• BrikoX@lemmy.zipEnglish
    16·
    7 months ago

    I don’t like “big” instances, since they tend to quickly walk back on their promised goals once they no longer can manage their size. So when I joined Lemmy it was on a smaller now defunct vlemmy.net instance. The idea of operating and moderating the community was not that appealing, but it was a way to promote the instance, so I started !globalnews@vlemmy.net and !databreaches@vlemmy.net. It was a slow start, but they grew over time, reaching 1000/400 subscribers respectively and then the admin killed the instance and vanished. That was a lesson.

    After that, I joined lemmy.zip, it was tiny then, but it had a lot of things going for it, multiple admins, multiple communication channels, transparent finances and good base rules. What it lacked was content. So I had to decide if it was worth my time to start over by creating another community and help it grow. I re-started !globalnews@lemmy.zip and !databreaches@lemmy.zip and just started posting without any expectations. It was an outlet to share what I found interesting or what caught my eye. Eventually, people started commenting, and organic discussions started happening. I expanded the number of communities I moderate now, but the principles are the same. No expectations.

    So the reason for all this backstory is that I stay motived by believing in the project and wanting to help good instances to grow. If not for Lemmy I wouldn’t be posting anywhere else, never moderated on Reddit, never even posted on Reddit, was a habitual lurker there.

    Just find topics you are interested in, maybe set up an RSS client and share the content that you find interesting yourself.

    • BlazeOPEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      Thanks for sharing your experience. I see your posts every day, impressive

  • UKFilmNerd@feddit.ukEnglish
    15·
    7 months ago

    It’s a little disconcerting when I post stuff and people (I assume) down vote it because they can’t be bothered to read past the headline.

    I posted a video to an almost dead Tron community with Joseph Kosinski talking about Tron Legacy being released in 4K.

    But, again, I assume, because the video thumbnail and description was all about Top Gun Maverick…⬇️👇⬇️👇⬇️

    • BlazeOPEnglish
      7·
      7 months ago

      I chose my current instance because they disable downvotes for this reason. At least it’s one less vector of negativity

      • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        You say that, but I recently had a comment deleted and got banned from a community on that instance. I wasn’t being a jerk or anything. The mod was power tripping.

        • BlazeOPEnglish
          5·
          7 months ago

          Sorry to hear, there are power tripping mods everywhere.

          You can always try to escalate to the admins (even though sometimes they don’t want to interfere with communities)

          • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            3·
            7 months ago

            As much as it did and does bother me, it’s probably not worth the effort. That community probably isn’t worth my time.

  • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    13·
    7 months ago

    I’m kind of giving up. When I came over during the Reddit APIpocolypse, I tried to post as much as I could. My posts here don’t get much engagement, and only seem to reach a small audience, so it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the effort.

    I still try to post and comment, but it feels like a slog sometimes.

    • BlazeOPEnglish
      10·
      7 months ago

      Completely get what you feel. I had a look at your last posts, at least the good a few comments, that’s something.

      Sometimes it’s even worse, you post then all you get back is negativity. I just posted on !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world, there are some comments which I just reported

      • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        I had a look at your last posts, at least the good a few comments, that’s something.

        Yeah. When I post about politics, I often get some responses. They tend to be pretty same-y, but it’s better than nothing.

        I’m sorry you’re getting unnecessarily hostile comments on your posts. That’s disheartening.

    • misk@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      8·
      7 months ago

      Don’t ever think it’s up to you or any individual to carry the success of Lemmy or individual communities. Post what you think is worth sharing and don’t force yourself if you don’t feel like it. If Lemmy is to be more popular it will be on the backs of many people collectively.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    11·
    7 months ago

    I haven’t been posting / commenting as much recently because I’ve been busy with life stuff, but I do like seeing the posts (ex. I enjoy seeing the Lego posts). It would be nice to have more comments, but otherwise I usually upvote or save the post

    One thing I’ve noticed is that even on Reddit, there are more posts with lots of upvotes and no comments. I’m not sure why that is

    I’m planning to get posting again, but what I’ve found is that a lot of posts in the niche communities didn’t go anywhere. Then every now and then a post takes off and a lot of people see it.

    Best is when other people start posting too (ex. !publichealth@mander.xyz ). I guess it takes time for an active contributor with similar interests to find the community, since others might not encounter enough content outside of Lemmy to post them

    • BlazeOPEnglish
      6·
      7 months ago

      Best is when other people start posting too (ex. !publichealth@mander.xyz ). I guess it takes time for an active contributor with similar interests to find the community, since others might not encounter enough content outside of Lemmy to post them

      Definitely. I’m kind of waiting to find another poster on most of my communities, feels almost like searching for a soulmate ha ha

    • Microw@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      A lot of people simply are lurkers. I know so many people irl who browse sites like reddit, 9gag, news sites or whatever all the time, and never in their life would consider to post comments.

      • BlazeOPEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        Oh, definitely. The 90 lurkers - 9 commenters - 1 poster ratio seems to apply on Lemmy too. It might even be less, because it would mean that out of 50k people, there would be 500 posters?

    • BlazeOPEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      Hello,

      Good to see you here! On the same as you for everything, especially trying to run positive communities

    • Elle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      I think alongside trying to foster more upbeat/constructive communities, it may also help to have a mixture of novel/different posts and if relevant, helpful posts.

      For example, a few communities I’ve noticed are…

      !amateursatellites@lemmy.world

      !pocketknife@lemmy.world

      !wallpapers@lemmy.ca

      The first is definitely niche, second is maybe somewhere between, and the last benefits from being widely appealing, but what they each have in common is that there’s something different to come across from their posts. First is satellite imagery, second courtesy of a couple posters is some weirder pocket knives, and the last is more or less like pics but with a bonus of being a variety of images you could use on your phone or PC.

      A tricky part with each of these so far has been that despite some upvotes, you may not see posts from them too often depending on your sort setting as they don’t often draw too many comments to each post.

  • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
    8·
    7 months ago

    I do this for a few sublemmys like !nasa@lemmy.world and !esa@feddit.nl. I view it as keeping communities on “life support” until Lemmy grows a bit more.

    One of the best practices I can think of is to cross-post a post with text in the body (important) from a small sublemmy to a large sublemmy. This creates a link to the original post on the smaller community, and gives it some visibility.

  • ThisIsNotHim@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    6·
    7 months ago

    Part of the problem may be lack of tagging and filtering tools.

    For example:

    I’m not interested in memes so if a community is largely filled with them, my only way to avoid them may be to block the community. This includes communities that I might otherwise subscribe to, or want to engage with.

    This is also tied into community fragmentation, community discoverability, and feeling the need to browse All to see anything. I don’t know how widespread my issue is, but I have seen others mentioning having extensive block lists of communities.

    • BlazeOPEnglish
      2·
      7 months ago

      Which community did you post to where you where the only one posting?

      • ThisIsNotHim@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        I’m responding more to the feeling that a community has a single human posting. Even as a reader it can feel that way.

  • BlazeOPEnglish
    6·
    7 months ago

    Sometimes I question the fact that some communities might be too niche, but even on something as generic as !movies@lemm.ee there aren’t that many people wanting to talk about movies

    • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      9·
      7 months ago

      I feel like Lemmites generally have a handful of interests: US politics, Linux, and Star Trek. I guess the war in Gaza gets a lot of comments too. But outside of that range, it gets pretty quiet.

      Going back to Reddit every now and then, it’s nice to see conversations on other topics.

      • BlazeOPEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        Yes, it’s kind of strange. I have been trying to correct that with recents posts in !pics@lemmy.world and !interestingasfuck@lemm.ee.

        We are 50k people here, don’t tell me there is no one that likes other stuff that the one you listed.

        • Elle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          7 months ago

          I think some of this may be the default Active sort setting for the all/federated feed keeping some communities and their posts around the top. Might be mistaken, but my understanding is that it primarily elevates upvoted posts with recent comments, leaning on recent comments for keeping it visible.

          Problem is, that means some posts that may get a decent amount of upvotes but no or few comments may gradually get buried, only rising to the top briefly or on some slower days.

          I think as a result of getting buried, some may not see the other stuff they might want to talk about to comment on, and besides that, I sometimes get the sense there are a lot of lurkers around here, voting on stuff but otherwise not commenting either for lack of anything to add or not wanting to risk getting into arguments (if not both).

          • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
            5·
            7 months ago

            voting on stuff but otherwise not commenting either for lack of anything to add

            I see myself in this comment and I don’t like it. It’s hard to make the first comment though. Any suggestions?

            • Elle@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              7 months ago

              What you did at the end can be a good approach tbh. Be curious and ask something about the post, or something in it that you’re not sure of or familiar with, or if the OP hasn’t added any body text or indications in the title and simply posted, what their opinion on it is, or if it’s like a show/story/site/product, what’s the premise or what’s up with it and what they like about it.

              Also if you don’t want to focus it on the OP, in the absence of other comments, you can say as much like, “Do you (including anyone else reading) know/think [somethingsomething here]?”

          • BlazeOPEnglish
            4·
            7 months ago

            Hello, good to see you here.

            You might be right, this is indeed a filtering issue. I use “New comments” on Subscribed, and then “Top X hours” on All, but people who use Active must definitely be missing on some.

    • LittleTarsier@lemmy.caEnglish
      7·
      7 months ago

      I think part of the issue is there’s multiple communities on different instances for the same topic. I’m subscribed to like 4 different movie communities. If we all just stuck to one, maybe there would be better engagement?

      • BlazeOPEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        That’s interesting, because I can exactly tell you why there are so many movies communities

        • !movies@lemmy.world got created but is pretty much unmanaged. People on LW just post there out of habit, or because they support LW
        • there was historically a moviesandtv on an instance called lemmy.film. It was getting some traction, but then the instance disappeared
        • to keep another instance out of LW, people (including me) got involved into !moviesandtv@lemm.ee. It was going well, but at some point I suggested to have discussion threads for current movies, and to engage more with the community. The mod found that “backseat moderating” and banned me. The details can be found in the spoilers in the OP here: https://lemmy.world/post/11446250?scrollToComments=true
        • I thus took over !movies@lemm.ee, to kind of have that space to discuss movies.

        I think we might consider posting to !movies@lemmy.world to promote the two others on Lemm.ee. I actually did that 2 months ago to talk about the Dune discussion thread we had on !movies@lemm.ee: https://lemmy.world/post/12820343?scrollToComments=true

        18 upvotes, no comments, and that’s it. I guess a few people went there, but I’m not sure.

        • misk@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          Dang, this sucks. I usually post news rather than open discussions so I never noticed. I had my own disagreements with lemm.ee admin back in the day which is why I’m on sopuli.xyz among some other things.

          I do wonder if going with movies community on an instance that has more broad one already is too much of a handicap. Something like beehaws’s c/entertainment could work if parked at some instance that’s federated well enough.

          • Microw@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            7 months ago

            Open discussions are always the hardest things to get comments and actual conversations in the comments, except maybe in the AskLemmy community where it works well.

          • BlazeOPEnglish
            2·
            7 months ago

            I do wonder if going with movies community on an instance that has more broad one already is too much of a handicap

            It might be, I just posted on !movies@lemmy.world (not wanting to get another account banned on !moviesandtv@lemm.ee ), we’ll see how it goes

            I don’t think that’s much of an issue to be honest, and even if it is, having a “large” audience able to see it from their local feed should outweigh the con.

        • LittleTarsier@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          Well, that’s ridiculous! I imagine there are similar stories for other communities as well which ends up with a bunch of fragmentation.

            • BlazeOPEnglish
              2·
              7 months ago

              That was another shitshow, probably the worst I’ve ever seen on Lemmy

          • BlazeOPEnglish
            2·
            7 months ago

            I agree with you.

            I even escalated the “power tripping” of the mod of !moviesandtv@lemm.ee at the time to the admin instance, but their stance was that they didn’t want to interfere with the moderation of communities, as that would be themselves powertripping.

            I’m going to post to the LW community to advertise !movies@lemm.ee at least

    • misk@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      2·
      7 months ago

      Isn’t this because there’s already moviesandtv which seems to be better suited to the current community size?

      • BlazeOPEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        moviesandtv exist, but don’t really allow people to discuss movies and shows, it’s mostly about news.

        I suggested at the time to just have a pinned post like “what have you been watching”, but got banned by the mod for “backseat moderation” (see below: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/8381687)

        The other issue is that as Lemmy posts don’t have unique URLs that can be used by every instance, you can’t just have a megathread with links to discussion threads, as that would work only for one instance

        • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
          2·
          7 months ago

          The other issue is that as Lemmy posts don’t have unique URLs that can be used by every instance, you can’t just have a megathread with links to discussion threads, as that would work only for one instance

          I’m curious as to how Lemmy apps solve this issue (which they seem to have done), and why the web interface doesn’t have similar functionality. In Eternity and Thunder, I can tap on a link to a post on another instance, and it opens the corresponding post on my home instance.

          Is there some lookup table under the hood to match post IDs between instances? Whatever system apps are using, why would this not work more broadly?

  • p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    7 months ago

    I don’t mind the slower nature of lemmy. I like how quiet it is compared to the karma farming spam bot hell reddit was.

  • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    7 months ago

    I don’t mind. We’re still early adopters here really. I see it as slowly building a stronger place for people to find in future exoduses.

  • darakan@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    7 months ago

    I started moderating !animation@lemm.ee about two weeks ago. I don’t feel demotivated so far because it’s still early days and I think it’s a fairly niche topic. Especially among Lemmy’s somewhat older userbase. On top of that the subscriber count has more than tripled during that time so I’m pretty happy with that. The one thing that frustrates me are the occasional random downvotes. I’m certain most of them are just by people not subscribed. I kind of wish there was a way to set it up so only subscribers to the community could downvote.

    The 1 post that got a huge amount of traction and a lot of fun conversation (even though some of it was off topic) was a discussion question in the form of a meme. I wanted to try it out because on the ALL feed, the majority of the most popular posts are memes. It’s not something I want to do too often because I don’t want that to be the focus, but I’ll probably do it from time to time in the hopes of getting more people engaged. And maybe pull some more subscribers.

    • BlazeOPEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      Hello,

      Welcome here, thank you for your comment, happy to see that your community is doing well. I’ll add a link to the sidebar of !movies@lemm.ee

        • BlazeOPEnglish
          4·
          7 months ago

          Thanks! I’ll probably do a small post about it later this week (Sunday tends to bit a bit slower on Lemmy)

    • BlazeOPEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      Thank you for your comment!

  • insomniac_lemon@kbin.social
    3·
    7 months ago

    I posted some stuff and ran into this plus my threads not getting federated to certain places. And 3 weeks later they are still the newest posts on those communities (Kbin’s ps1graphics and blender communities, note that Kbin communities seem to not use the community link format).

    I had some technical questions and a roadblock too, but they are niche so I just… didn’t deal with it. Maybe there’s an instance out there that’d fit (for me, someone who dabbles in art and programming while not really being those things), but also I doubt it particularly because I’m only interested in a semi-niche programming language. Audience vs niche seems like an unwinnable balance.

    I’ve thought about posting to a more popular lemmy.world community for the next thing I make as it would probably get more of a response, but probably not answers so that wouldn’t matter since the stuff I made so far was just random objects. Well, I guess getting answers for Blender questions is more likely.

    • Blaze@reddthat.comEnglish
      2·
      7 months ago

      Hello,

      Welcome here! Did you try !blender@lemmy.world? Seems reasonable active, and with a 2.5k userbase.

      But yes indeed, it’s sometimes difficult to find the audience for a niche topic, general topics do better on average

      • insomniac_lemon@kbin.social
        1·
        7 months ago

        I haven’t, the other community I was thinking of is !artshare which has 3.94K subs.

        My style is low-poly with vertex colors (no textures). My Blender questions weren’t really that important, the roadblock I am having is trying to use said models in a specific framework (or maybe the very specific bindings I’m using) just not loading vertex colors (I am not sure if there is ‘help’ here, aside from just fix it).

  • bradorsomething@ttrpg.networkEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    These things take time. I’ve saved discords in the past by making interesting comments or posts that created conversations. Lemmy is growing, and quality content attracts quality content.