With the custom Reddit clients now all cut off, but the r/SpaceX subreddit still going strong, we might want to re-evaluate what the channel here on Lemmy means.
It started out as a temporary refuge while the subreddit went dark, but at least I myself am still interested in building a community here.
Feel free to discuss the below points individually in the comments (though I don’t expect high participation, any discussion is of course welcome).
Lemmy and/or Reddit
I think rather than positing this channel as the successor of r/reddit, we should just make it an independent SpaceX interest channel, since both will exist side by side.
Mods
It’s unlikely this place will need active moderation for quite some time, but it would still be useful to have mods for e.g. stickying threads, updating the sidebar
@threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works and @agildehaus@sh.itjust.works haven’t been seen in a while. Are you still interested in modding? Do we want to add extra mods?
I’ll reach out to to threelonmusketeers on Reddit if we don’t get a reply here.
Starbase update threads
These will probably be the most interesting posts on here, but we don’t really have the manpower to keep the huge initial post with resources up to date. Having it as a plain copy/paste of the r/SpaceX one also feels a bit disingenuous since we don’t really “own” that content.
I’d suggest making the initial post simpler, cutting out most of the stuff (unless someone volunteers to make something similar, and keep it up to date), and just linking to the most recent r/SpaceX threads.
I’m not sure if there’s a way for multiple people to edit a post, but that could be useful for these long-lived threads.
Sub rules / guidelines
I don’t think we need anything here right now.
Automation
Given the sub has low activity right now, how do we feel about adding some automation of content? Examples I can think of:
- Auto-posting of road closures in the Starbase thread
- Auto-posting of some high-quality content, like CSI Starbase videos.
I could take a stab at implementing the road closure one, if there’s interest.
Anyway, let me know what you think, either about these specific points or the channel in general.
It is tricky. This isn’t Reddit and we don’t have the numbers but it would be good to have some of the same discussions.
Best to keep the posting rules a bit relaxed compared to the SpaceX sub. More like lounge. While news is appreciated I don’t know that a flood of bot posts is any substitute to some good launch threads and starship dev thread.
It is also a problem not having a place to discuss NASA, rocketlab, ula, Artemis, bo, ESA and other space launch news. My space multi was huge.
Yes I agree with the sentiment of not creating a slurry of automatic posts without any discussion. It’s why I wouldn’t create a thread for each launch. But maybe we can have a “launch party thread” which auto updates with a comment for each upcoming launch or so.
As for discussing other space-related stuff, I think it’s fine to discuss that here, or cross-promote other channels. In SpaceXLounge we had a ton of tangential threads which I always found interesting, like the Starliner saga.