I love the “cassette-futurism” aesthetic / niche, but hadn’t really thought about it for some time, until I hit up our FV community just now, and submitted a little article about an item I found, yesterday.
Problem? I happened to notice that in that /c, the prior posts dated to 2mos ago, and that currently, the place is effectively dormant, if not outright dead. This to me is a right-old shame, given that 200+ posts had been made there already, meaning to me that a sincere & sustained effort had been made to launch it and keep it going for a quite a while, until… well. Whatever happened.
Just in general, though-- I would think that anyone who’s been a part of the Fediverse for a while has noticed the heavy trend of communities being created all the time, with most of them crashing and burning relatively shortly thereafter. Or others, persisting for a while, until the creators or contributors dried up at some point.
Still, at the end of the day, the FV is full of dead communities that succumbed for one reason or another, and that’s unfortunately just sort of… natural, right? That said, I do not like it when it happens to concepts and communities that I love and support!
So what’s my point, here?
Er… well… I was thinking that maybe as a group-effort, some of us might-potentially rotate our posts a bit between communities that we wanted to support, to help keep them going?
Obviously that would need to be cross-organised in terms of groups of people and groups of communities, but I’m wondering if maybe that might help in such situations? For example, let’s say that every week I create 1-3 posts for a rotating schedule of critical communities I appreciate, so to speak. And others in the sign-up list do the same, see? In which case we together help keep those communities going on until they potentially ‘catch fire’ in a larger, self-sustaining sense, so to speak. Or something like that?
Not sure if all that makes sense, but… there it is.
The issue is, people keep trying to treat this space like Reddit, a website with multiple orders of magnitude more users than the entire Fediverse.
We need to grow things out in a more controlled manner. Broader topic spaces that can house discussions of of families of niche topics. Themed servers.
Meaningful attempts to advertise these spaces outside of fedi, to people who are interested. And that means selling them on something other than “Lemmy”, because “Lemmy” isn’t a selling point to basically anybody.
I often wonder what it would’ve been like if Lemmy had limited/restricted the creation of communities for the first few years. That’s what Reddit did until they grew.
Maybe it could’ve been like 10 to 20 communities per instance at maximum. Might’ve spread things out across instances more too.
[email protected] Yeah. Controlled growth is important when you’re trying to grow a forum. Especially when you’re trying to grow a forum that is aping someone else’s UX (and doing it kind of poorly). But, of course, there’s an option in the server settings to limit who can create new communities, and seemingly no site admins have chosen to use it.
But the other thing is just… you can’t advertise “Lemmy”. This has been the problem with everything on the Fediverse. Everyone is trying to sell the server software as the experience. It’s like trying to get people to your blog or whatever by selling them on “Wordpress”.
seemingly no site admins have chosen to use it.
A bit of a unique case, but Beehaw disabled community creation.
It would probably have been better indeed
This is the way. Niche subs weren’t created out of the blue. Early reddit had a handful of subreddits, mainly programming, technology, pics, and some others. It took a good many years of user growth before things like r/bedsidestoriesitellmyselfbeforetakingapythonexam could ever have a chance of having a thriving community. I see so many communities on here that only have a single poster or bot chugging away. Another issue is users gatekeeping communities on here. I often see people complain on posts in technology that are inherently political (like VPN banning/age verification laws/AI fuckery) that the community is not meant for politics.
honestly I like piefeds solution to this particular problem more; communities get grouped into broader feeds then if there’s anything in there you don’t like you can block it easily enough.
I’m not sure if you can force communities to thrive. If it’s too niche or there just isn’t much to say then I’m not sure what could be done. If it has potential but isn’t known, maybe try posting it to [email protected]
Seems like it doesn’t have to be forcing communities to thrive, so much as exploring the Fediverse and having fun as a group effort. Hopefully some people would stick around in each community afterwards. I think it’s worth trying, the Fediverse is small enough that even a little bit of group effort is maybe enough to reach critical mass, and a little bit of splintering is enough to prevent it.
I think you’d want moderator buy-in, or someone willing to step up as moderator. It seems much more likely to fail if there’s a group effort like this on a community where the moderator(s) aren’t around anymore or don’t care for outside help. You’d probably also want to determine if memes/low effort posts are allowed or not for a given community.
I’m willing to help out as I’m able, and I volunteer [email protected] as a good candidate. I’m a moderator there, but really just secondary. It’s great example of a community that’s kind of dormant (ever since @[email protected] stopped posting), but it’s not dead. I’ve been meaning to post more, but haven’t gotten around to it, and if there was a group effort that would give me an excuse to prioritize it.
I’d also be a big fan of keeping such organization efforts here in [email protected] and not creating a new community just for that, imo wider communities are better, and should only be split off when they’re big enough on their own. Maybe a weekly stickied thread? It would also be nice to be able to opt-in to getting message pings, it’s easy to forget and miss it in your feed.
Also, a related effort would be getting people to comment! Even a quick short comment is much better than upvotes, imo.
I think you’d want moderator buy-in, or someone willing to step up as moderator. It seems much more likely to fail if there’s a group effort like this on a community where the moderator(s) aren’t around anymore or don’t care for outside help.
Excellent point. I realised that not too long ago, after I tried to keep [email protected] going with a series of ~two dozen posts over ~2mos, but there was no active mod, so no mod action on other posts there that failed the core community rules pretty hard. It made me feel like ‘what’s the point of making a sincere effort, then?’
Thing is, I’m already a mod & content-creator at two places, and don’t want to add others. So what to do when the mod’s gone in such cases? Try to advertise somewhere for new ones to step up? That also seems kind of weird, speaking as someone who’s only slightly-connected to such communities.
Your following thoughts also make a lot of sense to me. Not sure about the Lemmy (etc) side, but with PieFed, you can indeed go to various /c’s ‘homepages’ and click on a bell icon that appears top of the page, to get notifications of each new post.
So what to do when the mod’s gone in such cases? Try to advertise somewhere for new ones to step up? That also seems kind of weird, speaking as someone who’s only slightly-connected to such communities.
There are absolutely examples of inactive mods being booted and new mods being put in by instance admins. You need a volunteer willing to spearhead the campaign (and thus taking over modding power), and appeal to the instance’s meta (or whatever it’s called) comm and a reasonable admin will appeal to the ghost mod, and if they don’t get a response in [x] time, it gets handed over to the new mod.
Yeah, that part’s completely understood.
It’s not the relevant bureaucracy and mechanisms that are the issue, but moreso the intangibles of finding / attracting such moths upon the flame, so to speak.
Pandantic [they/them] Or shuttered. Site admins need to be actually managing their websites, not just keeping the server online. Behaving like corporate social media operators doesn’t provide a meaningful difference from corporate social media for most people.
Site admins need to be actually managing their websites, not just keeping the server online.
I’ve been involved in modding and admining webforums for ~25yrs, and my take is that it’s an incredible job to do both things well. So much so that it’s almost impossible. Generally-speaking, you can be a really good, proactive site-runner, or you can be an excellent head admin, running a good team of moderators, but most people simply can’t do both, and I’m not even sure that making it a paid operation really helps with that.
I’m not 100% that’s precisely what you were meaning but, well… opinions are like assholes, I guess. :P
JohnnyEnzyme What I mean is curating their communities, ensuring they have mods for them, shuttering any that are inactive, and finding other sites they can partner with to split community loads.
You know, actually taking responsibility for the social network they’re running, rather than treating them like some sort of natural phenomenon that just suddenly sprung up on domains they purchased.
What I mean is curating their communities, ensuring they have mods for them, shuttering any that are inactive, and finding other sites they can partner with to split community loads.
Well yeah, and I think that gets back to what I was saying above. As a user, you certainly want to see the best possible outcome with all that, but it’s not so often the case, for various reasons. I think it also helps to remember that these are hobbies and passion-projects, and dealing with people is both a skillset and something that commonly drains the one trying to make the effort.
You know, actually taking responsibility for the social network they’re running, rather than treating them like some sort of natural phenomenon that just suddenly sprung up on domains they purchased.
Sounds like you have something or someone specifically in mind with that. In any case, I’m not really sure how widespread that problem might be on the Fediverse, and not sure how places like that would survive for very long, given that users can just go elsewhere to avoid all that.
Yeah, sorry on not doing a better job of moderating that community. I recently realized that this user isn’t a mod on that community and I haven’t been getting reports. I did some cleanup though, and user reporting will help a lot, since I still feel less ownership of it, which means I’m less likely to proactively take something down.
I appreciate your efforts! In any case, it’s beyond clear to me that one or two new mods are needed at OOCC, with Flying Squid gone and the other listed mod no longer using that account (“Tachyon Tele” I think). EDIT: Oh actually, I think they just need their current account swapped for their old one in the mod list, if that’s something you can do.
Any opinion on what would be some good ways to advertise for new mod volunteers for dead-ish or modless communities? Some posts at the ‘new community’ places, maybe? A ‘meta’ post at their respective instances…?
Any opinion on what would be some good ways to advertise for new mod volunteers for dead-ish or modless communities? Some posts at the ’new community’ places, maybe? A ‘meta’ post at their respective instances…?
Usually, creating a thread on the community can help to find volunteers.
After first checking with the admins of that community’s instance, right? The awkward part for me would be doing so as a person almost entirely unconnected to the place in question, i.e. no ‘authority’ to speak of.
Indeed, it can be a bit awkward, but the vast majority of the time admins will be okay to give you admin rights if the community is abandoned.
Actually, if they don’t, that seems to be kind of a red flag.
I’m not sure if you can force communities to thrive.
You never could, far as I know. As someone who’s been running a /c for 2.5yrs+ now, and still the main content-generator, it has to be at least somewhat of a labor of love, and you just have to be patient AFAIK.
Taking on the responsibility of posting content to various communities all by myself is generally a bit much for me, but if there was a rotation of volunteer posters to do so, then at least I’d have new content to look at on a regular basis. Even if it was just one post a week or so.
I view Subscribed only. A reminder to check out All occasionally would help.
So this is more of a client thing than a Lemmy thing, but it would be nice, when viewing all, to have a very easy interface to block a community you know you will never be interested in. Maybe it’s not so bad any more, but shortly after I first joined All was full of repost bots posting to instances that were nothing but reddit reposts. What the fuck is the point of browsing AskReddit or AITA or similar when OP isn’t even on Lemmy?
Reducing friction to weed out communities that are in a foreign language but posting as unspecified, or country-specific communities, or niches that I have no interest in would help me browse All a lot more often.
Edit: And of course I just learned I can long-click on a community name in Voyager to block the community. Problem solved.
Right, but here’s where things can ‘slip away,’ so to speak-- at several points I’ve attempted to curate and grow my Subscribed list based on active communities, only to later realise that a lot of them had since gone dead over a relatively short time (let’s say ~6mos).
If I hadn’t manually remembered to go back and check on them, I wouldn’t have realised that, for most of those /c’s. So, sort of a different phenomenon than browsing All, where you’re reminded of active communities because of the recent posts people had made.
Maybe if there was some sort of tool or feature to show content from dormant /c’s, that could help. For example on Reddit, old posts from various subs routinely show up when I browse by MultiReddit. At the very least, that reminds me about those subs, and indeed sometimes gets me curious enough to go back and look at them.
old posts from various subs routinely show up when I browse by MultiReddit.
Do you know about the personal feed feature on Piefed? They are basically multireddits. I’m asking because I think I’ve seen you mentioning it elsewhere.
I remember learning about curated feeds, but I might have missed the “My Feed” feature. Looks pretty good!
So, basically the PF counterpart to MultiReddits?
Exactly! Enjoy, you’ll see they are quite nice
This is my suggestion - campaign to promote viewing all, and sorting by new. That way, niche comms can stay small, but still be appreciated by those who like the content. No forcing to grow. Like cool rocks - I feel bad I haven’t put content there, but like one should only do so when they want to show a cool rock and that shouldn’t have to be all the time just so a comm doesn’t die.
ideally to me we have general communities and more specific ones would come into being when the demand was there. so like you have like video games and if there are a whole bunch of people who like a game and are always commenting. well they start talking and if there are a few folks willing to run a community then get one going. to me the problem is one person making someone and being super jazzed and posting a bunch and maybe they get some peanut gallery commenting from all but none are so into it to post anything themselves and then the person burns out and it becomes desserted.
to me the problem is one person making someone and being super jazzed and posting a bunch and maybe they get some peanut gallery commenting from all but none are so into it to post anything themselves and then the person burns out and it becomes desserted.
That’s pretty much it as I see it. Schöpfermüdigkeit?
After 2.5+yrs, the biggest reason my community is still going is because 1) it’s a passion project that never ends, and because 2) I wish to express my gratitude for all the folks who digitised bandes dessinées, because I lost my personal collection years ago, and now only read Euro comics digitally.
Someone creates dozens of threads taken from Reddit and then bans anyone who disagrees with them, even if it’s the only reply.
This is 99.9% of Lemmy.
Who?
or just spam bestreddit updates, and nobody visits these.
I’m a fan of organic discovery.
The ol’ reddit switcharoo was a fun way to discover new communities on the other site.
I’ve also discovered a few comms here when someone linked relevant ones in the comments.
Most communities aren’t communities but 1 person posting.
People often start new coms when a reasonably similar com already exists. Reasons often are hyper specific bordering on absurdity.
To fix this you need to go and implement robust cross posting for Lemmy, akin to hashtags, and robust support in all front ends in use.
Then go around as instance admin and heavily encourage posting in more general communities as well as your open-to-everyone, but actually probably just your own posts, community. E.g. but disallowing auch behavior or creating a burden for maintaining communities.
Also, people, get posting! (Said the habitual commentor)
People often start new coms when a reasonably similar com already exists. Reasons often are hyper specific bordering on absurdity.
The vast majority of newly promoted communities on [email protected] or [email protected] already exist, but people want to create their own for whatever reason. It can get tiring as a witness.
To fix this you need to go and implement robust cross posting for Lemmy, akin to hashtags, and robust support in all front ends in use.
Piefed has comments consolidation for cross posts which really helps. Unfortunately the Lemmy devs are against the idea.
Blaze (he/him) Comment consolidation really isn’t a solution, and is an amazingly short-sighted fix. It works to prevent the establishment of local community or server cultures, and presumes the end-point of the fediverse is a more complicated, less well funded version of centralized media. That the “fediverse” is out there, and that any particular website is just an empty vessel to access it.
This actively works against everything we need to actually create a space that appeals to people who aren’t here already. It cuts us off aat the knees before we’ve even stood up.
Like, imagine merging politics on Midwest.social and politics on lemmy.ca…
Comment consolidation really isn’t a solution, and is an amazingly short-sighted fix.
From a user perspective, I really enjoy being able to see all the comments on a post on
As a community builder, I also find it nice that wherever a link is posted, users will be able to see the comments. It feels less like communities are competing against each other.
This actively works against everything we need to actually create a space that appeals to people who aren’t here already.
The top issue potential new joiners raise is content and comment fragmentation.
Politics obviously should stay separated, but that’s the minority case compared to the vast majority of clone communities.
I am sure we could send some tanks to convince them. I heard they love tanks.
What? They love tanks? What does this even mean?
There thems tankies
I am aware of several very specific communities on Threadiverse (like anarchychess or stickenthusiasts) and as an avid Mastodon user I try to repost anything that fits these comms from there. Even if I am first poster on e.g. trouduction since 7 months. A comm may be dormant but at least someone subscribes to it.
A comm may be dormant but at least someone subscribes to it.
Not to be pointlessly cynical, but I’m subscribed to dozens of dead communities, and am barely aware of which ones are on my list unless I manually check.
At least any post from that dead community will appear on you subscribed feed, if you browse it.
Do you?
I suspect that like most others, I’m subscribed to dozens and dozens of communities. Browsing a dead community every once in a blue moon to enjoy its content makes sense, but if it’s truly “dead,” then no, posts from that place won’t be appearing on one’s subscribed feed.
What’s the difference between threadiverse and lemmy? I thought mastodon was already interoperable with lemmy? Why do you have to repost it?
Threadiverse is Lemmy and PieFed and MBin (technically Friendica or some NodeBB users can take part in discussions with their users too, but…).
Mastodon is able to follow/subscribe to a Lemmy community, but as
Announce,which helps to deliver entirety of votes and comments to every instance, is interpreted by Mastodon as “Boost”, a follow of a fairly popular comm will flood your timeline. Also, Mastodon is unable to create or moderate a community and only MBin and Friendica are able to follow Mastodon users.Kierunkowy74 > technically Friendica or some NodeBB users can take part in discussions with their users too, but…
But what?
Neither are Reddit clones (or rather: link aggregators) as NodeBB is a traditional forum but with ability of following users and comms on fediverse (if enabled) and Friendica is compared more to Facebook with more Mastodon-like feed interface. AFAIK many NodeBB instances are erroneously treated as federated as many of them has ‘nodeinfo’ turned on but do not federate. Only a minority of NodeBB users interact with the Threadiverse and some Friendica nodes (already having performance troubles) have already defederated busier Lemmy instances: too much load on software
Kierunkowy74 Ok, but why does that make them not part of the threadiverse? “They don’t universally participate” is also true of, well, Lemmy-based websites.
