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?
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.
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 :)
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
Yeah that is understandable.
Chad approach on life
It just takes time for these communities to form.
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!
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.
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.
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. :)
Yesterday lurkers are going to need to be today’s commenters and posters!
I see y’all lurkin’
Not postin’I feel attacked
You are being drafted. We are sending you out to colonize the fediverse!
I’m doing my part
And my axe! something something name checks out.
yesssir!
They’re just following rules, man:
Rule 33. Lurk More - It’s never enough.
And yes, the pool is still closed.
Patrollin’ and tryna catch me lurkin’ dirty
i was a reddit lurker for 10 years. i didnt even have an account. today i made my second comment here. hello world
Chad!
I’m okay to help re-create some spots I’ll miss, but up I have to mod them?!
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’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.
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 created a home theater magazine (I think). Feel free to post there!
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.
Congratulations! You get to help found those niche communities in a new place!
Working on it! Right now, with this huge influx of new users, is a great time to create content that is very search engine friendly. In an effort to promote such content, I started the dance community here on kbin. Please join!
I created a couple of communities that I used to post to on Reddit:
Industrial Design and Jewelry Design
I’ve been working in both fields for years and I’d like to help build up these communities within the Fediverse.
Whether you’re a designer working in one of those areas, or are simply interested in them, feel free to join :)
Best of luck to you!
Thanks.
Also, just noticed that I’ve replied to you instead of replying to the post itself, not sure how it happened lol, sorry. I guess I misclicked.
Thank you for starting a community! I hope it’s a great experience ^^
Thanks for the encouragement!
Amateur dancer here
Just subscribed too. Thanks!Yay, thank you!
Ooh, fantastic! Amateur house and locking dancer here. Joined!
Let’s go!
We need a technical backend and all my technical subs. IT, Python, Unreal Engine, Unity3D,
I support the Fediverse but here is one of its problems that needs to be negotiated.
As an individual poster, if an instance bans you or defederates instances that you would like to communicate with, you can wander off to another instance. It’s bad, but it’s not the worst.
As a (prospective) moderator, you have to recognize the danger that an overactive instance admin will crack down on your sub or remove you as a moderator for editorial reasons.
Reddit is pretty slimy, but for years they were broadly hands-off from a moderator perspective. Reddit’s recent actions show that a moderator can put decades of sweat equity into building and maintaining a community - and then get shut out capriciously, without communications channels or other tools to migrate any significant portion of that community. Start over from scratch.
The question for a prospective moderator is whether you can really trust the instance you’re basing your new mag on. Most communities of any size will want insurance of having an instance they control or at least an instance that makes fairly strong assurances about moderator ownership.
If you’re just driving by and you want to own the espresso machine universe on a particular instance, you can create /m/EspressoMachines and arbitrarily name a few other moderators and then wander off, but this kind of moderator is doing very little to grow or maintain the community. It’s arguably irrational to commit to that kind of labor when the rug is likely to be pulled out from under you at any time.
Maybe in the future, moderators could vote to move a mag/subreddit/community to another instance and bring all their subscribers with them automatically. idk.
I also wonder how many instances are just hosted on some old desktop sitting in a tangle of wires in the basement.
There needs to be durable instance backup/migration tools available to moderators of these communities.
I imagine that’ll eventually get done with the limited dev time Lemmy is working with here, but it’s still worth considering for a new community.
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
For what it’s worth, this is exactly how Reddit was in the early days. I remember a niche sub being something that had maybe 30-50 members, now basically every subject has a subreddit with communities in the 5000+ range.
Just give it time. If there is a particular community you’re missing, use this as an opportunity to start it over here and start getting people involved.
Same here. As frustrated as I’ve been with Reddit for years now, what kept me there was that it was really the only place to get tailored news and discussions on my special interests. I’m still not gonna go back to reddit, but I don’t know what I do instead.
I tried to set up a few magazines myself, but it’s pretty clear there aren’t enough people on this platform for me to find anyone who shares common interests on the things I want to talk about.
Feel like I’m just gonna be a hermit out in the mountains out of the loop on everything.
It also doesn’t help that it’s hard to even keep an eye on smaller magazines right now. As problematic as Reddit’s algorithm was, one good thing it did was weight subs so that you’ll still them on your frontpage, kbin does not appear to do this. Multireddits were also a very useful tool so I could bookmark a shared new queue for the ones I wanted to follow most closely, in a single tab I’d always keep open.
Hopefully these issues can be addressed.
popular posts having equally good chance to appear and stay in your subscribed feed no matter the size of the community is reddits best algorithm and it worked really well
I feel like the niche communities will come with time, so I’m not super worried outside of what happens to one specific writing community’s audience, which matters a lot if you’re a writer trying to build an audience, particularly if you don’t want to wait a few years for the community you’re been writing a book for to grow again.
What I’m really missing is the ability to browse /r/all, which will undoubtedly be harder with Lemmy/Kbin. Having something that can aggregate those well is going to be super important for federated communities to snowball together.
I created a place for model trains: @modeltrains / [email protected] (on Lemmy, if that link doesn’t work you should use the search button by your username to look up
https://kbin.social/m/modeltrains).Bro, the boom is still under way, be patient.
