That's the wild thing—I've tried all sorts of ways and it reads like a viable meme whichever way I read it.

Edit (2023-08-07 T 08:50 Z): It occurred to me that I forgot to directly mention traits that might bias what I offer. On top of a general confidence and enthusiasm for Beehaw, I'm also a moderator for !creative and !askbeehaw. I strive to keep things balanced and outside of my biases, but it feels right for me to explicitly bring that up for transparency.

I can respect it's a tough issue to put briefly, but I think I get what you're putting down. "Our content isn't diverse enough", I suppose? "We have too much news and not enough anything else"? I 'unno, but I get the impression that you'd like to see more content that isn't news. I'm not too sure what to make of conflating that with "a more positive, uplifting, inclusive place", but I'd think it's got something to do with "negative to downright doomscrolling doomerism." Do let me know if I missed the mark here or there and I'd be down to talk that out, but I'm confident enough in that perspective to run with it at least for an initial comment.

And, welp, yeah. I think there's some truth there. What's up with that? I wouldn't be surprised if there's people with a better read of the room, and there's definitely people that are more properly active than I am, but I'd like to say I'm passionate about Beehaw's fundamentals and continued success. Hopefully that's good enough to say I have some theories as to what's up and what we can do about it.

1. I'd wager there was a sort of honeymoon phase with Beehaw and the Lemmy fediverse with the initial API scramble and Reddit following through on that. I'd also wager that honeymoon phase has been over for a few weeks now. So now we might be doing things like spending less time on Beehaw than we first were, or taking off the rose-tint shades that often come with a honeymoon phase and realizing that Beehaw's means and ways has imperfections and drawbacks just like any other platform inevitably does.
   Put another way, finding a positive sounding community is easy. Engaging and creating that positive sounding community is harder.

2. I'd think that the Reddit migration is also going to bring elements of old habits from Reddit, both in Beehaw and in people accessing it through federation. I think that Reddit's content leaned pretty heavily on news, so it wouldn't surprise me if a fair chunk of Reddit migrants continue to lean into posting news content.
   I'd imagine that our federated activity amplifies that aspect. !technology is a pretty good example of this. Our site sidebar stats say we clock in around 12.7k registered users. !technology has 34.2k subscribers, and that's not even considering federated users that might be lurking or posting without subscribing. There's like a whole 'nother Beehaw and a half in there. Admittedly it wouldn't surprise me if these federated users are less in touch with Beehaw's values or intentions. That's not a knock on those that go through the due diligence to inform themselves on how we like to do things, but Lemmy makes the barrier of entry for federated users a pretty low bar without granular ways to raise it.

This is all to say that we, as in Beehaw users, might not be as active as it seems, and that something is gonna take space.
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Regrettably I'm not so sure if there's an easy answer to this. This runs the risk of coming off a bit like a smartass answer, especially because I wouldn't call myself a bastion of activity, but I really do think it's the best means to help resolve this issue: use the thing the way you'd like to see it used.

Create things and share your progress and end product. Share the cool stuff you excel at, but share the small and goofy stuff and the experiments in other things too. Share the successes, share the failures. Take pictures of neat things you see in person, get the links to cool stuff you see online, and bring us in the loop about it. Give people some discussion and context in your OP's body—some hooks to help egg on conversation, if you will—and find ways to get in the conversation down in the comments.

I was hoping to get more active after my vacation at the top of the month, but I've been swamped with family errands and it's been a bit of a bummer. But I got some neat photos burning a hole in my pocket, creative projects I'm itching to get back to, a few neat links to share, and ideas of topics to talk shop with in a community or two. It's been a kind of epiphany rocking around my mind, thinking about how to generate community engagement. We could talk days on end about stuff like our philosophy, gray areas with content, community activities, or indulging in Tea. I'm starting to think that the most powerful solution to engagement and content issues is both the easiest and hardest: just get busy posting. Gotta plant flowers in the garden to bring in the bees, y'know? 🐝

i think my first personal action towards that is to stop giving a damn about trying to aim for "Prime Time" and just start posting, even when its O-Dark-Thirty by US hours 🥴

I don't think I have a strong opinion toward bots. They could get gimmicky and unnecessary, but I never felt like they detracted from my experience to a noteworthy degree. I don't think I ever disliked bots too much on Reddit? But then again, I rarely liked or wanted bots, either. I have a loose leaning toward letting people reasonably experiment with how they interact with a platform online, but "bots" as in the kind of stuff I remember from Reddit seem like a relatively weak expression of that. If I had to put an opinion down, I'd say that I'm in favor of their continued presence with the caveat of some guidelines and defined best-practices. Otherwise, if I wake up one day to learn that bots are banned on Beehaw, admittedly I wouldn't be all that bummed about it.

th3raid0r and Lionir seem to get pretty well at the kind of recommendations I'd like to see. Bots ideally should provide a meaningful contribution to communities. Bots should be clearly labelled and identifiable as such. Bot creators should have consent from the community's moderators to have a bot interact within the community. The Cardinal Be^e^ Nice applies here, perhaps to a greater degree: bots shouldn't be used to fake engagement, impersonate people, commit technical attacks on the community, etc.

the_itsb also reminded me of another aspect: we may want to consider how active and populated a community is. Bots take up the attention and visual space of everyone else browsing a community and its discussions. It strikes me as a worst-case scenario, but I could imagine it's possible for a bot overabundance to choke out legitimate conversation. That's enough for me to start thinking twice about whether or not I have a loose stance on this.

Maybe there's a conspiracy? Maybe there isn't. There isn't much I can do outside of weening off my use of them, ultimately deleting my content there, and using and encouraging alternatives. Past that, I've come to find out it isn't worth the trouble for me to give that kind of thing too much airtime in my head if I can help it. If I wake up one day to learn that there's A Whole Thing going on, though, frankly it wouldn't surprise me all that much.

If I had to give it an absolute Yes or No based on what I know and figure, however, I'd say there isn't a conspiracy. I'd wager that it's just the likes of ignorance and capitalist business practices.
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I've heard that the economic landscape in the past decade-ish allowed certain sorts of companies and people to do business in a way that likely wasn't as sustainable as they thought. 2020 comes around, the economic landscape changes for intersecting Reasons, and I'd figure that the companies and people operating the least sustainably realize they have to change it up if they want to rake in the dough. Some of these businesses were social media platforms, and some of those platforms are lead partially or entirely by people like Musk or Huffman, who make some Less Than Thrilling decisions because they think it's a sound bet to get a lot of cash. That's not to say their decisions are sound bets, let alone good in sum, but I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt and say they weren't decisions made in a vacuum.

As much as we may use platforms like Reddit or Twitter to connect with one another or find and do something besides consuming and entertainment, we have to remember that these places established themselves as capitalist businesses. They are for-profit companies that ultimately answer only to the likes of a board, their shareholders, or their leadership. I think it's reasonable to say that the end game for a lot of these businesses is to make money. A lot of it. The consumer's most important purpose in this approach is to serve as a means to that money. There might be exceptions here and there that are given various labels, both inside and outside of a capitalist lens, but Twitter and Reddit certainly don't read like exceptions. Ill-advised or not, if the right people at Twitter and Reddit genuinely think their recent decisions will make them more money, it doesn't surprise me that they'll do it. The trouble is that there's typically more to life than a dollar—actions tend to have consequences outside of their intended ones, especially at this scale. Even if Twitter and Reddit didn't mean for this to put a dent in the ability to organize (or even to just be like, a Shitty user experience,) it can, and will, have that effect.

Writing it out, it's kinda funny. I still don't think there's a conspiracy per se, but the effects of these business practices create the sorta symptoms you're talking about, anyway. How does the saying go? "The system is working as intended"? Whether that's better or worse than a literal social and class conspiracy I'd say is up to the individual.
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As an aside, this is why I think projects like Lemmy and Mastodon are a big deal. Actually making the platform has got to be one of the hardest hurdles to get a social media network started. For all their faults, stuff like this is ready to slap onto a server and run, and it's free and open source. That lowers the barrier of entry drastically to let people try and make this kind of thing work in a non-profit format.

"WHY DOES IT HAVE HUMAN TEETH," a dismayed commenter asked. "IDK WE DIDN'T MAKE THEM," the wildlife agency replied.

any volunteers to Brush The Teeth on the next one? lil thing looks like it could use it 👀

There are a few examples that come to mind of rotating brand elements, both large and small, that make me think there's a lot of potential to give a place and community some flavor and fun. I get the vibe you're already on board with this kind of thing, but for the sake of putting it on record and giving everyone else a sense of what's possible, I think it'd be cool to give a sense of the kind of things we can do in the future. Admittedly I'm 99% sure that these ideas are impractical, if not impossible, with Lemmy's current UI abilities. Still, I think it may be good for the community to keep stuff like this in the backburner in case the potential opens up. This is spit balling, admittedly. Hopefully spit balling we'll be able to act on eventually, though.

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I remember Apollo for Reddit had a massive library of app icons that users could independently choose from. There was what I would call the primary mark and a few color or smaller derivatives of that, but there were also some wildly different ideas that were loosely tied to one another. Some were closely aligned with the original Apollo, others were barely connected to that visual identity. Either way, Chris got a lot of artists involved in the app icons aspect to Apollo. I forgot if they were commissioned or if it was some part of a community volunteering bit, but it was a cool way to add another touch of customizing and involvement to the app.

Newgrounds is an example that I think goes even farther than Apollo. There are visual elements that remain consistent, like the logo, logotype, and site iconography. But every so often (IIRC, something like once a month or once a season,) they'll bring in a community member to change up most of the site's color scheme and the site's padding graphics. I can't seem to get the Wayback Machine to load a good capture on my end, so I went ahead and took a screenshot for archrival's sake.

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I'm leaning toward saying that the new logo is an improvement, design wise. Digital icons, let alone content like tab icons, will always require some sacrifices in detail in order to be legible. This logo still has some legibility loss in smaller sizes (although I'll admit asking for that not to happen is a mighty tall order,) but I'm tempted to argue that it maintains its legibility better than the Bee Rustler. Mentioning visual unity with the community icons series is something I'd say is a plus, but if seasonal or community variants to the site logo is something that's explored later, it makes that point not quite as meaningful.

Bee Rustler was a cute lil' thing and I loved her as much as anyone else, but admittedly I'm not so sure her graphic was a good fit for a logo. Chances are, however, that this is the kind of thing that would be most completely resolved with a comprehensive brand set that can accommodate community flavoring in aspects of it when the time comes. I'd think that's getting well into long-term territory, however.

Issues aside with Bee Rustler being a catch-all logo solution, I doubt that Bee Rustler is going away entirely any time soon. Mascots, and more broadly the sense of characters within a community, have a way of maintaining staying power. There's going to be means and ways for Bee Rustler to show herself and still be part of the community lore, whether that's officially or through the user base. Like I've still gotta see the Bug Crusher through before I throw the towel, and I don't think that's gon' be the end of it from me or anyone else either 🤠.

Absolutely cute critter you have in your yard there. Looks like the little dude has a delightful kingdom to roam around in 👑.

I love Tech Connections. Unnecessarily long deep dives, but that’s the kind of content I absolutely appreciate. His stuff is a treat that helps to highlight the rabbit holes that can be found in the mundane.

I don’t know if I have a settled opinion for or against defederating from Meta instances, but I know enough to say I absolutely respect the decision to.

I may appreciate more exposure to federating social media, but I also appreciate that Meta has a problematic track record. Besides, my shifting away from Reddit has me realizing that juggling accounts is not as difficult as I thought. If I end up having a reason to get on a Meta instance, it wouldn’t be an issue to make a compatible handle that can communicate there.

I ought to concede I have plenty of disappointment around this. I feel like there were well established means to do this kind of thing safely, and I think because Seagate failed to meet that, five lives were needlessly lost. I wouldn't be surprised if this story lives on for a while as a sort of fable in hubris. That's not even getting to, say, the sense of injustice invoked in comparing how this was handled to the recent shipwreck in the Mediterranean. I think all of those thoughts distill down to the Eat The Rich flavored fan faire, and I think there's already plenty of that here.

Still, the Rich and Foolish nature of this trip all said, I find it commendable that the likes of the US Coast Guard, the Navy, and international groups came together and put up a sizeable and respectable search and rescue effort. I think it would've been well in their right (and in fact realistic) for them to wave it off and say something like "they made the wine, they drink the cup." But they didn't. I can respect that the collective weight of the wallets on board likely played a big part in it to say the least, but I'd also wager that it also takes a mighty large amount of forgiveness in people being foolish to go through that kind of effort to try and save them. Similar can probably be said for rescue missions helping out others in equally foolish incidents.

There's a lot directly and indirectly connected to this disaster that doesn't reflect well on the bulk of society, but the effort to try and help others even if they don't necessarily deserve it? I'll admit it feels naive to say, but I'd rather live in that kind of society than one that errs toward extending a callous hand. I hope we'll hear more often about us extending a hand to those who indeed deserve it, like those in the Mediterranean, but I'm also in the camp of continuing to extend that kind of forgiveness to The Foolish we'll continue to stumble upon. I hope to have the will to do that, at least.

We're all going to be foolish from time to time in life, and I sure know I'd sincerely appreciate a kind hand when it's my turn.

You got my thoughts on the question worded pretty well.

OP’s mention of Voat and your mention of additional platform alternatives that have gone sour remind me of a key thing: there’s often more to why and for whom these platforms were made for. Even if these platforms have some broad thread along the lines of “independence from [established company],” the devil’s in the details.

What prompted the migration to Voat around 2014? It was an issue with content restriction, but what kind of content was being restricted? Likewise can be said about Bitchute and Odysse: they cater to issues around content restriction, but what kind of content was being restricted to encourage their development in the first place?

This might be a big strong of a comparison for the subject, but it kind of reminds me of arguments around what started the American Civil War, of all things. Sure, some may frame it incorrectly as solely caused by restricting state rights. But a state’s right to do what? There’s probably a name for this kind of logical issue that’s not coming to mind.

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One thing that makes me more optimistic about this recent Reddit Drain is the nature of it. The previous drains that I can immediately think of stem from less than admirable root causes. I’d be willing to wager that a substantial sum of those who left and stayed out in those circumstances were not good company, to put it politely. But this latest intrigue seems to be casting a wider net and it seems to be appealing across sensibilities. Hopefully that averages out the demographic inclined to leave Reddit, and hopefully that’s for the better. Worst case scenario: the Toxic Sludge of the drain is turned off by instances like Beehaw or even lemmy.world and naturally corrals itself to instances more receptive to their company.

When I first starting shifting away from Reddit, I was nervous about whether I’d like having smaller communities. I’m definitely adapting more to it myself.

I remember coming to a similar realization with Discord servers. I started out with joining servers between friends and I figured that maybe I was missing out by not getting into some larger ones. I actively tried getting into a couple of servers that weren’t even all that big compared to some numbers I’ve heard before—the servers I’d try to get into were like, 3,000+ users typically?

The conversations always felt way too fast for me to get a word in, and it never felt like I had many chances to start conversations unless it was like 2am and most of the serve was asleep. Voice chat feels like I can’t even get my foot in the door. Server rules and policies paradoxically felt convoluted as well as nebulous. I make a solid attempt at integrating into the culture wherever I go, but I could never seem to do those servers right. I still stick around some of those servers now, but only because they play meaningful roles in communities I’m in.

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It feels radical to say, because I’m so used to equating Big Numbers and Lots of Content to being a healthy community, but maybe there really isn’t too much wrong with a smaller or slower community? That’s not to knock anyone who’d prefer the contrary, but I’m starting to realize that me personally, it’s those smaller places that I really enjoy, and that maybe I don’t give them enough credit. It takes more time for fresh content and talk to come in, but when it does, it feels meaningful and like I actually have a chance to be that someone who starts it in the first place. The moderation and culture feels much more in touch with the community there.

I hope Beehaw succeeds in whatever the community and its leadership wants it to be, but I hope that it holds on to its integrity and the philosophy it’s communicated so far, even if that means it leans toward a smaller feel. I think I kinda like that feel to it.