What are some of your favorite communities that feature topics like literature, science, ecology, aerospace, technology, politics, history, arts, culture, theory, and debate?
Where do responsible, respectful adults go for discussions and for substantive, high quality posts and comments by decent human beings?
(Not just limited to academic/intellectual topics, could be anything from hobbies to defense contracts to careers to skills. Just looking for respectful, reasonably intelligent, informed, relatively engaged communities.)
Also, are forum aggregators like Lemmy and Reddit even the best places to find such communities outside of listservers, universities, and academic conferences?
Where do responsible, respectful adults go for discussions and for substantive, high quality posts and comments by decent human beings?
I don’t think you will find this Utopia online
That’s been my experience for 95% of Lemmy communities right now, though. I don’t know if it will last but for now, it seems pretty high quality.
Yeah i feel like this is how the early redditors must’ve felt. I don’t want this to get huge frankly
It was. But there were interesting effects from Reddit getting huge, like more niche subreddits and random encounters, like someone posting a proposal pictures and the targets of it being able to find it online. That probably wouldn’t happen on Lemmy.
Probably a worthy trade for better discussion and less bots, though.
I thoroughly enjoy MetaFilter (one of the last surviving community blogs from the 90s) and Tildes (a more recent attempt at capturing the same feel). Text-heavy discourse, minimalist design, human-scale moderation, and moderately gatekept (MeFi has a $5 fee, Tildes is invite-only). PM me if you’re interested.
There used to be a website called WiserEarth (and then later Wiser.org). This was an internet utopia for intellectual, empathetic discussion about sociopolitical, environmental, ecological, and economic discussion. Really miss that community. But yeah, few. And far between.
So, check out communities on mander.xyz for science topics and slrpnk.net for ecology.
I don’t know yet of any good munis on lemmy for theology, philosophy, or wild theorycrafting, but I’m interested if anyone has recommendations.
Myself being very new to Lemmy, would you possibly be able to explain how to search by instance? Is it about finding the right app, or is it simpler to just sign up via different instances?
This is where apps are nice. You could also just go to the instance’s website and view their local community list.
Yeah lets get some social science running in this b**** Ü Perspective this techie fest (<3) could use some of
looking for… reasonably intelligent…
Fair question, sure, but then you reply with?
…theology…
You’re why we can’t have nice things. 🤌🏼
Maybe we should allow all kind of discussion in online communities? Theology is a valid discussion topic.
Allow it, sure, but insinuate is anything more than the study of systemic superstition that’s hobbled the species and upheld exploitation since the dawn of mankind? That’s irresponsible at best.
- !digitalbioacoustics@lemmy.world
- !shortstories@literature.cafe
- !archeology@mander.xyz
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biohacking@mander.xyz
- !history@ theres like 5 of these
- !humanities@beehaw.org
- !interestingshares@lemmy.zip
- !longreads@ like 5 different ones
- !nameit@sopuli.xyz
- !paleontology@mander.xyz
- !permacomputing@slrpnk.net
- !permaculture@lem.ee
- !philosophy@ 5 of these
- !poetry@ 5
- !psychadelictherapy@lemmy.world
- !roboticsandai@mander.xyz
- !science@ 5
- !soillessagriculture@discuss.tchncs.de
- !solarpunk@slrpnk.net
- !space@ 5
- !strangetimes@lemmy.world
Shameless plug:
Try scrolling through local on a few instances or look at top subscribed communities and you’ll find descent stuff.
I don’t wanna make a list of a 100. Some of these you’ll like, some you won’t, find what suits you.
Instances:
- slrpnk.net
- literature.cafe
- beehaw.org
- mander.xyz
Wow, thank you my friend. This is a wonderful list. Subscribing to most of these!
Edit: also, “InMyMind” is wonderful! Thank you for curating some fascinating content. 👍
You should probably get off .world and go make an account over at mander.xyz. That way your home instance will be full of the kind of communities you seek and you can just supplement it with others.
Also, we’re still building this thing. Feel free to come browse c/13thFloor@kbin.social, the very inactive but super cool arts community started by @Arotrios and currently being looked after by me until he gets back. Proper link in my bio.
If you use exclamation, links work ;) !13thfloor@kbin.social
Thanks. It doesn’t work for me to type that with the way kbin formats (we use two lots of @ so what you typed is just plain text to me) so I have to do it with urls and was being lazy.
I have both lemmy and kbin formats for everything in my bio but I’m not sure if Lemmings can read my bio.
Yep, just did, because I happen to agree with this being a good idea 👍
That’s a very cool art community btw. Eclectic, museworthy tastes without excessive pretense.
In my own experience I found that .world communities are usually the ones to stay away from. Most of the comments devolve into petty bickering and go off topic quickly. It was a great improvement when I made a new sub list of topics from other instances. They arent as active, but the quality of discussions is higher and respectful.
