Offbeat

1465 readers

213 users here now

Post your funny, weird, strange, or quirky news stories here!

Community Rules

No editorialized titles
No satire news sites (The Beaverton, The Onion, etc...)
No politics
Submissions must be no older than 2 months (i.e. the article should be "recent" news)

Similar Communities

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

TheWaterGod

[MOD POST] Seeking feedback on the direction of this community [Updated with results] (self.offbeat)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by TheWaterGod to c/offbeat

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

UPDATE: Looks like the voting is evenly split (3 vs 2, but one of those 3 was me). As a result, I'll keep things mostly the same for this community. No big changes coming. We'll keep this community focused on weird stories/events but I'll give the "news" part a little bit of wiggle room.

-----Original Post-----

Good evening guys, gals, and non-binary pals -

I know this isn't the biggest community on Lemmy, but I would love to hear your feedback on the future direction of this place. I've been thinking about this for a while and @BlameThePeacock's recent post inspired me to actually post about it.

The original idea for this community was to be a Lemmy equivalent of /r/offbeat on Reddit. A place for weird, strange, and offbeat things that happen in the news. Kind of like nottheonion, but with a broader scope.

I've been noticing that sometimes people post things that are interesting and very much offbeat, but not what you would traditionally consider as news. I haven't been removing these posts, but I have been aware of them. I've even got a report about one of them not being news. Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4

So I guess what I'm asking, would you rather that we stick more to strictly being "Offbeat News" or broaden our horizons to being just "Offbeat". "Offbeat" would still include weird things that happen in the news but also include other weird but interesting things out in the world that aren't strictly news articles. I personally feel like the latter would be an interesting direction to take, but ultimately I'm not looking to alienate the people that enjoy this community.

Cheers,

TWG

EDIT: If you'd rather vote instead of leaving a comment, here's a poll: https://strawpoll.com/GeZAOpGVJnV

top 4 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] BlameThePeacock 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sorry

I figured it was okay because it was a recent piece of content :) which I guess is where I drew the line myself on it being "news"

[–] TheWaterGod 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

No worries mate! It's something that's been on my mind for a while and you finally lit a fire under my ass to do something about it 😂

Now if only I can take better care of some of my other communities 😬

[–] Rentlar 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I voted for news but I think we should give that post a pass because it was a video from today.

As long as it's about something recent (last month or so) and not just a "TIL" kind of post. I wouldn't say encourage non-news but my suggestion is to tolerate it up to a certain point.

[–] TheWaterGod 1 points 2 years ago

Thank you for that! I've added that to the sidebar regardless of how this vote moves forwards. It's actually just a good rule to have. I've gone with "no older than 2 months" to give a little wiggle room and I'll see how that goes. I can always make it tighter down the line.