this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
2183 points (96.9% liked)

You Should Know

32162 readers
1 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Why YSK: Getting along in a new social environment is easier if you understand the role you've been invited into.


It has been said that "if you're not paying for the service, you're not the customer, you're the product."

It has also been said that "the customer is always right".

Right here and now, you're neither the customer nor the product.

You're a person interacting with a website, alongside a lot of other people.

You're using a service that you aren't being charged for; but that service isn't part of a scheme to profit off of your creativity or interests, either. Rather, you're participating in a social activity, hosted by a group of awesome people.

You've probably interacted with other nonprofit Internet services in the past. Wikipedia is a standard example: it's one of the most popular websites in the world, but it's not operated for profit: the servers are paid-for by a US nonprofit corporation that takes donations, and almost all of the actual work is volunteer. You might have noticed that Wikipedia consistently puts out high-quality information about all sorts of things. It has community drama and disputes, but those problems don't imperil the service itself.

The folks who run public Lemmy instances have invited us to use their stuff. They're not business people trying to make a profit off of your activity, but they're also not business people trying to sell you a thing. This is, so far, a volunteer effort: lots of people pulling together to make this thing happen.

Treat them well. Treat the service well. Do awesome things.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I bet if we stole the idea of reddit gold and allowed people to award comments and posts, but 1. no premium membership and 2. make it clear that the money is going to help keep the service running, that would bring in a lot of revenue without harming the community.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you guarantee the money isn't being used for profit?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's certainly a valid and important question, but I'm not sure how relevant it is to the question of how Lemmy increases its operating revenue. If I'm living minimalist but my issue is I can't sustainably afford housing, food, and healthcare, there's no way to solve that problem without solving the fundamental issue of me not making enough money. My impression is that that is the main question facing Lemmy at this moment, and so that's what I was focused on.

I suspect most financial advisors would tell you that managing money is what you do when you have some.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, very true. It's quite the catch-22.

With decentralised systems and free software we can try to evade the control of these corporations (and the profit motive), but the irl parallels to this (e.g. self-sustability) are even more difficult to pull off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

sounds like a decent idea, but how can it scale to so many servers out there? it’s a logistical hell

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If it was just built into the base software, then every instance would have the option available by default, no? And then it would just be a question of directing the money to the right place and displaying the relevant icon on the awarded post or comment.

I'm no software engineer, though, so it's entirely possible everything I'm saying is total bollocks. Still, worth considering if we're thinking about the long-term health of this place, IMO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd rather just give them my money and have a little icon. I don't like the idea of copying Reddit. Even the upvote/downvote thing is cullable if you ask me. The only thing Reddit-like that I enjoy is the familiar UI.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

As in, some kind of "contributor" badge next to your username? That's also definitely a good way to do it. Basically, if it makes donations visible on the community level, I think it's a benefit.