Lobsters manages an okay community (caveat: from what I’ve seen), but their lack of particularly strong rules or guidelines (just as with HN) don’t give me a ton of confidence in their ability to handle value conflict. Following, they don’t really state their community values anyway, which is something I find increasingly important.
Also with respect to the feedback cycles from hiding progressive comments that has been posed; I see a similar thing happening with these invite-only platforms. You are less likely to have diverse opinions and viewpoints from a userbase that largely grows only from the people in the same degree as existing users.
I’ve written about that last part before, and I’d like to stress that’s as neutral an appraisal I can proffer; I think for some communities that is an ideal model, but for many others it would be stifling.
I read both, though lobsters seems to have more useful content lately. I would like to join so I ask comment/ask questions, but don’t know anyone there to ask.
I’ll be chattin’ in there and some person will pop in and be like “can I have an invite? can I have an invite?” and the vibe I always got was that it was unwelcome
I used to read HN and find interesting stuff, but stopped when it became ever more flooded with startups and AI this.
In its place I have the RSS feed from lobsters, which surfaces plenty of interesting articles.
Lobsters manages an okay community (caveat: from what I’ve seen), but their lack of particularly strong rules or guidelines (just as with HN) don’t give me a ton of confidence in their ability to handle value conflict. Following, they don’t really state their community values anyway, which is something I find increasingly important.
Also with respect to the feedback cycles from hiding progressive comments that has been posed; I see a similar thing happening with these invite-only platforms. You are less likely to have diverse opinions and viewpoints from a userbase that largely grows only from the people in the same degree as existing users.
I’ve written about that last part before, and I’d like to stress that’s as neutral an appraisal I can proffer; I think for some communities that is an ideal model, but for many others it would be stifling.
I read both, though lobsters seems to have more useful content lately. I would like to join so I ask comment/ask questions, but don’t know anyone there to ask.
I can invite you if you DM me your email! I don’t use lobsters super often since I mainly use Lemmy but I do have an account there
I chat in their IRC chatroom occasionally but idk how to turn that into an invite like their about page says <.<
Simply ask for invitation.
I’ll be chattin’ in there and some person will pop in and be like “can I have an invite? can I have an invite?” and the vibe I always got was that it was unwelcome
Couldn’t immediately find an RSS feed there, does it require an account?
Modern sites like to hide their RSS feeds. There are browser addons that show you the feeds - highly recommended
Not sure how I found it, but the “top stories” feed is https://lobste.rs/top/rss
It does require an account with invitation to comment and upvote