World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it’s just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there.
I really can’t see any specific virtue that it has; uptime is not the best (or so I’ve heard), the moderation is quite lacking (which is demonstrated by the fact that Beehaw defederated them), they make some unpopular moderation choices (like blocking !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com), and overall the atmosphere is a lot less… nice than those of smaller instances.
I also feel like it goes against the idea of the Fediverse that one instance has control over most of the platform. Especially on Lemmy, where communities mean that building community within an instance makes so much more sense than elsewhere, and upvotes are federated near perfectly regardless the size of your instance, decentralisation makes a lot of sense. It really just doesn’t make sense to me that Lemmy World is where people are going.
This isnt really true about beehaw though. Their mods actually have really good heads on their shoulders when it comes to policy and enforcement.
Their goal is to protect the general vibe of the place and their prime rule beyond of course not being a bigot is to “Be(e) Nice”. Discussions are meant to be had in good faith and if someone is say spready hate speech and someone tells them to fuck off the mod will likely bad(and depending on what they said delete) the hater and probably do nothing to the person who told them to fuck off.
They will go after people who are arguing in bad faith, trolls, people who are being too aggro for no reason, and of course people getting into a fight who need to cool it.
Their more simplified ruleset is to combat what is often seen when you have the more reddit style strict rules. Where you wind up with users knowing just how to be a dickhead without actually breaking the rules and ruin the place. If a mod bans or deletes a post when the person isnt breaking a rule but stinking up the subreddit then the user causes drama towards the “abusive mod”. So the mods then put in more and more rules until the subreddit becomes bland or hostile towards posters. In this example if someone posts hate speech and someone calmly just tells them to fuck off then both posters will have to be penalized for breaking rules.
The beehaw system allows for discretion. Ive also seen admins and mods on that site try and talk things out with posters who are causing a stink and giving them a good faith opportunity before showing them the door.
We’re talking about apples and oranges. Or rather, fruits and oranges. Contrast my note #1 with your comment:
You’re talking about intentionally socially disruptive behaviour; Beehaw does address it. However I’m talking about bad = non-contributive behaviour in general, regardless of “intentions” or “faith”.