Fedigrow

(I'm one of quite a few users that care enough to comment their irritation.)

@Blaze, you have used the word sorry several times, for which I applaud you.

However, the other mods from the community you're all promoting in the mass messages are completely unrepentant and defensive instead of apologetic and placatory.

Other lessons to take on board are that if you're getting pushback, a bit of humility and apology go far further than arguing back and telling people they have no right to be cross.

I think an edit to the post with an apology and explanation would give folks an opportunity to forgive and move on. Arguing with complainers just isn't doing that, it's making it worse. @Blaze, you're best for tone here and you're good at explaining and apologising instead of defending and doubling-down, so I'd suggest you do it.

This really was a Nicole from Toronto moment.

I really can’t think of a better solution then an @ everyone ping to be fair.

I feel like people on Lemmy are more… hmm, how to articulate… Aware of online hygiene? Quicker to be fatigued by the grievances found on other platforms that they don’t want to see on here. I think that may contribute to the hesitancy and protest regarding this method of communicating a community migration.

All I know is that a mass ping needs to have the blow softened a bit so people aren’t so upset. A pinned post sure, or maybe a roll call post asking people to comment acknowledgement of the move or notify they do not require a ping? Or perhaps set up a bot to post a “We are moving instances” image every once and a while so people can come across it in their feed? Have a bot crosspost new posts to the new community instance?

Either way, I think people will be mad about being pinged no matter what you do.

I don’t think the idea is wrong, but I think that the messages should have been direct messages to users that clearly explained why that individual user was receiving the message, plus whatever else you needed/wanted to say. I would have had more rigid criterion for inclusion, too. Subscribers, certainly, and perhaps people who have interacted with the community a minimum number of times within a limited time period. For me, 3 times in 3 months seems generous enough to cast that wide net while also not being overly-broad. So if I were executing this, I would have had the bot direct message people, and say “Hello, I’m a bot acting on the behalf of X community. You are receiving this message because you are a subscriber or have recently interacted with the community. We wanted to let you know that the community is moving! It can be found at Y.”

From @Monument@lemmy.sdf.org

@UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev as you're the script/bot creator

Please never do this again, and especially never send me a direct message from a automatic service again.

Anytime you create automation that eats human time it's spam.

Also, as feedback from a community perspective, those pings probably allowed us to reach the monthly active users on the new community, so at least there's that