i feel like you missed the point why you (rightfully) would have been downvoted for HL. even if you’re personally not supporting the game, you’re still giving it (presumably) positive publicity, which is supporting the game
now you have a post celebrating that you could do that here, and ngl it’s left me with a sour taste in my mouth
but hey, i guess you’re right, i have to sit here and explain it instead of dropping a downvote on you and moving on with my life
LOL and it’s recent, great, there are two posts on my front page that remind me that a famous franchise owner wants my dead, thanks
I remember when my sister disowned me. She was a huge Harry Potter fan growing up. When she heard that I started HRT she sent me vile text messages for months, quoting Rowling’s then recent essay on trans people. I got to hear how disgusting I was from my own sister, parroting the words of JK Rowling.
She gives those who hate trans people validity, and spreads their message. I know how dangerous it is; I lost my sister in part because of her.
that’s really tough to hear, thanks for sharing jellyfish. i hope time can heal some of your wounds, and i hope your sister is ashamed of this some day.
I’m so sorry for what happened, and I’ve deleted both posts (at least on Beehaw for the other one). I didn’t think of it the way you and Fracture showed it to me and I’m thankful that you shared your insight.
That’s really kind of you, thank you. I know never talking about Harry Potter isn’t possible, even if I wish it was. Some of my friends are huge Harry Potter fans, I was too at one point; but we agreed just to try to avoid the subject when I’m around.
Having a place like Beehaw has been really nice, it’s a place I can relax and let my guard down. I hope Lemmy adds the ability to hide posts, that’s help a lot with stuff like this.
this is a valid perspective. what do other readers think? if beehaw had its’ current activity in the height of HL’s craze, how should that be handled here? i feel like this plays directly into beehaw’s philosophy below from the Docs. mod input here would be really cool
We’ve all experienced someone who’s a real jerk on the internet but manages to never get banned because they never explicitly violate any rules. “I’m not sexist!” they’ll claim, but then happen to post a lot of articles calling into question modern feminism or criticize the wage gap…
i didn’t see it like that. I’m gonna delete that post, and I’m so sorry for that. Thank you. I understand that deleting it won’t right my wrong, but I’m sincerely sorry.
Edit for a little note: I went to sleep after posting this, and I haven’t checked Beehaw since. That’s why I left it up for so long. Thank you though. Also, the post was a technical perspective on how the portals work in the game, not anything to do with it’s content or the like. I haven’t paid for the game either. So, I’ve deleted both posts and wanted to thank you for sharing this perspective.
This is great. I honestly hadn’t given the downvote thing much thought. The bit about promoting discussion really hits it home. Tell me why you don’t like it!
It reminds me of restaurant reviews. I eat at Chili’s pretty regularly, and if you pay on the little tablet kiosk thing (Ziosk?), it wants you to complete a survey. If things were great, I do the survey. But if they were bad, or even just fine, I skip. I’ve heard too many tales of disciplinary action being taken on non-five-star reviews, which just kills the whole point. Do you want my honest opinion, or do you want a yes-man?
Back to the piece, it’s a great write-up. Though I do want to point out that you used “apart” instead of “a part” at least twice. 🙂
But don’t worry, the XMPP article linked at the bottom has way more errors.
This is fine while we’re still small, and the number of intentional bad actors is limited. If our user sign-up vibe check filter ever fails, though, and we get inundated with a thousand alt-right trolls, the inability to downvote is going to majorly suck. Having to sit down and compose a well-worded, sourced comment every time they brain-dump a load of reality-distorting rubbish onto my feed is a huge time- and energy-sink, which is exactly what they’re going for. It takes them 3 minutes to type some pile of complete nonsense, and it takes me half an hour or more to debunk it. By the time I’m finished with my “this is why you’re wrong” comment, they’ve gone on to copy/paste their own fuckery 30 different times over 10 different comment threads and 6 different Lemmy posts.
Eventually, nobody will have the energy for these chuds any longer, and their screeds will stay up unopposed or only marginally opposed, which is their intended goal.
Downvotes make it simple, quick, and easy to fight this bullshit-shotgun tactic, because clicking one time is faster than the fastest-typing sealion. While they outpace my ability to sit and debunk their “arguments”, each one of their posts can accumulate double-digit downvotes before they even finish posting it on the next thread, hiding them from everyone who’s not sorting the comment section by “dumbfuckery”.
We’ll see how it goes, though. I tend to be cynical and doomy, and maybe the things I worry about will never happen, or will shape up differently than I predict. But the fact that none of the “Yay, no downvotes!” people ever address this concern is something that reduces my level of confidence in the scheme.
I’m right with you on “Negative Reactions don’t Inspire Discussion” If someone doesn’t like my post, I want to know why. Hearing opposing viewpoints is my favorite way to learn.
A simple downvote doesn’t tell me anything. Are they mad because I raised a sensitive subject, made a bad joke, used an Oxford comma, or do they actually have a relevant disagreement? This isn’t reddit. I won’t bite your head off. If I’m full of shit, make a comment of your own and tell me why! Don’t just hit a down arrow!
Constructive criticism: words like “and”, “of”, and “the” aren’t capitalized in titles, but “don’t” should be. I don’t know the exact rule offhand, but I’m sure you can find it in a Manual of Style or something.
The rule is that you don’t capitalize prepositions (“of”, “in”, etc.), conjunctions (“and”, “but”, “or”, etc.), or articles (“the”, “a”, “an”). There might be a couple odd cases but those should be enough to keep you out of trouble with the people that get mad about Oxford commas. :-)
Depending on the style guide, some prepositions are capitalized. For example, AMA says to capitalize prepositions that are 4 or more letters long (then, after, etc).
Careful, you only capitalize prepositions of three letters or shorter by default. Though different style guides might say otherwise: Chicago style doesn’t capitalize any prepositions, while MLA doesn’t capitalize any words 3 letters or fewer (which presumably could lead to the odd lowercase “i”). And AP doesn’t capitalize any words 3 letters or fewer unless they happen to be verbs.
Could we think about repurposing the down-vote function to serve a different role? Similar to the report function, which signals a need for moderator review, the down-vote could be used in the same way to flag content that might require a second look. This could assist in handling extreme or illegal content without suppressing diverse opinions or content simply because it doesn’t receive wide agreement.
What if we displayed only the “+1” upvotes on the website without showing any down-vote counts? This would maintain a positive atmosphere and could encourage more open dialogue. Essentially, a down-vote would transition from meaning “I disagree” to “this might need reviewing”.
Importantly, if content isn’t extreme or illegal but still gathers a significant amount of down-votes, it could be an indicator for the moderator to assess if further action is necessary. This shifts the down-vote function from being a tool for disagreement to a measure for maintaining the quality of discourse.
Reddit did try this, they use downvotes as a way to prevent showing poorly written or short content, but they didn’t properly explain it and so I feel that it probably wouldn’t be able to be explained.
I mostly write notes and technical texts. Started off with Evernote, then tried a bunch of things: Obsidian, Notion, Joplin, ended up using Logseq. IMO Logseq is perfect for people who value their independence from the cloud: it is local-first, stores everything in text, works well with Git.
I would have really appreciated not being tied to it’s editor, but so far it’s the most convenient app I used for my purposes.
Obsidian. Previously Visual Studio Code (well…), WriteMonkey, Notepad++, but in the end—VSCode has a great idea for the UI, and I already write in Markdown, so Obsidian was a natural choice the moment I learned it exists.
Emacs + orgmode. Quite technical, not for the faint of heart, but it is an amazing tool to keep everything in plain text. If you are not a technical person, probably this is not for you, as it requires quite the tinkering, but once configured to your workflow, it is very good.
Second place for Manuskript (source code), that is an open source scrivener-like application. I like it a lot, but I always go back to emacs, but probably someone here can appreciate it.
Although I like GNU Emacs a lot (it is my IDE, my scratchpad, my IRC client, my Matrix client, my Gopher browser and my part-time e-mail reader) and I use org-mode for my TODO lists and structuring for my more complex blog posts, I (personally) consider it inadequate for writing long-form prose. I always feel that it expects me to have a list wrapped around it. I know that org-novelist exists, but it tries to enforce a workflow that’s not mine.
I just had a brief look at Manuskript and it crashes immediately. I think I’ll wait for 1.0.0 before I try again.
@ReMikeAble Thanks for your encouraging comment! (I can’t reply directly because it doesn’t load on my instance for some reason), but I remembered I could just leave a general comment and a mention. I really appreciate the kind words~
I’m one of those writers that has to really be in the mood to write or else it feels forced. So, to limit my distractions or case of “Ugh, okay I’ll just look for 5 more minutes…” which turns into a hour.
I found those really neat program called Ommwriter. Its literally just text. There’s no UI or anything. I think you can customize the background, but I haven’t felt the need to change anything.
I’ve looked at a lot of the other tools that exist and none have the polish and sheer capability of Scrivener. If you just need a place to write, other tools are great. But if you want formatting and output control, Scrivener is unparalleled. And when you’re ready to publish, you can easily produce whatever format you need with intelligent, automated exports. It’s incredible.
I will second that all day every day. Scrivener has the ability to scratch all my little writing itches like nothing else has. I’ve been using it so long I’ve still got the old version and it’s just a comfy writing blanket for me at this point.
I thought about updating to the new UI version but I think I’m beginning to understand the crotchety old timers of yore and their attachment to typewriters.
Elize Caram was humming softly as she was putting the finishing touches on her latest creation. Marie O'Bain observed her target carefully through her scope, hoping to catch her in the act of cheating, with regards to the rules and regulations governing this particular endeavor. Not as in the act of cheating between lovers or companions in an exclusive relationship, but the far more serious kind of cheating that goes on in televised baking competitions.
Marie trained her rifle on Elize, as she moved from counter to oven. Elize being the person moving that is, not Marie. It would be really weird if Marie would try to shoot Elize from a considerable distance while simultaneously decorating a cake. No Marie had been clever and had already baked her cake this afternoon. She was sure it was going to be a winner. She'd bribed one judge already, blackmailed another, and arranged for the sudden removal of another judge's lower intestines.
Nothing nor nobody was going to stand between her and the ultimate prize. The only threat left was Elize, with her dimply freckled charm up the wazoo. Oh gosh I can't believe you guys picked me, I'm positively gushing with undeserved glee, “blegh” Marie thought. Baking is no place for twee feelings, not an environment for the giddy or the soft-hearted. “Baking is hell,” Marie thought, pulled the trigger.
A shot rang out in the amphitheatre, destroying a beautiful Schwarzwalder kirsch torte and killing a surprised woman in the same moment. The stage was strewn with blood and brown cake. As Marie moved from her position in the skybox down to the floor, she smiled to herself. When she reached the corpse of her rival, she bent down and rifled through her pockets. Elize's pockets, not her own, of course, she could be looking for something at that moment in her own pockets, but in this case, they were the pockets of the corpse below her. Also, she was not using her rifle to rifle through the pockets, which would be weird. She did have a second pocket rifle with her at the time, though mentioning this would be superfluous.
Due to not appearing the next day, Elize was disqualified, and Marie won the competition. The remaining judges praised her for her innovative use of meat in desserts, and her bold choice of flavor in the pink icing.
Prose, every time. But when Im feeling really stalled or uninspired I find I often get more inspiration from reading poetry.
I studied lit in university and have lots of poetry books and anthologies lying around, but I highly recommend this for other writers when theyre feeling run down or stumped. Go get some poetry books!
"According to my calculations, should be right over this ridge," said a male voice that sounded like Jason Stathom for some reason.
"Gosh it's such a beautiful day, Mr Sticks," Kentaro got to the top of a grassy hill and stretched. It was a beautiful sunny summer day, he looked out over the overgrown valley, an abandoned village ahead. Kentaro was a seven year old boy with a bowl cut and glasses.
The left side of Kentaro's body was orange and sponge-like, the left side of his head was sprouted with hundreds of filaments, each with a tiny eyestalk that moved independent of Kentaro's brown eye. The left side if his head still had hair, all the eyestalks sticking out. Mr Sticks had a toothy mouth below Kentato's ear.
"We don't have much time," said Mr. Sticks in his grim voice. "We have to get to the tape while the coast is clear."
"But if the coast is clear, can't we take a break? I'm hungry."
Kentaro walked to a piece of rubble and sat down. He started rooting around in his backpack.
"YOu don't understand, the fate of the galaxy is at stake here. Kentaro. Kentaro?"
Kentaro hummed and continued pulling things out of his bag, a thermos, extra socks, a half dozen action figures, comic books.
"Didn't you pack anything for the search?"
"What are you talking about I packed tons of stuff. Cookies!" Kentaro pulled out a cardboard box with bears all over it. "You want one? These are great!"
"Make it snappy," said Mr. Sticks.
While Kentaro stuffed his face Mr. Stick's 2000 eyes looked in all directions, wary.
"I think someone's coming," said Mr. Sticks. "Stop eating cookies! If we don't get that tape, the intergalactic army of doom's gonna destroy your whole planet. Don't you care?"
"Sure I care, I care a lot," said Kentaro, still eating cookies.
"THEN COME ON, kid. We don't have much time."
Kentaro looked at his Doraemon digital watch.
"It's only 10:15!"
"That's not what I mean! Get moving kid,"
"Sheesh, okay. You know if you had a cookie you'd probably feel better," Kentaro offered the box to Mr. Sticks again.
"Focus, kid. We need to get into that old TV station, and we need to find the room where they store the tapes. It's an old episode of Brave Star Warriors. Number 621. The tape is down there."
"Why did they hide the secret code on an old video tape again?"
"Wasn't my people's idea. Last time we trust earthlings again."
"But you trust me, right? Mr Sticks? We're friends right?"
"Uuuugh. Where's the entrance?"
"Over there!"
Kentaro smiled brightly, pointing to the front door of the old TV station. It was brown bricks, crumbling and overgrown with vines. They passed an "OSAKA TV" sign, rusting at the corners.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sticks' many eyes started to look around with increasing worry.
"I sense someone's approaching. We have to hurry, kid. Shouldn't have stopped to eat cookies."
Kentaro stopped again.
"What?!"
"The sign!"
Kentaro stood before a more recently installed sign, a laminated board on a pole. It read "AREA IS UNSAFE, DO NOT ENTER - 500,000 YEN FINE!"
"We can't go in there!"
"UUUUUGH," said Mr. Sticks. "Just go."
"I don't have that kind of money."
"Kid, the universe it at stake here."
"But what if we get in trouble?!"
Mr. Sticks starts to cuss under his breath,
Just then they hear rustling in the tall grass and vines growing in the old parking lot beside the building...
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