Hello, I’m a Reddit refugee and I was a prolific poster on r/skeptic. I would love a Lemmy skeptics community, but I haven’t found an active one anywhere. Mander seems like a good place for one. If I started one, would people be interested?
Personally, I also visit communities such as r/skeptic and also r/conspiracy for interesting discussions.
There are already some c/skeptic community in the fediverse:
Mander seems like a good place for one.
I am not so sure. Skepticism fuels scientific inquiry, and yes, people should be skeptical when discussing science. And this skepticism should show up in every community.
What worries me about a community dedicated to ‘being a skeptic’ is that, in my experience, this is a space that can easily concentrate polarizing views - about religion, gender identity, politics, who is misinformed and who isn’t, conspiracies, etc. These become spaces to debate charged political and social issues, and science is rarely the priority.
I think that we have more than enough polarizing spaces in the internet and in the fediverse, so I really try to make an effort to minimize the volume of polarizing topics in this instance.
It is very rarely a hard ‘no’ for me. You are of course free to create a skeptic community, and it is possible to create a community that does not fall into the ‘traps’ I’ve mentioned. If you choose to that, I would appreciate it if you are at least mindful of the mission of avoiding polarizing spaces and trying to stick to the topics of science and nature.
I suspect that a large number of people are interested in discussing socially relevant and politically charged topics in a skeptics community, and so my recommendation would be to use the communities that I mentioned above.
Hey Salamander! Good to see you on this side! I’ll check those out, thanks. I’ve been looking but couldn’t find anything active.
EDIT: Looks like both of them have been inactive for days. I understand what you’re saying about here, but I think if we keep it on a scientific level, it will work. I agree that skepticism is often more social and political, but maybe we can keep those posts off of here? Maybe I should just use one of those others and try to liven them up? Not sure.
but I think if we keep it on a scientific level, it will work
You are welcome to try! _ I am just letting you know my immediate thoughts and worries, so that later on I don’t end up surprising you if things become too polarizing and I see the need to step in. But I am always in favor of trying things out.
Sure, I totally understand. I’m still thinking about whether or not I want the responsibility of moderating it, so I’m still mulling it over.
Leery but could be cool. I really like looking at why people are so attracted to conspiracies in general and why they judge things as conspiracies even if they aren’t as a meta topic but I’m not sure that fits.
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What would a conspiracy community be about? Done right, I get the relationship between a science interest and a ‘skeptic’ interest, though I find it’s not often done right.
However my impression of ‘conspiracy’ is a strange paranoia that has nothing to do with science, and sometimes goes directly against. What kind of topics would be there?
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I would love it personnally!
What’s the elevator pitch for it?
I’m not sure what more is needed for an elevator pitch, but I’ll try- A community for skeptics to gather and share information, news, have discussion, etc. Typical for Lemmy from what I’ve seen so far. I just want an alternative to r/skeptic.
I have never had any exposure to r/skeptic so that’s probably why I’m lost. But being a skeptic is more a state of mind for me. This being a science instance, I assumed was everywhere. Like people wouldn’t take things at face value without scientific publication backing statements and such. I don’t know what a specific community for skepticism would add in this environment.
Like, what would a post be like? Reference another post or a news article and deconstruct it with references to academic publications?
I don’t know that academic publications are necessary, there are plenty of things posted here which aren’t from journals. But I was thinking articles like the one I posted in Science Communication. It’s not quite right for that community, but I still think the Mander instance as a whole would enjoy seeing articles like that.
I have previously asked the community about how they feel about the scope of Mander, and I see that the communitie’s views are mostly aligned with what I want on this.
I want to keep a focus of the instance on discussing specific science and nature topics. I have seen several posts made to “Science” and “Science Communication” that touch on issues that are in a sense related to science but not really a direct scientific or nature-related topic. These are posts often concerned with social topics like the spread of “fake news” or the media mis-representing things.
These are not within the scope, and they are better suited for communities in other instances.
I have not taken many actions yet because I need to work more on the policy, but I can tell you that I’m not really so much in favor of building communities centered around non-specific popular topics that have a high probability of triggering polarizing discussions that are not even focusing on science. Even if most people like to discuss these, myself included, it’s simply not the concept of Mander. Being so popular and engaging, consider that those posts would easily be able to dominate the “Local” view and hide the actual science-centered niche discussions.
I would comment there.
