c/Quarks will change to "local only" when Lemmy 0.19.6 releases

EDIT 3: **Due to some bugs we're delaying this feature until Lemmy 0.19.6 is released! **

The goal of c/Quarks has always been to help foster a sense of community for StarTrek.website, but it is just a generic "offtopic" community and does not really have an identity of it's own on the Fediverse.

Thanks to the new feature in Lemmy 19.4, we can create true "local only" communities. And Quark's can be what it was originally intended to be, a place for our users. This will allow us to better discuss what kind of experience users of this instance wish to have (not just provide) without all the dorks on less cool instances coming here and ruining our weather control network.

Smiling

EDIT: to those of you concerned about missing out on "trek-adjacent discussion" @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website has indicated they plan on loosening the "on topic" rule of /c/StarTrek to include more of that.

EDIT2: If anyone is interested in growing and operating a community on our instance, please feel free to reach out or comment here!

46 comments

That’s a total bummer but I’m not moving my whole identity for one single community. If everyone did this, Fedi would be an ever lonelier place.

Bye 👋
- I'm legitimately curious: what is the appeal of this community to a remote user?
  
  On my home instance, the community !meta@sopuli.xyz is for discussing issues specific to the instance, it's not really relevant to people not using the instance.
  
  On startrek.website, the Quarks community seems to primarily discuss Star Trek adjacent topics which are of interest to many Trek fans.
  
  I think it's great that you guys want a private community for discussing things only relevant to the instance. I just wish you hadn't chosen to close a community with broad external interest.
  
  @ValueSubtracted @deegeese you're joking, right?
  
  I only discovered this place after I was on fedi for 3+ years. It's incredible and amazing to be able to participate remotely. I honestly can't fathom why you WOULDN'T want that. But hey if they want to close it then bye I guess.
...and the fractured drawbacks of lemmy slowly become apparent. I see this happening more and more, and don't expect lemmy to survive if it continues.
- YOU KILLED LEMMY
  
  YOU BASTARDS
Good luck folks, I think each server having it's own identity and it's own place is something that makes the fediverse great.
- You should be here, making burgers of the day using the entire galaxy of ingredients
- Thanks, we do too!
This is dumb and makes no sense, even for the intended purposes.
@ptz@dubvee.org Tagging you here because you're basically the only other person who contributes to this community.
- I've always kind of (naively?) viewed it at face value: a place for everyone to discuss sci-fi and other things that aren't directly Star Trek with an audience that's largely composed of fellow Trekkies. But I do realize it's also your "meta" community where you answer instance-specific questions, post announcements, etc. It makes total sense for those to be local-only (and once I update my instance, I'll probably be doing the same for my meta community).
  
  We'll probably relax the rules on c/startrek a bit to allow a degree of Trek-adjacent content that we might have previously punted to Quark's.
  
  While I like the idea of a dedicated and federated Trek-adjacent community, I realize there's moderation and other overheads to deal with if you were to spin up a new community for that purpose (if you even wanted to, that is). As Value Subtracted said in the quote above, relaxing the rules of /c/startrek to cover things that would currently go to /c/quarks would address that.
  
  So, I'm sad to see it go (from my federated perspective), but I completely understand the motivation for doing so and support it.
  
  Or, as the Borg would say:
Goofy decision. I have an account here, but I rarely use it because of the ratio of spam to genuine posts on the instance.

You could always just defederate from those toxic instances? It seems like this isn't a popular decision with the community. Might be worth rethinking it.
- If you don't like the content hosted on this instance, why do you have an opinion on this at all?
  
  I think she's saying she's upset we don't remove enough content from other communities (federated with us but not originating) on this instance. Which is correct, the admins here generally leave content on other communities alone if they are actively moderated.
  
  Ok nevermind she's apparently saying /c/StarTrek and /c/Risa are "spam"?
  
  I do like the non-spam content on this instance, such as Quark's and Daystrom. I'm subscribed to it through other accounts, but occasionally I poke my head in on the actual account I have here.
  
  Personally, with most of the instances I actually use, I find it easier to just look at the Local feed. On this instance, however, a significant portion of what gets posted is just repetitive spam, so it's hard to really do that. It's much easier to subscribe to individual interesting communities, such as Daystrom and Quark's, through other instances that I'm more likely to actively use.
  
  I suppose if you don't care what kind of experience anyone has on your instance, that's your business.
- The admin team doesn't make instance decisions based on what's "popular". It's actually against our mission statement. Though that doesn't mean community input is ignored.
  
  But that being said, admins can see who's voting and we can see that the downvotes are not coming from users with much/any history in this community. So we are not taking their feedback strongly into account.
  
  This logic is bonkers. Lurkers are part of the community too. Everyone participates in their own way.
Man, I don't like Stamets but he was right lol.

When you guys just wanna do something even if people disagree you're gonna do it.

On either side though it kind of sucks. From the mods are right perspective, yeah, basically only users from the instance post here already. On the other side though, bringing activity in from across the federation is definitely a better move long-term unless the people coming in are toxic. Latest non @stw poster had a hilarious premise and I loved it. Would hate to see that go, but I guess it's going to /c/startrek anyways.

Everybody is kinda dug in here, it's pretty sad.
- The problem is nobody wants to grow and maintain a federated "Trek adjacent" community. I've even offered the opportunity to host one on this instance and nobody wants to put in the effort.
  
  (Also, I just need to point out that Stamets was not "right" about anything involving our team. He claimed the Risa mods were "transphobic", and set up a new community where he repeated the claims. When one of our Admins asked Stamets if he intended to continue, he cried harassment and used the attention to promote a GoFundMe.)
  
  I think you guys actually need more open communities and not less.
  
  Quark's is great as an off-topic zone. The theme makes sense because the bar is somewhere people go to unwind and not necessarily talk direct shop. Stuff like news that's Trek-adjacent fits perfectly in here, but the subsequent topics listed after other sci-fi television kind of deserve their own community. I think the scope of Quark's is too large.
  
  Navigating the fediverse and server meta have traditionally been their own communities as a /c/meta sort of affair. Those are definitely things that only the @stw community would really want to discuss internally and perhaps should be kept instance-user-only, but something like news and other "adjacent" content is of value across the federation and the opportunity for everyone to post just makes more organic sense to me. I would also take the opportunity to have another themed name, like /c/battlebridge, /c/ops or even /c/conferenceroom for the meta community.
Bastardos, all!

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