Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I'm not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.

The data

I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:

query {  
  monthlystats {  
    date_checked  
    softwarename  
    total_posts  
    total_users  
    total_comments  
  }  
}

Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:

jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'

(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I'll put the graph for that in comments)

Then did a good old' chart

What to think of it

I don't know. Users' activity is on the rise and I find it nice

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[–] 1984@lemmy.today 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah exactly, they dont have downvotes and any upvote also requires karma, so you cant just create new accounts and bot upvote things.

But yes, its also a much more mature audience at that site. Many are older computer nerds. Lemmy has some of that too though.

They also have a moderator that is full time working on keeping the site clean, so there is that.

But yeah, I really miss discussions where you see unpopular opinions and they are not downvoted, because I can handle seeing that. I may not agree and then I will just ignore or comment, not downvote it.

Without good moderation, it will turn into 4chan though. So yeah, the extremes are not good, have to be in the middle.

[–] TehWorld@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

That’s the old Slashdot model. It does change how echo-y the chambers become when you limit how things get amplified. Those with higher engagement get to push things a lot harder and I’d actually fear the opposite. An Ai model would certainly be able to echo the general feeling of a place and then slowly turn the dial toward a goal, and do it more effectively in that case as it can comment on everything anyway.