Ask Lemmy
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Honestly, I think we have way too many communities. Cull them back to a small set of fairly broad communities: Arts, Tech, Politics, etc. Once those are active enough, then start to subdivide as the sub communities grew to a sufficient size to self-sustain.
What happened instead, was people tried to create all the same communities that reddit has, without the people to sustain them, and now it looks like a ghost town.
This is true. During the big migration wave to Lemmy about 3 years ago, a lot of people came over and started niche within niche communities with the idea of making straight up 1 for 1 copies of very niche subreddits. I've even inherited moderation on some of them.
I think the best way forward is to try and backfill by posting a majority of content to some of the more main communities, and then crossposting to the more niche ones. This makes the more general and I think more important foundational communities active, and it gives a trickle of content to the already existing niches. Not being afraid of crossposting and then in general posting more is a good answer.
I personally dislike the cross posting in lemmy, as it results in seeing the same post 3-4 times in a row, which is kinda annoying as well. I believe piefed does it better (dunno if anyone can confirm that?).
Is this the right place to discuss PieFed? I think PieFed did the cross posting and fragmented communities problem nicely. You can create your own feed too.
It's part of the same family, so I don't see why not.
I've not experienced piefed first hand, but from what I heard it joins Cross posts somehow? Lemmy you can create your own feed by subbing to communities, is piefed different?
Yes, it collects all the replies in one post, if the OP's been cross posted to different communities, and it only shows the post title once, so it doesn't overcrowd your feed. You can submit to communities to create your home feed like Lemmy, or there are Feeds that you can subscribe or create to your own liking, or there are Topics of collected similar communities, for easier browsing too. It has a more complicated structure than Lemmy, but I think it's worth it.
Cross-posting would be cool if the communities were hierarchically subdivided and automatically cross-post the most recent top 3 to a parent community. E.g. /c/art < /c/traditional_art < /c/classical_paintings
It would be much easier to discover and search new stuff you like.
That would be really cool. And kinda fits the "organic growth by subdividing" model
This is true that crossposting is messy, but I think it is the best current solution. Crossposting means it is more likely to show up on the feed of somebody only subscribed to one of the communities, which might remind them that the community exists. Crossposting also means that when somebody stumbles upon a community it at least has the appearance of a pulse.
I agree with this. Leads to communities being drip fed and having small user bases where eventually most people (who are not committed) just end up back on Reddit.
So how many communities should there be exactly?
About tree fiddy
...It was about this time I realized the other poster was about 8 stories tall and was a crustacean from protozoic era.
Well I think that’s the wrong question to ask. I believe it’s probably best to get a handful of communities with a strong user base and encourage more people to come before we start slowly expanding out to more niche communities.
Take 4chan for example. To this day, I believe there’s less than 25-30 boards. Everybody just funnels down to one of some 30 odd communities, and they post their thread there.
For Lemmy, we have so many different fediverses and then on top of that there’s communities within each fediverse! Theres multiple ones for news, and politics and technology and memes. And I understand that is the appeal of being decentralized but it also means we never really amass numbers for communities. So, with that in context, I think it would be smart to encourage a strong user base in maybe one fediverse or assortment of communities before spreading out.
When you have a lot of small niche communities without a large population, there’s just no recipe to keep that community afloat unfortunately.
I mean I run television@piefed.social. It's only active because of me. I make up the majority of the posts. But when I do post, I get activity.
I run two niche communities but I'm fine with them being slow because I don't particularly care about the mod position - I just wanted a space to post two things I like
!SlowGentleASMR@sh.itjust.works
!AnimatedMusicVideos@sh.itjust.works
I think those are different in that you don't need discourse. You can post away, and if no one responds its not a big deal. But other communities, especially ones that people might go to for help or advice, getting zero responses to a question is spirit crushing.
Good point, and true.
As a user, It would be nice to be able to consolidate.
I agree to an extent. The problem is that an interest in a specific topic does not translate into an interest in the broader topic. Personally, if we only had broad communities on the level you suggested, I'd likely not use Lemmy at all, because then I'd have to spend too much time scrolling past the majority of posts or adding filters.
Ripping communities away from moderators to merge them is going to drive them away.
Yeah, the ship has largely sailed. But also, there are lots of communities that are empty and also functionally unmoderated, so some could be removed.
Unmoderated is different. Many aren't though, even if low activity.
Does become a bit of a philosophical question though doesn't it: Is a community really moderated if it has zero activity?
Also, I somewhat object to the framing of "moderators owning communities". I don't own the community I mod, I serve it. If it was a ghost town, and closing it down would prevent people stumbling into it and wasting their time, I would be completely in favour of it.
Of course by inactive, I mean no activity.
I run television@piefed.social. 90% of the posts are by me. I forced it into having a presence. It however does get engagement when I post.
This is true for many communities.
I disagree.
The one of the major things that Lemmy lacks compared to Reddit is all of the smaller random hobbyist communities.
Those niche communities work on reddit because there is a huge userbase to keep them alive. If you create them here, you get an empty community that looks dead, which discourages people from posting.
Having an active "hobbies" community going first, and then later splitting off the "knitting" community when it's clear that there are lots of knitters means that you don't get empty dead communities.
You can't force the niche community into existence, it has to grow organically.