That exchange is absolutely bonkers. I'm sorry but I have far less respect for Ada after reading that text exchange. Glad I don't use that instance.

Hey, you're an instance admin and this kind of collegial statement is entirely appropriate given your role here.

Me? I'm a newbie here. I don't have much to lose. My assessment of that exchange is: she bonkers. But that's just me.

No.

The best content creators here have OF accounts. They need to eat too. Close them off and this place will slow to a crawl.

This is a self-defeating move.

So, this was a failed experiment. I was hoping to do a porn for women community. But it kinda didn't work.

Gooner Girls, the term, really refers to women who like to masturbate to porn. Gooning is the watching. And you'll find lots of vids out there of women masturbating while watching. It's a kindof amateur porn subgenre.

I think first, there's a decline in the general Lemmy userbase. Partly, this is because of unaddressed Federation bugs that have persisted now for weeks without being publicly addressed. That's driven a lot of contributors away, which has feed on effects across communities. That's structural and beyond LemmyNSFW, but affects us.

Second, here at LemmyNSFW, poor community moderation. There are dead communities admins will not address because of top mod ownership rules. But that so many subscribe to dead communities shows the decline. Reddit prunes unmoderated communities for a reason.

Mods also let creeps post horrible comments and don't filter them out or ban abusive users, and this has driven away contributors. Especially amateurs and OF creators. I'm of the opinion they are bread and butter here and driving them away reduces overall value of the site. So while I'm into the kink side, I want c/gonewild to thrive.

Third, there are the serial downvoters. Admins thought requiring people to join communities in order to vote would solve this problem. No, because their goal is to suppress contributions overall, so they just join to downvote. This is why you see a top community like c/anal or c/blowjobs wither with no submissions. They're killed early on. And that drives away contributors. Whether that's contention over the top page or just a desire to see LemmyNSFW fail, I don't know. But IMO downvotes only express aggression and don't help curate content. They serve to drive away contributors.

We need more contributors, not less. And the decline in contributions says something is seriously wrong. It's like a reverse Tragedy of the Commons, where instead of overgrazing by all, we have a few trampling the commons out of spite.

Finally, there is the lack of rich media. Only pics and RedGifs, both limited. And gifs get converted to webm, which don't autoplay or loop in LemmyUI. Another Lemmy issue, beyond the site here, but is one cause of declining interest IMO.

This is JMO and is said with all due respect and deference to the community and site admins.

My first kinky GF was a highly experienced community kinkster while I was this vanilla nerd. She connected me with her ex Mistress who provided kink mentoring so I could be the Dom my GF wanted and needed. But it was hard for me. About seven months into our relationship the Mistress tasked me with walking my GF leashed through Kenmore Square on a Saturday night when nightlife was popping. She was dressed in fetidh gear and collared while I wore a suit.

And oh yeah, eyes turned toward us from all over the street.

Because this submission has accumulated a large number of downvotes, and I have no control over voting, I feel compelled as moderator of this community to emphatically state to OP and this community that she has my 100% full support. Her post is ON-TOPIC for the community. Furthermore, OP has shown courage by posting herself, her rope work, and sharing this to the community at large, Those who body shame or who do not wish content of this sort in their feed are not welcome in this community. Please feel free to unsubscribe and block.

Selectively. Preferably against their political enemies, POC, and LGBTQ+.

Would be my guess. *cough!*

It was harrowing and embarrassing for me. Which was the point. To get me to confront those feelings, control them in public, and walk tall.

I should add, many community kinksters these days would consider a public display like that to have violated everyone else on the street because they didn't consent to see it. But back then (late 90s), the kink community didn't hold such views.

I think that's a North American thing, because just before Covid I saw a leached woman being walked along the Champs Elysees in Paris. Nobody batted an eye. Lol

My view is that it's not the OF creators who drove away amateur creators, it was the abuse directed at them by men who wanted only women with model like figures. I saw so many horrific body shaming comments along those lines. Here's an example of that, which really affected how I changed moderation policy and got strict about assholes shitting on contributors:

https://lemmynsfw.com/post/6909667

I really think that's the core of what drove away amateur OC contributors. Who would expose themselves, physically and emotionally, for free, only to be shit on by the audience? So they left. And that suppressed audience, because who'd come here without content? At least OF creators post stuff. And we have much too little of that right now. JMO

But if you were contributing, you'd have a first hand impression. I'd love your opinion on that.

Everybody in Europe needs to go to spas in Budapest. It's medicinal. And required.

Yes! You kooky self-slut, you.

On the downside though, I'll be able to spank you from afar for having done so. No cumming!

Thank you for contributing! Good luck in your shibari and rope bondage journey.

No body shaming contributors.

If only the comic author had crammed an entire dissertation worth of caveats in four panels to satisfy your need for completeness!

Super happy to see this sentiment. My feeling is that a porn only community won't ever break out into a general place where people support each other. Nothing wrong with porn. I like it too. 😆 But bondage in general is so much more than just porn. We need the porn. But we also need a place for people to help each other learn and do bondage.

That's JMO. I don't want to dictate everything. But I do hope more people feel welcome and safe to post and comment.

I don't know motives. I can't read minds. But that it drives away contributors is something I'm pretty sure of.

Thanks for all your hard work!

Also, I'm seriously trying to set up BDSM as a top portal to stitch together the other kink communities here. I bring that up because of what you said about discussion and community interaction. Which I agree with 100%. See here:

https://lemmynsfw.com/post/7682770

Reddit has hundreds of millions of users and the platform is highly active, making it suitable for pros to submit work for profit. Or as a means for amateurs to break in and see if they can build an audience.

Reddit is a business plan for many creators. The large audience there gives submitters incentive to put up with the horrible abuse they face from poor moderation and terrible users. And still, as you note, OC creators flee. Comparing our relative numbers of fleeing contributors per capita as being similar to Reddit isn't the win you seem to be arguing for.

Look, when some of the largest communities don't see posts for weeks, that's a sign something is wrong. We have disincentivized contribution to the point where stagnation has set in. That's a clear sign some change is in order. What that change should be, I don't know. But simply refusing to accept these clear signs as doom and gloom leads to refusing to recognize a problem. And if you don't see a problem, you can't act to fix it.