hjertnes
hjertnes

I want more Micro Monday recommendations! And I also want more Micro Monday diversity

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matthewlang
matthewlang

@hjertnes I’ve just added @penmuse (my writing prompt site) to here if you are looking for a Micro Monday suggestion.

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@matthewlang awesome!

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belle
belle

@hjertnes Ditto! I rarely see a Micro Monday for someone I don't already know/follow.

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@belle I see at least one new person each week. But I hope that it will become more diverse as we run through all the people everyone follows. I would also like to see less "straight white dudes" in the Micro Monday posts

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belle
belle

@hjertnes Same. I mostly don't follow the few Micro Monday suggestions that are new to me because my timeline is already lacking diversity.

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@belle How do we solve this? Diversity Tuesday?

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jeredb
jeredb

@belle I am very actively trying to make my following to be less like me. Micro.blog is better quality posting, but I still want more diversity in the posters.

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timeuser
timeuser

@hjertnes @belle I think this is an argument for being able to see follower counts for users. If someone good has a small number of followers I'd want to let other people know to check them out.

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belle
belle

@timeuser I disagree. I think we can boost diverse voices without needing to know how popular they already are, but focusing on whether they say interesting stuff. I see where you're coming from though.

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belle
belle

@hjertnes I think the problem for me is lack of discovery. I look at the Discover section multiple times a day, but it's human-curated and not updated super often, and not especially diverse a lot of the time. As users we have few other discovery options.

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belle
belle

@hjertnes I think plenty of people would not like being recommended purely on the basis of filling a diversity quota, and fair enough. But for general discovery and Micro Monday, I think we need better ways to uncover and share more diverse voices among our community.

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belle
belle

@hjertnes Although, that's assuming there are plenty of diverse voices here that we're just struggling to find. We don't know the make-up of the whole user-base. Maybe diversity is lacking in general? Wonder if @macgenie can share anything about that?

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jeredb
jeredb

@belle I worry that the Discover section is not going to be maintainable as the platform grows, but I’m sure @manton and co are keeping that in mind. I would love to know more people are selected as community managers (supporters?) with a continued eye on diversity.

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timeuser
timeuser

@belle One would hope. It's such a tough balance of incentives and motivations. The popular get more popular. The invisible stay invisible unless someone popular draws attention to them.

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belle
belle

@jeredb That's a cool idea. Maybe trusted people could flag interesting posts for inclusion and the curators could still have final say. I agree it seems unsustainable. It already doesn't update enough for my liking 😏

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belle
belle

@timeuser Fair point. I definitely think finding ways to boost the undiscovered voices is important.

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jeredb
jeredb

@belle that is exactly what I think. Maybe a nomination process?

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belle
belle

@jeredb Although for me, at least, the problem would still be that I have no way to discover new voices besides Discover and my timeline. How does one find these new voices to nominate in the first place?

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belle
belle

@jeredb Another positive of that approach, though, would be that the Discover section could end up more representative of the interests of the community at large.

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In reply to
SimonWoods
SimonWoods

@belle @timeuser @jeredb @hjertnes It's great to see solutions being offered so far. Hopefully we'll all put the work in to make these things happening, whether that's making things to help directly or by taking tangible solutions (not necessarily just ideas since anybody can have those) to @manton and @macgenie.

Feedback is good but I think the owners of the modern web have shown us that it doesn't really get the job done, as opposed to action which at least has a chance of improving things.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@belle concurrence

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belle
belle

@simonmumbles @timeuser @jeredb @hjertnes I don't use Slack but the Micro.blog Slack has a channel discussing this exact issue, in case any of you didn't know and want to jump in over there.

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jeredb
jeredb

@belle I forgot their was a Slack group. I am going to try and get in on that!

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@belle @timeuser @jeredb @hjertnes et al ..

one man's ‘diversity’ is another woman's ‘same as it ever was’ so if we can, my votes would be to avoid quotas, and agendas.

maybe also step back and ask is it people, themes or ideas that we want to explore ?

i might not follow jo because I really don’t like sport - and 90% of her stuff is about sport - but heh - turns out she has fascinating insights into the indigenous people of the Amazonian rain forest ... who knew? do i want to follow her now - or work out how to discover her insights through tags / search etc

it's kinda why getting your news from your friends on facebook was always a non starter for me ... i might share the same humor, even like the same music - but I seriously do not get the drivel he writes about whether the world is flat …

onwards .... loving the thinking about how to grow and support @manton @macgenie

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belle
belle

@JohnPhilpin I find this is one of the issues with the "following" model of social media in general. I'm rarely interested in every post on every topic from the same person. Blogs seem more focussed so RSS works for me, but microblogs are as random as tweets.

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manton
manton

@belle @jeredb Great discussion. Being able to scale Discover is really important to us, too. I'm planning some better curation tools that will help.

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alongtheray
alongtheray

@hjertnes Good point; I’d like to add that although I appear to be a straight white guy, I’m also deaf and bisexual so there are different flavors of diversity.  That said I’ve brought up some issues pertaining to the deaf here but there was no interest so I’m not sure what the diversity angle is here.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@manton 👍

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@solari can you point us to those points you made?

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@belle some blogs are not topic focussed - but are about the ‘self’ … but i get it.

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alongtheray
alongtheray

@JohnPhilpin I'll surface those again later; we have an excellent discussion on diversity in general here as it is. I bought this up to say diversity is not always visibly apparent and to not just follow people for their diversity but to engage on their platforms/issues.

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belle
belle

@JohnPhilpin True. I choose not to follow those ones 😏

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belle
belle

@solari Very good point. This is part of why I push for explicit pronouns. There are lots of kinds of diversity that aren't obvious. I'm not sure what the answer is in terms of uncovering diversity that's not easily seen but I'm open to ideas!

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amit
amit

@belle Another angle is regional diversity - of course it bring a diverse cultural perspective (sample conversation here). But it also enables inclusion of more voices, of people who miss out on interesting discussions (like this) just because they take place at odd times for them.

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belle
belle

@amit Very good point!

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@solari that's the reason I always say "straight white guy" as in all of them

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@alice of course, but I would be really annoyed if you got invited to Jurassic Park without telling me 😶

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smokey
smokey

@hjertnes @alice They sent archaeologists to Jurassic Park instead of paleontologists? I’m confused (I have never really seen those movies, only bits and pieces).

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@smokey what's the difference?

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@smokey the first one is awesome🤩

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smokey
smokey

@hjertnes Paleontologists study dinosaurs and such (pre-human life) and archaeologists study human life. Paleontology is a pure science, whereas archaeology is a scientific part of the humanities (like a very science-y kind of history). I defer to the actual archaeologist in the discussion :-) but that’s how I see the distinction.

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@smokey That makes sense. I still want a pet raptor though.

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smokey
smokey

@alice That’s good, because we know archaeologists are better for fighting Nazis and south Asian cults and for going through ancient portals to other planets ;-) (Oooh, an amphora emoji!)

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smokey
smokey

@alice 😄

Also, serious question I’ve been meaning to ask: what’s your field/area/specialty within archaeology?

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smokey
smokey

@alice Very, very cool! When I was a historian, I worked on the Middle East, so the Ancient Near East is also dear to me—all the same “stream” of the past 😄

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