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user-centric and content-centric platforms reflect different citation styles used in scientific literature
(discuss.tchncs.de)
In scientific literature there's generally two ways to cite someone:
- If you're writing a technical paper about something related to technology, you typically cite the paper in square brackets.[The Art of Citation; Johnson et al.; doi: 10.4208/jcm.1512-m2015-0242]
- If you're writing in sociology, you typically cite the author in round brackets. (Clarke 2013)
Nevermind the square/round brackets, my point is that in technology-related fields, typically the name of the paper is considered more important than the author. A paper can have many authors, and not always all are listed. Meanwhile in sociology, the author is considered more important than the name of the paper.
This reflects the main difference between Mastodon and Lemmy:
- Lemmy is content-centric, where you have communities (focused on a topic) as the central element of organization, and they can have posts.
- Mastodon is people-centric, where you have person/user as the central element of organization, and they can have posts.
This is why lemmy mostly appeals to people working in IT and tech, and that's why there's mostly nerds here.
Interesting analogy, but I doubt citation style and field preference are portable to social network preference, because lemmings with sociological backgrounds and tooters with technical backgrounds exist. Nevertheless, it might be a useful thought to explain the difference, between a social content aggregator and a microblogging network.