What's a community that gatekeeps really hard?

Gardeners.
So many gates to maintain.

I guess ranchers too. Except they gatekeep the old fashion way as well.

I grew up in a very conservative Catholic community. Imagine a group where JD Vance and Harrison Butker would be considered mild. If a new person didn't show up in the right kind of clothes and faux humility, people would make a snap judgement and start gossiping. If the new person were wealthy or had a lot of children (8+) or were in a medical field, they would probably be ok. The single parent mom with two kids who dared to send one to public school for better STEM classes? Lol, she had no chance.

There was a "welcome wagon" type group who were supposed to invite new people to coffee and doughnuts with the congregation in the basement after services. I watched the one invite one family and offer a handshake, visibly retracted the hand to skip over Single Mom, and then extend an invitation to the next family. Ice cold.

There was a "welcome wagon" type group who were supposed to invite new people to coffee and doughnuts with the congregation in the basement after services. I watched the one invite one family and offer a handshake, visibly retracted the hand to skip over Single Mom, and then extend an invitation to the next family. Ice cold.

Just like Jesus would have wanted eh
- Jesus would understand, because they’re special

A lot of more traditional hobby communities like HAM and model aircraft clubs, that want you to take a dozen tests to play with them. Those same communities seem to scratch their heads as to why they can't attract new members.

Ham licenses make sense. If you screw up, you ruin things for everyone, so you have to make sure everyone who transmits knows what they're doing. The problem is the elitism, and how many of them look down on anything more modern than vacuum tubes as not being real amateur radios.
- But from experience, hams are usually enthusiastic to explain anything related you might be interested in
I think those only need 1 test to play with them, and that's because they are regulated by the government. They want people to follow the rules because if they don't it can come down on all of them.

The biggest one of these that I know of is falconry which requires 1 falconry test, 1 hunt test, 1 inspection, and finding a two year sponsor. Falconry is specifically set up to gatekeep as to protect the sport in the USA.
- I'm on board with rules if it involves live animals tbh
- Yeah, I have yet to encounter ham gatekeeping beyond "don't broadcast without a licence and callsign". The test itself is all important stuff, as I'm studying for it in Canada.
  
  It's dead because what we're doing right here is an easier way to talk to people around the world. You have to be nerdy enough to love the technology for it's own sake, so that cuts down the pool pretty severely even before the cost and "red tape" come into it.
- How is putting up so many barriers to participation meant to protect the sport?
I found HAM folks super welcoming. I came to take the entry level test and they encouraged me to take the next level one at the same time, and generously offered to help me pass it.
Right target, wrong reason: Testing for HAM makes complete sense. It's government imposed to get licensed, and that's because the equipment required for HAM could be easily modified to interfere with other electronics or run up against communications laws. HAM being self-regulated (in that everyone is a snitch if they find out you're operating without a license) is only going to be possible if everyone is a snitch. Also, everyone has to share the radio spectrum, so you should know how to be a good actor before you get the chance to go on air.

But there is gatekeeping in HAM in how few beginners focused resources there are. At least in Canada, I found only one set of books that taught the latest HAM exam and one series of YouTube videos (thanks Ylabs!)

I have found very few "your first radio" resources. Hunting for that sort of thing is an intimidating experience, full of jargon and acronyms (not stuff like "VHF" and stuff you need for the exam, but model descriptions and stuff). Lots of sites and radio club web pages aren't kept up to date, and it's a lot to ask of new people that they come out to field day for in person meetups when it's just a bunch of strangers.

Railway and train modellers, of all scales. To their credit, a fair fee people are becoming more open, but especially modelling clubs are often run by old white men with questionable politics and problematic behaviours. They will sneer at anything that's not steam, or at people who run modern instead of vintage trains, or who don't get a train model exactly right the way the original ran that one time in the mid 50s from Bumfuck, Idaho to the middle of nowhere. They have little patience for newbies who might not have internalised all the lingo, or who might need something explained in simple English. If you build something that is not an exact replica of a real world location, they'll say you're not doing model railway, but merely toy trains. And then these same people go and wonder why they can't attract new people to the hobby.

All of this applies to many niche communities. In Germany, especially the older forums that are around since the internet became widly popular show such behavior. Take HiFi- forums for example: If your plugs are not made with gold, you are doing it wrong. Also, if you want to spend money for a hobby, don't bother to start if you are not willing to spend at least an unreasonable ridiculous ammount of Euros.

These enthusiast also complain about a lack of new members. It's the nobody wants to work anymore sentiment, but with niche hobby communities.
Replace "trains" with "amateur radio" and the entire paragraph fits perfectly.
- Sad, imagine if ham ran the radio decentralized parallel internet. Progress occurs one silent key at a time

Permanently Deleted

And even if you do listen to death/black metal, you can still get crap from some people if it's not a certain sub-genre. It's just music, let me listen in peace, I don't need a lecture.
- "Yeah, I like tons of metal bands! ...just not sure which ones as I can't read any of their names."
I listen to a variety of metal. If most of your song is incomprehensible screaming or growling (in any genre, for that matter), I'm not interested in that song.
As an older metalhead, this makes me a bit sad, but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. The metal scene I joined in the early 90s did have its tolerance problems specifically against other music genres, but I never knew it as particularly gatekeepy, at least the circles I socialised with and the concerts and festivals I went to. There were some people who though you weren't a real metal fan if you didn't exclusively listen to metal, but they were a minority. Nobody had a problem with me not particularly liking Slayer or Motörhead, and there was no requirement to have long hair and be covered in leather and/or band patches.
- If it makes you feel better, it's mostly just loud people on the internet. I've never really seen any gatekeeping behavior at any of the many shows I've been to.
- I remember when metalheads would not shut the fuck up about Justin Bieber back in the 2010s. They were obsessed with hating him.
you have to have the metal uniform and some insignia, else you are out.

Vegan groups. You will toe the party line comrade! And yes, shellfish are intelligent animals with a rich social and emotional life.

"But they don't have the nerve types and brain structures to feel pain as we do..."

"HERETIC!"

The guys running /Politics and /WorldNews will ban people if they don't endorse israel committing Genocide.

Also r/Israel (for obvious reasons). It's sad, especially considering that so many people would benefit if the Jews and Muslims were living together in harmony. Which we don't see due to the apartheid regime that is Israel.

Gamers love to call people who focus on one particular type of game or console "not real gamers"

Let's just call it fromsoft fans
- Boggles my mind when people claim that using mechanic present in the game is not playing the game "as intended".
  
  Who do you think put the feature there? The pesky magical game dev that spawns at 2 am to code in a mimic tear?
Not true. We just call people who focus on the wrong kinds of games "assholes."
- Anyone who hasn’t played Factorio is a noob
You know what, I've stopped getting excited when I met someone claiming to be a gamer, because they inevitably say they play "Dota". Play what you want, but why is it always Dota?
- It's either League of legends, CoD, or Modern Warfare in my experience

North Korea

Fire Emblem Three Houses, the game literally has an NPC named "Gatekeeper" who won a yearly Fire Emblem popularity poll with the highest vote count ever.

Farmers. I'm local and from an established farming family, but because I didn't end up in a branch that's still active I might as well be dog shit, and not just on farming-related matters.

Well, maybe dog shit is a slight exaggeration, but damn they will give you the cold shoulder.

didn’t end up in a branch that’s still active

Could you elaborate, please? I know Jack about farming and this sounds fascinating
- So, my ancestors, at least as far back as great-great grandparents, came here and took some land from the Natives (hey, just admitting it is part of reconciliation). Over time, they had an ever-increasing number of descendants, but the amount of land stayed the same. Some inherited, some presumably didn't, and many wanted to do things other than farming with their life and sold their land. My grandparents never farmed, except just to help friends and family, and the last of their land was sold a few years back. (Conversely, I have a great uncle who owns fuck-you amounts of land)

Gatekeeping enthusiasts

What makes you think you may speak for us?

Security guards.

North Korea.

lemmy.ml

Sheepdog trials. Though mostly it's about making things go through the gates.

I don't even know why they have trials, and the jury isn't even selected from their peers. Every one of those dogs looks guilty to me.

Do you even care about movies if you don’t watch them in the original language?

To be honest I’m that guy. But I don’t judge anymore and German dubs are actually top notch compared to other countries. But it’s a tough decision for me to watch a new movie in German just so I can share it with someone else and I will comment on it once!

I used to roll my eyes at people who watch movies in o-tone. I just thought they are kind of pretentious. But fuck me they were right.
- i think the key problem, at least for me, is that your hear the orinigal voices of the actors with the background sound of the real location.
  
  this is completely changed when you have a german dub. it feels completely stale, lame and artificial. and you have only like 20 people that dub everything.
- what the fuck is o-tone?
German dubs are actually top notch

I find this ironic when compared to native language German porn, which frequently has audio that is distractingly out of sync to the point that it almost seems like it's many minutes off. It's not even just one studio either, it happens to a lot of them for some reason. I'm starting to wonder if there's an industry joke that I'm not aware of which explains it, but I haven't noticed the same issue with porn produced in other languages.
- ALARM!
I don't have a lot of comparisons to dubs in other languages, but most german dubs I know are average at best. The biggest problem is that they often pick voice actors who just don't suit the character or the original actor. The stilted reading/talking is another issue, which is also often present in original German productions.
German dubs are actually top notch compared to other countries

This is true for movie productions. They are dubbed well, even to a point where jokes and plays on words are translated as well. On the other hand, cartoons are not. They lack of something that makes them unwatchable when dubbed - I think it's because some of the play on words and jokes are missing, also the dubbed voices differ extremely from the original. Such thing can make a character appear and be percieved very different, compared to the original. If cartoonn are availiable in original language (English), I'll prefer that.

Yesterday I watched an interesting video about this topic: Why Germany dubbs movies, but other countries don't
Warum Deutschland Filme synchronisiert und andere Länder nicht The video comes with insights from a voice actor, who dubbs the voice of Leonardo di Caprio.
- I saw that video, really liked it!
  
  Especially comedy is very hard to synchronize for obvious reasons, which is why the jokes are often completely changed.
  
  I don’t mind so much when voices are very different. When you don’t know the original it doesn’t really matter. Yes the general tone of the movie then changes a bit but it still works as long as you don’t compare. For the average viewer it’s good enough.
German dubs are actually top notch compared to other countries.

Sadly, this does not apply to the show Dark. Fantastic show. Terrible dubbing.
- Did the German actors dub themselves? I can imagine this must be hard.
I would be bothered if a movie written in pig-latin was dub to English... who doesn't understand pig?

What beautiful language.

hoarders are good at gate keeping

TERFs

Gatekeep so hard they require DNA tests

Any "hardcore full loot pvp MMORPG"

Archlinux

Not all of Arch Land is a barren wasteland of unfriendlyness. There is a small village called EndeavourOS that … keeps the gate wide open … or so. Younhopefully get what I mean. They are nice people.

Reddit.

Unless it's completely changed since the APIpocalypse, I'm going to say wrong criticism, right target. It's a big place, only some parts of which gatekeep much.
- Yeah, Reddit seems like it does the exact OPPOSITE of gatekeeping. It's progressively lowering the barrier to entry to attract new people.
  
  Before I signed up, it was very much "The narwhal bacons at midnight", with people needing to understand the inside jokes and references, Reddiquette, and other "soft skill" kind of stuff to get upvotes.
  
  I left with the API situation, but even by then, it was nearly mainstream. "Normal people" would tell people about things they saw on Reddit. Of course, nobody would share their username with anyone else. (Nor should they! Lol)
  
  Even since then, I'm occasionally seeing Reddit screenshots from people whose phones I imagined never opened much else aside from messaging apps, image/video-based social media, and their camera app, lol

Bouncers

On the flip side, the ukulele community is so open and friendly, helped me stick with a hobby I sucked at to begin with, and now I've released actual music!