Here’s what the sidebar says: “A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought-provoking questions.”

And yet we keep seeing is:

  • Is it possible (or difficult) to migrate an entire forum from vanilla to a lemmy instance?
  • Is Tom Clancy’s daughter trans, or is it a character of his?
  • Does anyone have a link for ace attorney 1 full game playthrough?
  • Does anyone have suggestions for buying a webcam?

TBC? Most posters do indeed bring it with highly thought-provoking Q’s, and I love that. But matey, there must be better places for these Q’s, yeah?

  • underline960@sh.itjust.works
    531·
    12 days ago

    People ask those questions here because it’s not obvious where else they should ask those questions.

    In my opinion, Lemmy doesn’t have enough traffic to be hostile to lost Redditors Lemmings.

    We can always redirect people to appropriate communities (assuming they exist and are active), and once we hit a certain critical mass the problem will go away on its own.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    30·
    8 days ago

    For people asking about alternative communities, we put together a list a while back when closing !askmen@lemmy.ca: https://lemmy.ca/post/48642221

    “Ask” communities (for starting a discussion):

    For questions that are more specific to your situation:

    Group specific communities:

    Broader in topic (not necessarily questions):

  • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
    191·
    11 days ago

    I’m just happy people are using the community. Its way too quiet most days for lots of hard set rules.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    16·
    12 days ago

    IMHO, the real problem is that the community is poorly-named. It should be “ThoughtfulDiscussion” or something. The name suggests a general forum to ask any question. And so, well, people do.

    The /r/askreddit subreddit had the same problem as !asklemmy@lemmy.world does, as I recall.

    EDIT: I’d add that I think that there’s actually a better argument for a general “ask questions” community on the Threadiverse than on Reddit, at least as things stand in 2025, because the userbase is smaller, so it’s hard to get many people in a lot of the niche forums. Like, sure, if you want to ask a question about Linux or about a video game, there are more-appropriate communities. But…suppose you want to ask a question about, say, fly-fishing? I haven’t looked, but I’ll bet that there isn’t even a fly-fishing community out there yet.

    EDIT2: !casualconversation@piefed.social is sorta-kinda for general posts that are intended to spark conversations, and the content there might be somewhat-closer to what you’re looking for, if you want content that people would actually talk about. I don’t know if I’d call all of that “thought-provoking”, but I think that stuff there is better at starting back-and-forth conversations, rather than just getting a one-off answer.

  • Denjin@feddit.uk
    204·
    11 days ago

    This question is neither open ended or thought provoking. QED

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    101·
    11 days ago

    Well, somebody thought it was smart to block a very generic name like “AskLemmy” and make it a crazy fringe group out of it instead of one fitting the name. Yes, people could read the sidebar, but with a name that suggestive while having a completely counterintuitive use - nothing else should be expected.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    91·
    11 days ago

    IMO I believe these types of communities, although entertaining and enlightening, are index farms used by governments to identify users and fingerprint them to their real life identities.

    I see far too many generalized questions like, “what is your favorite color” “when you were a kid what was the most famous musician” “where were you the day the towers fell” “what’s your favorite brand of cheese” etc…

    just sayin, if it’s not happening now, it will be one day.

  • TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    7·
    12 days ago

    I’m gonna be real, I actually don’t see anything against any of these questions in the sidebar except your first question about technical matters.