The recent vote quota has been a hot topic and I'm curious about its effects on the site, the feature seems to target power users but I'm wondering about the knock-off effect on content in the platform, since we know about the 90-9-1 rule that applies to most online communities where 90% lurk, 1% post and 9% engage with the posts, I'm concerned that having implemented a feature specifically designed to limit that 10% minority that create the content that the rest consume, have you noticed any issues with content dropping? is there any way to track that? do you know of users who have left because of it? I myself used PieFed before but now I'm using Reddit more, I would understand rate limits but vote quotas are a deal breaker for me whether or not I reach the limit, something about it rubs me the wrong way, and the fact it's enabled by default on every instance? it feels like we're punishing away the people who actually keep the platform alive and I wonder if anyone has data on whether this has measurably changed posting behavior or if it's just a theoretical
10 Comments
DosDude@retrofed.com · 35 pts · 5d
I've effectively disabled it by setting the quota so absurdly high, even a bot wouldn't be able to hit it. I understand his reasoning, and I don't agree. It's good that Admins can set the quota themselves.
I know of at least one prolific person (PugJesus) that quit the fediverse because of it. And they did post a lot to cool niche communities I am subscribed to, and I enjoyed their contributions. Unfortunately they do not want to do another instance migration.
I'm glad Rimu disclosed it either way, instead of silently adding it.
karashta@sopuli.xyz · 15 pts · 5d
It made me stop using piefed.social and start using sopuli.xyz again
walden@wetshav.ing · 0 pts · 5d
That's a Lemmy instance, right?
Would it help if there was more visibility on PieFed instances that show their individual settings?
If you're willing to go back to Lemmy you probably weren't interested in the ideological differences of PieFed, anyway.
Vicinus@piefed.zip · 13 pts · 5d
I'm not replying to Rimu's comment, because I don't want to get into it with him again, but the graph he posted can't be used as evidence of anything. The data isn't normalized to activity (posts, comments, voting).
If half the people left after the 1.7 implementation, you'd also see a drop in network activity. Based on our (Rimu and I's) previous discussion, there was a significant drop in activity (comments and posts) at that time (I don't have data on votes so can't confidently state they dropped too during that time, but I would be surprised if they didn't correlate with the posts and comments.
As one of the other commentors said, pugjesus left, which I think, was unfortunate but understandable. I was considering leaving, but .zip removed the limit and I believe several other instances did as well.
Blaze@quokk.au · 10 pts · 5d
Nice to hear about .zip
CombatWombat@feddit.online · 8 pts · 5d
I miss upvoting basically every post I see and I miss PugJesus
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 5 pts · 5d
I think it has no impact on me. My quote bar is almost empty. If I click on your account, there doesn't seem to be a lot of votes which federate to my one-person instance. Idk if my instance broke but it says 84 votes total and doesn't even show show any line. And I've been clicking on random accounts during the last weeks to see what kind of impact this has, and I rarely see anyone exceed 25%. Mind that I'm not really into politic and memes. Maybe YMMV if you're part of those communities.
rimu@piefed.social · 5 pts · 5d
It doesn't limit that 10% minority, it limits the 0.02% minority. And that 0.02% were not the ones making posts the most, they were voting the most.
Please see the numbers at https://piefed.social/c/fediverse@piefed.social/p/2190040/who-decides-what-you-see-on-the-fediverse-a-look-at-voting-patterns
In this graph we see CPU usage (green line) and network activity (orange line) for the last month. The change was introduced around 3rd of July. Visible on the far left of the graph is a few days of what it used to be like.
Kirk@startrek.website · -1 pts · 5d
Wow that's huge it seems to be working as desired.
rimu@piefed.social · 1 pts · 5d
Kirk@startrek.website · -3 pts · 5d
I think it's a cool idea, there is so much empty engagement for engagement's sake by a super small handful of accounts that it's basically just spam. I can't imagine someone checking out the fediverse is going to see endless feed old memes and decide this is superior to reddit in any way.
Not all of us want an endless content feed, I like slower social media with more thoughtful and respectful discussions and I like seeing developers that understand that and try to bake it in.