Most online communities have a low barrier of entry and effectively no user onboarding, and end up becoming chaotic messes where content is difficult to navigate. Obviously this is fine for more chatty communities, but is unfortunate in more serious and discussion-focused forums and for content archives. Even on Lemmy, there are communities where formatting rules are completely ignored[1]. This results from a combination of site design, moderation, and user respect for the community (three things notoriously bad on reddit-like sites, and well, most popular sites)
A couple of exceptions to the trend are forums which enforce a barrier of entry and quality control (unfortunately I can’t recall any right now, but I would love to hear of some!) and some booru IBs. A booru site is an archive where users upload media without titles and tag it for easy searching. If a booru manages to enforce a decent quality of tagging (and there are mechanical ways to assist with this, such as tag aliases) then the site becomes a well-organized online content community.
Most boorus I’ve found allow NSFW content, so here are some work-safe examples:
- FindAfox (photos and videos of foxes)
- FIRST Robotics Competition Archive (unofficial)
- Safebooru (mostly anime drawings)
Note: feel welcome to list slow or ‘dead’ sites!
Obviously biased but hexbear
But Lemmy.world told me hexbear is evil?!?
lemmy.world is a wretched hive of liberals and fascists.
Certainly seems that way
Lemmy.world sure does have a lot to say about other instances don’t they?
For the sake of discussion, can you give some examples of good design in the community? How does that contrast against other Lemmy instances?
Aggressive moderation of bigots removal of down votes and an incredible dedicated and diverse moderation team for starters.
It is for example the safest place for trans comrades on the entire internet from my experience.
And we love our emojis and have the best worst memes, don’t we folks?
I was gonna say SCP but that’s kinda fallen apart.
I’m only peripherally aware of the SCP community, but I really enjoy browsing the stories… what’s fallen apart about it?
They all got stuck in an infinite IKEA
MetaFilter has been a very well managed & moderated community for a very long time. Their FAQ is worth perusing as food for thought. They pay their moderators. Funding comes from a sign-up fee and donations.
Personally I can no longer stomach how labor aristocratic and unabashedly anti-“tankie” MetaFilter is, though.
Fortunately, I think this other site is also well managed:
A couple of exceptions to the trend are forums which enforce a barrier of entry and quality control
Resetera
I agree with the boorus. Some of the best tagging systems and implementations in existence
I don’t know if it is good organized, but i like the DevianArt website, a bit classic, a bit modern, full of significant content.
This is super niche but Ravelry is a fantastic place for knitters and crocheters. I don’t personally participate in many forums there, but there are lots of other ways to be involved and it’s very informative.
For what it’s worth, I’m expecting the best examples to be niche. General sites are often too purposeless to do these things well.
Ravelry looks great, good example!
It’s great! I’ve picked up sewing now (knitting got too easy after nearly twenty years…) and the first major disappointment is how there is nothing like Ravelry for sewing. There are major pattern companies, indie pattern companies, review sites, blogs, etc. but they’re not all in one central location and it bums me out. Oh well.
Prolewiki seems cool.
