Science Fiction

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Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

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Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

116

Hello everyone! I'm Canthidum, new mod here. Wanted to introduce myself and get some input from the community. (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by canthidium@lemmy.world to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world

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Hello. I'm the new mod of ScienceFiction. I just wanted to introduce myself as you'll be seeing my name a lot more around here. I also wanted to get some community input on a couple things.

First, you'll notice we have revamped the about/rules sidebar. Please familiarize yourself with the guidelines, it's not much different, just trying to be more welcoming and informative as well as make sure we are having a safe, good experience for our members. I like to be transparent as well as get community input often because after all, this community is for you all.

Second, one of the things I came on for is to post weekly discussion threads to make sure conversations about ongoing shows/movies/books, etc are easy to find and take part in. So I wanted to see what all you would like to discuss. Obviously Foundaition is airing now, so I will be making sure we have a pinned discussion post about each week's new episode. I also wanted to see what else you might want to talk about and what upcoming media you were looking forward to that you would like to have discussion threads for. Izzy has been making monthly "What are you watching/reading?" posts but we also want to have more specific weekly threads as well. So what are you looking forward to?

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[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Thanks for volunteering. I appreciate the change in the community guidelines towards being more welcoming and informative.

A question and some observations, and a suggestion …

What is this community willing to consider as on topic?

The sidebar says this is a place to discuss all things sci-fi but the community name is ‘science fiction.’

‘Sci-fi’ is often considered to encompass all of speculative fiction including horror and fantasy.

‘Science fiction’ can be defined more narrowly. In the old subreddit for sci-fi books, as an example, the discussion could be captured by those who insisted that only classic, hard science fiction, or fiction based on currently established science theory, was science fiction. There seemed to be a fair bit of gatekeeping of more popular franchises or works that involved more speculative science. There was a great deal of dismissiveness from some users about anything with faster than light travel. It made it challenging to have more wide ranging discussions.

My own preference would be for a big tent sci-fi community that embraces all the different permutations of the genres, and allows for the mashups.

If the intent is to go with that big tent speculative fiction definition, in the spirit of being open and welcoming, it would be helpful to be yet more clear in the sidebar on this point.

[–] bboplifa@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

that is news to me, I thought sci fi was just a short form for science fiction. I dont think many people would welcome that type of borderline content, I know I wouldnt; and I positively bristle when comic books are referred to as sf, just my $0.02

[–] StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago

Well, I appreciate that perspective as long as the definition of science fiction doesn’t get so narrow that it has to fit within the scientific knowledge of a person with a bachelor’s in physics in 1975 - which it sometimes seems to.

My point is that it’s worth discussing early. That way the Sidebar can be clear, and the mods can do their thing and the rest of the members can avoid gatekeeping.

Personally, I can take or leave the wild science of Silver Age Superman comics, or Marvel. I’m not sure why anyone would consider that to be any more fantasy than Star Wars or Farscape however.

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