Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had:
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I wouldn’t worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)
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Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn’t fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren’t yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.
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Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit’s leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.
To me, the smaller userbase is actually a real problem. I’m willing to stick it out and hope it grows. But for over half of the subreddits I subscribe to, the corresponding lemmy communities have 0 posts this last week.
Yes, I don’t need 10k comments on my posts. But memes or mainstream news was never the big value of reddit for me - I can get these anywhere. Instead it is about the niche communities with a few thousand subscribers. And for now, I still have to use reddit for them.
Yeah the very top post on hot right now has 9 comments lmao.
There is no one here. I mean I love the platform and the apps. I don’t go to Reddit anymore on my phone. But there’s no one here.
If I don’t go to Reddit at least once per day I’m going to miss news and events that are important to me.
Just FYI hot is probably the worst way to browse for news and events, I’ve found top of 6h is far better if you check often, Active if you check every 24 hrs ish.
That’s been my experience as well. I usually do top 6 or top 12.
That’s mostly on the sorting algorithms being slightly fucky wucky. Lemmy has enough activity to satisfy me, but lacks niche communities.
I’ve noticed that “Hot” turns the front page over pretty quickly, which means you see more in your feed, but posts are bumped down before the comments start piling up.
Whenever I’ve posted anything that has made it to the top of Hot, the majority of the comments come in after it has dropped down (which happens after like, 1hr).
If you sort by “active” there should be posts with more comments. The “hot” sorting is not really representative for how active users on lemmy are, since it favours younger posts over older posts with lots of comments. You can read the details of the reasoning here .
I swap between active and hot. Seems to work well
Reddit has a lot of international subreddits which don’t really exist here on Lemmy (they have like 10 users and they almost never post).
Reddit has huge lively communities. I’m having a ball here on Lemmy, but I too must check Reddit once a day to know if important stuff happened.
Sure, someone could say I should work on jumpstarting these Lemmy communities, but I’ve only been able to to what I can so far (that is, replying to posts and joining the conversation)
Ninja edit: fixed grammar
Yeah the issue is that with large online communities, your largest user group is always going to be that of least engagement.
So users who just read stuff is your biggest group. Then comes users who made an account. Then comes users who up and downvote. And last comes users who post.
It makes it very hard to grow a new social media platform.
I’m in the same boat, but rather than just going back to Reddit for those communities, I’ve opted to lose those communities, conversations and information entirely. I will not support their platform.
And I resent Reddit for that in a major way. Fuck them.
Yeah, you need people to post and comment to develop a community. I’ve got one community where I post five times a week, but I’ve only had two posts from other people and only one person commented on a post.
I checked it out, and tbh I think that the post requirements are pretty restrictive, especially considering that Lemmy is relatively new and doesn’t yet have a critical mass of contributing users.
Assuming that the axiom that states that only about 10-20% of users actually post is true, you’re already facing an uphill battle in terms of growing your subscriber base. On top of that, the community theme (art with no context) sounds like an interesting endeavor, but it’s also pretty niche. It’s gonna be hard to find the community organically. Or for your community to find you, organically.
Also, by requiring that the post be a non-flash photograph of the work of art as displayed, you’ve placed additional barriers in front of those 10-20% of content contributors. I mean, how often does the average person go to the museum? Also, does the poster have to have taken the image themselves, or is finding and posting an image you found online (that is a non-flash photo of an artwork as-is and adheres to the community rules and post guidelines) acceptable? The last sentence that reads, “Mods reserve the right to ask where you’ve taken the photo of the art.” seems to imply that the image in the post needs to have been taken by the person posting it.
I enjoy the premise/theme of the community, but I feel that you’re either going to have to lower the barrier to participate/contribute, or you’re going to just have to accept that it’s gonna take a fair amount of time before your community grows into a self-sustaining body. It’s like you’re taking care of a newborn pet, and, at least in the beginning, you’re gonna have to feed your community/pet with fresh posts pretty often. You’re also probably going to have to advertise your community when it’s relevant.
Remember that at the start, even Reddit went out of their way to populate their front page with posts from various dummy accounts to create the illusion of activity. Anyway, best of luck with your community, I sincerely hope you’re able to retain and grow the community you’re looking for.
For those that want to check it out: !no_context_art@thelemmy.club
Lack of posts is one thing, but lack of comments is something else. People seem to be engaging with the posts with the like button, but that is all that is happening for now.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !no_context_art@thelemmy.club
What about now?
Still visiting several subreddits that don’t have corresponding active lemmy communities. Once of them actually has an “official” lemmy community (run by the same mods) but none of the people moved over, so it’s empty,