Good to know; I only knew that usage from movies and whatnot, had no idea it was still used like that!

86 is a slang term that means to get rid of something. See the Green Day song ‘86’ as an example. The origin is from a really long time ago, when it meant a menu item at restaurants was no longer available.

if you have a more effective metric in mind, I’d love to hear it instead of just pointing out flaws

I mean, isn’t the whole point of this comment section to discuss the merits and flaws of the proposal you’ve made? If we’re not discussing the downsides, too, what’s even the point?

That said, an ideal system would be a measure of the quality of content, not the quantity of content so, as another user has suggested, some measure involving net upvotes might be more effective. Yes, obviously a user can create multiple accounts to upvote everything and fuck with that metric, but I kind of doubt many folks would go to the trouble.

Maybe some combination of PCM and the average number of votes divided by the number of active users could generate some sort of quality metric. At the very least it might be a measure of engagement.

Spam Resistance: Creating multiple accounts to inflate MAU is easy. Generating meaningful posts and comments is harder.

Isn’t this actually just spam encouragement? A community with a bot that posts 50 low-value posts every day will have a much higher PCM as a result, and that behavior is more obnoxious to users and moderators who have to see it and deal with it, vs. someone creating a bunch of accounts, which is largely invisible to everyone else.

This is kind of up to the individual community, not the instance as a whole. An instance theoretically could make a general ‘No memes on any community on this instance’ rule but it would be awful to enforce, and it’d be easier to leave it up to communities.

That said, I think Lemmy is a long way off from having the userbase or popularity to create that problem, and the absence of karma or any analogue really narrows the impact. Personally, I’ve seen significantly less low-effort content here than on Reddit, with the exception of a few specific communities that exist for that purpose specifically.

The Harris-Walz campaign is specifically amplifying his hometown roots in their own messaging… It’s how they want us to view him. I’d say it’d be more biased if the article painted him as nothing but a seasoned politician.

Clearly they won’t hesitate to wipe Palestine out completely, so are they, really?

It’s not like I’m sitting here actively supporting the genocide. I’ve been speaking out against Israel since this conflict started. Look, here I am being critical of Israel 10 months ago.

But I’m going to level with you - if I was going to choose a single issue to base my vote on, it wouldn’t be this. It would be climate change. I’d throw in my cap with whomever had the most decisive, immediate plan to cut fossil fuels and major pollutants, enact climate-friendly policies, and put 100% of our budget and focus into reversing as much of the damage we’ve caused as possible, because I think that’s a much bigger issue than Gaza, or Ukraine, or anything else.

Compared to that, which is a global problem, I think any individual nation’s conflicts are pretty trivial. It trumps genocide, it trumps fascism, it trumps everything.

Did the teacher at least spend time discussing it, or did they just lay it on you and let you sort it out for yourselves? Either way, that’s pretty early!

Flowers for Algernon, that was thought provoking but also way too heavy for a 7th grade English class.

If Trump and the GOP have their way, there won’t be another election cycle. Maybe you need to think beyond this one, too.

99% Hitler

Well, I guess this conversation is 99% over, then.

Where along the DNC’s journey to the right do you hop off? Is it never?

When we have a viable progressive candidate. Until then, I’m going to continue being a pragmatist and vote for the candidate that I think is better among those who have a chance to win, rather than waste my vote trying to make an idealistic point.

Even if it were the case that both were exactly identical, then you’d have to admit that your vote won’t matter for Palestine, and you should base it on other factors, so why don’t you tell me which of Trump’s policies you’re okay with having in exchange for the opportunity to take the idealistic stance in this election?

We can sit here and quote conflicting sources at each other all night, and it’s clear that neither of us is going to sway the other, so we probably should just shake hands and agree to disagree, but fuck it, I’m not doing anything else, so I’ll start. Here’s one. Okay, your turn.

I’m so sick of this horrible take. You do realize that, of the two candidates who have a chance to win this election, neither are good for Palestine, but one is worse, right? It’s not like Donald Fucking Trump is out there campaigning on cutting off arms to Israel and supporting Palestine.

You give me an actual viable candidate who has a chance of actually winning an election in the US and I’ll give them my vote, but right now, what’re you proposing? Voting third party? Why, exactly? Do you only value “taking a stand”, or are you actually trying to do what’s in everyone’s best interest?

The problem is really that republicans keep putting up the worst possible candidates and policies. If the choice was “A sort of bad candidate or another sort of bad candidate”, we’d all happily vote third party and if the slightly-worse-but-not-appreciably-so candidate won as a result, it wouldn’t be a huge hurdle and over a few election cycles we could maybe effect change.

Instead, in that scenario, it leads to Trump and Project 2025 and I’d love to hear your explanation of how that helps us get progressive candidates into office, because I just don’t see it.

I’m a “single issue voter” and that “single issue” is that I don’t want another Trump presidency, so I’ll vote strategically to prevent that from happening, even if I’d much rather have someone else.

The answer can be found by looking at how most of the commercial open source products are monetized. Software hosting and technical support are quite lucrative if the software is valuable.

This only applies to some software, though, no? Like, let’s say a group of folks make a game or something, and release it as FOSS. Assuming they’re not hobbyists, and this is their career, how are they covering costs and making a living on that?

How do content creators get paid?

Largely through sponsorships, I think, right? Sponsorships and crowdfunding, but both of those require some measure of notoriety. It’s an unfortunate case where you have to spend a lot of effort doing it effectively unpaid until you get a following large enough to bring in sponsorship money or ad revenue or donations. Or you need to be a pretty woman who’s willing to monetize that, that seems to have a much lower barrier to entry.

Out of curiosity, under this system, how do the people writing the software get paid? Are they all dependent on donations?

If I were the victim of genocide, I wouldn’t be a voter at all, because I’d be dead. However, that’s kind of irrelevant - are you the victim of genocide? I’m assuming not, if you’re voting in the US election. Even if you’re Palestinian, your people are the victim of genocide, but unless you’re in Palestine, you aren’t.

That said, if you are Palestinian, I feel for you, I honestly do, and it would explain your view somewhat.

I think we can both agree that there’s only two outcomes that’re possible in this election: Trump wins, or Harris wins. (If you don’t agree, I’d be happy to hear your third outcome.) If you truly believe there’s no difference between the two of them, you need to do some research on the topic, because there are a lot of differences, even if they don’t pertain to this issue specifically.

If, between the two of them, you hope Harris wins, a 3rd party vote is voting against your interests. If you hope Trump wins between the two of them, a 3rd party vote is still voting against your interests, because you’re effectively taking a vote away from your preferred candidate among the two who could possibly win.

Edit to respond to your edit:

The outcome is the Democrats stop committing Genocide or they don’t get votes. “But Trump” isn’t even an argument.

Unless you’re out there protesting, or writing letters, or making phone calls, or in some way letting them know that their policy is costing them your vote, it’s a useless gesture. Posting on Lemmy isn’t going to change any politician’s minds. It’s not even going to change anyone’s mind here, in all likelihood. If you actually want to make a difference, you need to make your voice heard by the people whose minds you’re actually trying to change.

I don’t think it’s a waste of time. Even if I can’t convince him specifically, there are other people reading these posts. If someone came to this thread who was less sure, and I can change their mind, that’s good enough for me.