Gaming, news, tech, general literature. All of these are somewhat thriving, with a steady influx of posts and comments. At the same time, the userbase is sorely lacking for more niche communities. In my case it’d be stuff like poetry, yoga, religion, linguistics, meditation. Or many other communities I’d doubt they’d form a larger userbase here, at least to the degree that it’d foster good discussions. Communities where there are a larger amount of “normal people”, that are not tech-aware, and who have no interest in migrating off centralized corporate solutions. That just want a large space to discuss what they’re interested in.
This for me at least, makes it hard to completely leave reddit (or even Facebook and their groups!). Do you think the fediverse will ever reach the point where this would become a non-issue?
It took a long time for niche communities to pop up on Reddit too, remember Reddit has been around a long time now. Back in the day, Digg was the shiznit and nobody knew about Reddit.
There is the Fediverse, and there is kbin.social. I’m not even sure how to see what niche communities are out in the Fediverse. You’d have to go through each instance to see what magazines/communities (these are referred to differently in different places) exist out there. Is there a or could there be a directory of sorts to list your magazine/community so that others can find it?
I feel confident in saying we should not be planning to host every single community on kbin.social.
There’s a few directory searches I know of.
One is over on feddit.de. It only searches lemmy instances atm, though, and idk how or how well it’s updated as things are made. It seems to go by community name, so for example “drawing” does not return sketching subs and the first result under “art” is Star Trek.
The other is lemmyverse.net, which seems to parse searches FAR better. With the drawback that neither of those recognizes anything on kbin yet.
It’s helped me here and there and apart from the drawbacks like the first one’s behavior, I wonder if my (and @Treedrake 's) trouble is a combination of my own interests being niche and most of the people engaging in those interests being on mastodon instead of here. Fediverse Party and Fedi Directory both tell me there are sizable resources for what I’m looking for, just not through a forum.
This severely limits lemmy as it can’t interface with mastodon tweets/microblogs, and hinders me as well until I have the ability to follow tags and see them in a dedicated feed.
This is one of those circumstances where forum and blogging culture don’t really mesh well. The audience is present but already busy with their own thing, and we’re expecting a different form of interaction than they are.
Redifugee here. I got here and created a community for Santa Fe, NM, USA (@SantaFe ), and another for Photobiomodulation/ Red Light Therapy (@photobiomodulation ). LoL, it’s ain’t much, but it’s honest work.
why do you doubt it? there are thousands of new people flooding in daily. set up the mags and post for engagement? sounds like a lot of work but I understand what you’re missing, my communities are not here either, but I’m going to do my best to make a space for them.
Just because it’d require a larger momentum than what we have now. But yes, I’ve been trying to contribute as well, so I’m trying to not sit idly by. I might just be a tad pessimistic, even though I like what we’re all trying to do.
Lemmy is just not as approachable or user friendly as other social media. I consider myself pretty tech savvy and even I’m not 100% sure I completely understand how the Fediverse works.
Yeah, it may be better than alternatives for a lot of reasons but not for the ones that matter to most people. Imagine the people that use Reddit casually. They’re likely even less willing to try new things. People want stuff that “just works”, they don’t want a long winded explanation about networks and decentralization.
I noticed there didn’t exist a niche community that I’m passionate about so… I created it! It’s like any other new platform, it just takes time.
Chad approach on life
I really want to take this attitude but I just don’t have time to become a moderator.
Funny you say that, Reddit thinks mods grow on trees.
My hope is once a community has built up enough that I can dump the mod powers on someone else.
Delegating is a good approach. Picking people you can trust is however not easy.
It’s not easy at all! However there is less pressure with the federation system now. If the community goes way off base one can make another.
I’m not mad at that. I’ll probably hold off until there are decent mod tools then start seeding some niche places.
Best of luck getting your old niché communities back!
Yeah that is understandable.
The fediverse grows in waves. This was the first wave for the threadiverse, not The Big Wave. Nows the time to let the lead devs catch their breath, prepare for larger userbase and contributor base, and work on critical issues and let contributors start to polish UX issues. The next time there’s a wave, this will be a much better place and we’ll be ready. That’s when you’ll start to see a lot more niche communities able to sustain themselves
It just takes time for these communities to form.
On top of that, we can’t expect communities to POOF into existence.
We have to be part of them to build them, which means making them if they don’t exist yet as well as posting and commenting in the ones that do exist. I hope that people who are used to lurking on Reddit will go out of their comfort zone a bit and start to participate in fediverse communities so that we can build things up more quickly.
I’m okay to help re-create some spots I’ll miss, but up I have to mod them?!
Yea I was a prolific commenter but I think I only created maybe 6-8 posts in 14 years on reddit, and certainly never created a community. So I might have to step up. Regardless of reddit, I absolutely love the idea of the fediverse and the decentralized nature of it, so I really would like to see it succeed. It really does have to be the way forward on the internet to avoid corporate interests.
Same here. The voice in the back of my head says “be the change you want to see in the world”, then I’m like “nah that’s too much work”…
Same. I think we need some way to coordinate the initial burst of content for some of the smaller subs. I hate to say it, but maybe we need to assign “homework” - Request (not require) new subscribers to contribute unique stories or info relevant to the mag/comm on some type of schedule.
Something like:
"As we try to grow this new community, we want to hear from you. We’re asking (not requiring) all new subscribers to start a new post within their first week covering some aspect of the topic they find personally interesting or that they feel could help others. Just add “(1P)” to the title of the post. It doesn’t matter if it’s something you said elsewhere, if you’re new to the entire topic and just want to post a bunch of questions, you have a funny story to tell, or have a super niche specialty.Also, we should consider having more moderator-level users in subs to reduce the burden of moderation. It’s more daunting if you’re asked to be one of 3 mods than it is to be one of 15. We should also look into incentivizing moderation duties, but there’s probably a much longer discussion to be had about that.
This sounds like a great tradition to encourage and support. On Reddit I was pretty danged chatty & responsive, but almost never started my own post. Maybe at most once a year. I hereby commit to upping my participation game to include some actual posts to some of the quiet magazines I’ve subbed to. Thanks for the push.
And YOUR exuberance has inspired me to commit to upping my post game. I was never a big poster on Reddit, but mostly because I just didn’t want to deal with the contrarian and amateur professionals fallout. It might be best to focus on the niche communities, since that’s where the real valuable stuff exists on Reddit.
Good luck out there!
Yeah! I mean, of course it’s nobody’s job or obligation or anything, but if we want this place to pop off we gotta put something into it. :)
What is the consensus on the etiquette of creating new communities/magazines with the names of the still extant old subreddits (particularly when you’re not a mod of the old subreddit)?
I’ve seen some magazines put a note in their description that the owner is willing to hand it off to the mod team of the corresponding subreddit. I think that’s a decent compromise in order to welcome the old subreddit to migrate over and maintain continuity, while also not waiting around for other people to act.
I would suggest using great care in accepting new mods coming from Reddit. Do look at their history with their community and what they shaped the community into.
Well, yes. Obviously only do this if you thought the mods were doing a good job with that subreddit. :)
I’m not really sure… but the way I see it it’s probably fair game.
Communities aren’t something that somebody (reddit, specific moderators, etc.) owns, they are just concepts that people latch onto. And, for me at least, I would rather see popular communities exist here if people want them to, especially since you can have multiple communities under the exact same name on different servers in the fediverse.
In other words, if you want to bring over a specific reddit community I think you should just do it.
Yesterday lurkers are going to need to be today’s commenters and posters!
I see y’all lurkin’
Not postin’They’re just following rules, man:
Rule 33. Lurk More - It’s never enough.
And yes, the pool is still closed.
I feel attacked
You are being drafted. We are sending you out to colonize the fediverse!
yesssir!
I’m doing my part
And my axe! something something name checks out.
i was a reddit lurker for 10 years. i didnt even have an account. today i made my second comment here. hello world
Chad!
Patrollin’ and tryna catch me lurkin’ dirty
I was on Reddit for over 10 years and it only became a place for niche communities when they got rid of defaults. Kbin/Fediverse will get there in a few years.
I personally think that’s when the front page turned to crap. It was nice, curated, not insanely covered in alt-subs with bad actors.
There are existing communities and there is an exodus, so it shouldn’t be necessary for the entire process to repeat from scratch.
From culture perspective, sure… But content don’t generate itself.
But content don’t generate itself.
With enough bots and karma farmers it sure seemed to lol.
What if we had some kind of artificial intelligence that just generated content? 🤔
Except it generate corpoporate PR and ads :/
First few times it was cute, than it turned into spam
Yup!
While lots of people are suggesting creating communities for your niche interests, I think it’s even more important to to find niche communities that others have created and contribute to them. Obviously you can do both, but if you’ve got limited time to post it may be better to focus your efforts, and be the “first follower” rather than the leader.
I’ve been doing this for /m/Animemes and /m/anime_irl, just making one post per day in each. There hasn’t been a ton of other activity yet, but the subscriber counts have been growing steadily, so we’ll get there.
I’ve also been wanting to build up /m/Bitcoin in the same way, but I don’t feel like I’ve got much to contribute right now, so I’m focusing on the anime communities.
Yeah, keeping the content flowing will be the most important thing, and it’s much less daunting than taking on moderator duties. Everyone on Kbin/Lemmy right now is basically an early adopter, so they might need to take more responsibility to keep momentum up. It’s too much to ask people who usually just read news on their niche subreddits to suddenly start up their own community here, but everyone can take one step “up the ladder” so to speak, and we’re already seeing this to some extent I think. Lurkers trying their best to be commenters, commenters putting up their own posts and regular posters starting their own communities.
My dirty secret? Sometimes I grab college football stories for /m/cfb from… Reddit.
Sorry everybody.
Yeah, most of my stock of saved memes are from r/animemes and r/anime_irl. They did at least make it through the filter of being funny enough at the time to compel me to save them. And they’re not necessarily ones that would be easily found by looking at the top posts in those subs.
Speaking of those large subs. Does anyone have the equivalent of world news, news, and games subreddits here?
I found a technology one, just need to grab those other ones. Links appreciated.
Yeah it’s going to be a process. For an example, the Gundam and Gunpla communities are relatively niche compared to other anime or model kit building (which are already niche things in of themselves) and while their subreddits are quite active, we still don’t have that critical mass (or much mass at all) of posts and content to engage with here. I have been meaning to, and plan on, making more posts to those so they get more activity.
Care minding linking those communities? I love Gundam. Hoping to come across some Evangelion communities.
Will you
pilot the robotstart the magazine or not? If not, we’ll just have to send Ayanami out again.
I have a buddy who’s into gundam, I’ll let him know about it when I tell him about Lemmy if you give me a link :)
The issue everyone is facing right now is we are expecting to immediately shift to a ready made alternative for Reddit in less than 2 weeks.
I mean Reddit happened over a course of 15 years. At least. Expecting to replicate the same diversity and engagements within 2 weeks is too much.
Right now the community is in ‘move house’ mode with lots of activity and excitement. It will all come to a calm once the shift is complete and we are all in our new home.
Then in the next few days… We will start hanging pictures and arranging the countertops(aka adding niche subs and improving engagements).
I created a home theater magazine (I think). Feel free to post there!
To help deal with the existential dread, at least half of my Reddit subs were various cat subs, as well as subs for other cute animals, and I long for the day that I can get there again.
there’s tons of niche mags around, but when i go to them, no one is participating. we have to help grow them if we want them to thrive. i try to post in them if I see they are empty. we cant expect them to magically appear and grow, we must be proactive
My recommendation: Make the ones you care about the msot yourself :)
