About

Welcome to discuss@discuss.online! This community is intended as a place for thoughtful discussion to happen, and this post will attempt to explain the goals of the community and how it's intended to work.

This is community is intended to be a place to slow down and think a bit before responding. If you see something interesting, talk about it! Substantive doesn't have to mean "deeply researched and cited" (though that's always appreciated, of course), but please avoid low-effort and joke responses. Ideally, you'll come away from here better for the time spent. The general discuss.online posting guidelines have some more guidance as well. Here's a slightly adapted version as well, for convenience:

Try to create interesting discussion. The best conversation brings a fresh perspective. Substantive comments are expected particularly for contentious topics.

Practice the Principle of Charity. Seek out common ground, and assume the best of others. Inquire, don't attack.

Humor is fine, but avoid low-effort common joke responses.

Don't test boundaries, that's not what the community is for. Consider yourself an honored guest, and respect the mods as people with lives.

Much of the Hacker News Guidelines are relevant as well, if you'd like additional guidelines.

What to Post

Post anything you find interesting! This community is intended to have a very wide focus, so anything from a cool new physics discovery to a deep dive into the hardware for an obsolete gaming console. The only real offtopic items would be political news. This isn't a community for "Politician does Bad Thing!", but "Here's a history of Bad Thing and how Politician works into it" might be appropriate

Moderation

Please downvote posts that won't do a good job of promoting interesting discussion. Please do not downvote posts just as a reaction to the title. If you repeatedly downvote without commenting, or participate (even once) in downvote brigading, you may be given a temp ban from the community, but:

Don't take it personally

Lemmy's moderation tools are lacking in this regard, so consider a temp ban a friendly "Please slow your roll". If you feel that you were wrongly banned or have any other questions, please join us at #online.discuss:discuss.online, we're a friendly bunch! Please do not DM anybody in response as that can easily come across as harassment, even if not intended that way.

This is a tiny community and not one oriented towards growth. If it ever grows big enough that the above moderation policies cause issues in the wider Fediverse, it will be revisited.

And finally, link to post image on Wikimedia commons:

Woman with wax tablets and stylus (so-called "Sappho")