Now Lemmy Explain: Simple Explanation for Complex Topics

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Inspired by r/eli5 and Casually Explained.

Now Lemmy Explain: Starting the "Now Lemmy Explain" community.

I've always felt like the name "Explain Like I'm 5" is patronizing (yes, I know, it's from an Office joke). I want to see a community that's better and more entertaining to read than how it was on reddit.

Now Lemmy Explain: The Rules:

All post title must start with "Now Lemmy Explain: "
All topics are allowed (within reason) but try to avoid ones that will start a flame war.
Keep your explanation concise and entertaining. Remember though, comedy is subjective.
Be excellent to one another, and have fun.
If you see someone else do a great job explaining a particular topic, you are encouraged to cross-post it here, but be sure to credit the original poster for their contributions.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Now Lemmy Explain Further: Why? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Modified from what I've posted on our partners at No Stupid Questions:

I've felt that /r/eli5 was some of the best content in the Old Country, but somewhere along the way, it lost the fun aspect it once had. Everything there is so sanitized that it no longer has the feeling of community anymore.

In the age of large language models, getting a simplified summary of a complex idea is pretty much just a copypaste away, and I don't really see the need of having a place for what ELI5 currently is when it can be automated away, but I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong.

Now, the specific issues I have with ELI5 on reddit is that the mods there seem to make and enforce the rules arbitrarily and without any rationale, which just led to serious mod abuse. For example:

Your answer can't be too short, that's too low effort.
Your answer can't be too long, that's too specific.
Your answer can't be for something someone asked before.
Your answer can't be how you literally explain things to a real 5-year-old, despite that being the very name of the subreddit.

Just ridiculous. And I think we can all do better than that.

My ultimate goal would be having a place for people to explain things that would not be possible for machines, it should be entertaining to read as you learn, instead of making your eyes glaze over, because first and foremost, on Lemmy, we are rebuilding a place specifically for people to get engaged and inspired by each other, because that's what a community is.

(Hatefulness would NOT be tolerated, of course.)

There's overlap between our partners at "No Stupid Question" and "Now Lemmy Explain", of course, but I think the best way to explain it (or, Now Lemmy Explain: ) is that NSQ focuses on getting any answer to simple questions, while NLE focuses on getting simple answers to any question.

I'm mostly expecting that if this works out, NLE will probably be the more casual counterpart to NSQ on lemmy.world, which would be the reverse of the situation on reddit.

So, if you have any topic you'd like to have explained, please make a post there, and we'll all try our best to explain.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The way I differentiate is:

No Stupid Questions - For questions that might be embarrassing to ask or possibly common knowledge.

ELI5/Lemmy Explain - For complex questions that require simplified answers

Out Of The Loop - For questions about viral topics that anyone could be uninformed on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Great "Now Lemmy Explain"! Make a post please.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's not really how this kind of community works though. I think you are in the minority as far as your engagement style cuz I personally never subbed to ELI5/etc despite commenting regularly.

The way I engaged ELI5/NSQ/OOL/ETC was via all/rising. If a question came up that interested me or I knew the answer to than I'd engage. From there if there wasn't already lots of comments or a top answer I might give my 2 cents.

Communities like this function more like a staple in that people know they're the correct place to ask certain types of questions. In the short term what we need is people to upvote questions (and for lemmy.world to successfully update so we get some proper sorting options) so they get visibility and as answers flow in people will ask more questions.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This kind of a sub would benefit from an AskHistorians style moderation. Maybe not this sub exactly, but a new one with the same mission. A sub where there's standards for a reply and comments that don't meet the standard are removed to maintain a very high level of quality. Hard to find mods that can and would do that, but at least the bar wouldn't be as high as AskHistorians, should be OK to recruit Lemmiers who have a good history of good faith and are interested in the job.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see your point, but I don't see a need for that YET, because I'd like to think most people here would want to do a good job making good explanations, and I'm not one to try to paint people with a broad stroke and would want them to have more freedom to express themselves, let upvotes determine the quality instead of the mods. So, current rules are intentionally looser right now.

The real problem is getting content here, ex-redditors are going to move towards a community with the ELI5 name, so the best way to help us out is making better contents here.

However, of course, I'm not naive: If low quality posts or hateful rhetoric even starts to become a problem, the bans and removals will be swift, and the rules will tighten.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really about need, more about attracting the really high end posters by providing them a place to put their really high end content, in addition to the less formal place you're providing here. If you build it, they will come...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Take it from me, I've done my share of legworks around Lemmy trying to promote this place, we're getting a decent number of subs, it's a bit disheartening to see that I'm still the one who writes most of the things here right now, vs a place ran by a wannabe powermod.

If you want to attract high quality contributor, the best way to do so is to be one. So, please make a post, I would really appreciate it.

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