally pick up the same conversation with a new account. Maybe I just don’t do enough social media use and miss the point. I deleted my stuff from Reddit, because I don’t want to help Reddit and it should be my private data. Fediverse we are all public and there is no tracking anyway. So whoever you are here, you’re it here, no where else, even with the same name.