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  • jet@hackertalks.com
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    1 year ago

    They got excited, they expected other people to generate the content, and they got bored and left.

    Starting a community takes real work, you got to do the legwork to get people aware, you’ve got a generate content to start the conversation, you’ve got to keep the ball rolling to keep people invested, it’s a non-trivial work.

    Founding a community then posting a request for moderators and walking away isn’t going to cut it. It’s a big time investment. So I salute the people who are doing it!

    • Deca@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I hate the amount of people telling me to just start my own sub when I mention that I miss Reddit’s variety. As if it was piss easy to get a whole community rolling by yourself

      • jet@hackertalks.com
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        1 year ago

        They’re not being flippant. They want you to grow the community. They want to see it too. We’re all here because we want to see Lemmy grow.

        We’re willing to help as much as we can. I’m posting way more than I would normally. In fact I usually only lurk. But I want to get content here. So if you make a community I’ll post to it. As much as I can.

        • Deca@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Great, I’ll be expecting your participation in /skincare, weddingplanning, engagementrings, kpopthoughts, indiemakeupandmore, …

          The issue is that some of them already have instances, but only 1 sub so I’d be talking to myself all day long

          The female userbase is virtually non-existent and until that changes I’m forced to stay on Reddit for relevant news and financial advice.

            • Deca@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Yep as someone based in Australia I’m also missing AusFinance as the US instance wouldn’t even apply to us due to regional differences. Unfortunately Reddit will stay relevant for a long time for niche topics, but I still enjoy Lemmy for everything tech related & memes.

              • kopper [they/them]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 year ago

                There is at least one instanace dedicated to Australian people, so a personalfinance community created there that’s dedicated to finance in Australia would probably work better than an “australian finance” at a generic instance such as .world.

              • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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                1 year ago

                There is a bunch of communities on Aussie.zone

                It’s sparse for now, but they are growing. In users, content and engagement.

          • HardlightCereal@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Nonbiney intersex here, I’m a little over half female, what’s so important about having full blooded women here?

            • Deca@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              They tend to be more interested in girly fluff topics like skincare, nail art, weddings, jewellery & guru gossip

              Feel free to participate

              • HardlightCereal@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Fool. Everyone knows girls are into linux, blahaj, D&D, post-ironic memes, technopunk subgenres, summoning demons, and stripey socks

                • Deca@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Not saying we’re not into it :D

                  Just that there’s stuff besides that then men certainly wouldn’t enjoy. I don’t think anyone here cares about lashes or what eyeshadow palette just released lmao

                  • HardlightCereal@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Just feels like stereotyping to me. I know lots of people who go against that mold because I’m part of the queer community where there’s more diversity. It seems like your problem is less an absence of girls and more a presence of patriarchal conditioning on the population here.

                    I try to analyse gendered statements like this from the perspective of “can every gender say something similar to this in a perfect world”. And since I’ve only ever met one other person with my gender, it would be unreasonable of me to expect there to be more people of my gender here. I need to find a better way of saying that sort of thing, and doing so taught me there’s a better way of saying what you did too

      • SomeoneElseMod@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        It really depends on the type of community. I created a few a missed from Reddit and honestly the screenshot/photo based communities are piss easy to start. !badrealestate for example is 3 weeks old with 48 posts and 3.6k subscribers. I just posted every day for a few weeks, now other people are posting and I contribute a couple of times a week.

        On the other hand !tennis_fans and !downtherabbithole are much harder to get going because they require very regular or in depth text posts. Those two have less than 200 subscribers between them.

        What I find really annoying is when people criticise posts on the communities I’ve created, when they haven’t contributed at all. People want more communities, people want more content. Don’t be a dick and then criticise the content that someone has put their time and effort into sharing with you for your enjoyment! Anyway, rant over.

        If anyone’s browsing this thread and looking for more (active) communities to join, there’s also !DontYouKnowWhoIAm !clevercombacks !murderedbywords and !confidently_incorrect

        • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          What I find really annoying is when people criticise posts on the communities I’ve created, when they haven’t contributed at all. People want more communities, people want more content. Don’t be a dick and then criticise the content that someone has put their time and effort into sharing with you for your enjoyment! Anyway, rant over.

          I encounter that too from time to time, it can definitely be frustrating.

          Keep on with the good work, !badrealestate is really nice, the horrible house designs get me really laughing sometimes

    • Zalack@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, actually moderating an online space with even modest activity is fucking hard and takes a shitton of time.

      I think a lot of people underestimate the effort involved and quickly lose interest once it becomes apparent.

      • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, bothered me during the protests to see people downplaying the importance of mods from those who were upset about their favorite sub being shut down. It’s a thankless job that takes lot of building to get started and exposure to bunch of crap to keep the place nice for its users.

        • Levsgetso@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          And harassing the mods for closing the subreddit without bothering to learn why it’s even closed. I don’t understand why people think that these unpaid volunteers owe them something.

        • HardlightCereal@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Moderating a large queer sub was easy on Reddit, and getting my own small sub up to an average of 50 upvotes per post wasn’t hard. But on Lemmy I don’t know where to advertise and my trans memes get downvotes from transphobes

    • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Quite a few comments here about this, but thought I’d give a perspective as someone who started a couple of communities which have mostly proved pretty quiet.

      They got excited, they expected other people to generate the content, and they got bored and left.

      This is sort of me - although I haven’t walked away, there’s just nothing much to moderate.

      I joined Lemmy as the momentum was building for the blackout protest in Reddit and, as I suspect many did, went looking for equivalent subs to those I was used to.

      Two that I frequented regularly were for Arrested Development and MST3K, and not finding them on any instance, I decided to start them up here.

      This was primarily to help people coming across from Reddit, perhaps just to have a tentative look at Lemmy, to feel like the places they were used to would be here too. I also made a few initial posts to try and provoke discussion, with minor, but non-zero success.

      I was upfront about not having any mod experience, and from the start, I invited those who ran the subs on Reddit to get in touch if they wanted to do it here too.

      One MST3K mod did just that, so now we are both mods, and the community does have a regular, if slow, trickle of submissions.

      The AD community is quieter, but we have had a few posts, including one a few days ago, which was nice!

      I guess, what I’m wondering is how much responsibility people feel mods have (or should have) to be generating content for the community on a regular basis? Genuinely, I’m not sure - I was a little concerned about it just being me shouting into the wind, partly because it can feel pointless, and partly because I didn’t want to seem like I was dominating things.

      Anyway, I just wanted to give an alternate viewpoint to those which are suggesting that people became mods as a power trip or whatever. That’s certainly not the case for me - ideally, I don’t even particularly want to be a mod, but I did want the communities to have a foothold for people arriving to Lemmy with no idea what to expect.

      • kopper [they/them]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Anyway, I just wanted to give an alternate viewpoint to those which are suggesting that people became mods as a power trip or whatever. That’s certainly not the case for me - ideally, I don’t even particularly want to be a mod, but I did want the communities to have a foothold for people arriving to Lemmy with no idea what to expect.

        There’s a big difference between creating 2 communities and creating 20.

    • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Basically this. I remember seeing a comment of someone being like “I created 50 communities, this is so fun!”

      Well, it’s so fun until you need to actually grow them

    • LexaMaridia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If I am the only person in a community though, it’s awkward. Should I just post a bunch of stuff? Would that attract members on its own?

      • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As awkward as it may feel, but if you are the only person creating content, then there IS content at least. It doesn’t make sense to do nothing and just hope that other people will eventually fill the void, as random visitors will take one look at the community and think “eh, it’s empty, no use in staying here” and just move on. Someone has to make the first step.

        Of course a little bit of advertisement can’t hurt as well, but content comes first.

        • LexaMaridia@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Character Ai (chatbot site) and Amphibia (cartoon)…

          Also thought about creating some myself. I left Reddit so I have those I could try bringing over here.

      • jet@hackertalks.com
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        1 year ago

        Make sure you go to each of the major lemmy instances and and subscribe, search, or ensure your community is federated for those instances all feed.

        Then just post, and try to spark interest and discussion, maybe once or twice a week, as a form of advertising your community exists and is a place for people interested in what have you

      • oyenyaaow@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        There is a sub on reddit where for ~6 months 95% of the content was me, bunch of links staggered weekly. Then suddenly it picked up steam because somewhere off-reddit someone found it and dragged a whole bunch people along.

        But if i hadn’t been posting, then that wouldn’t have happened.

      • subversive_dev@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It’s possible your posts could get boosted by new/all sorters and make it to hot/all even with no subscribers, but I would recommend trying to advertise the community and get subs first to improve your odds of growing your audience

      • scottywh@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I created a community on Lemmy.world named after my own username just to test things and post random shit… A lot of it gets upvoted so people are definitely seeing it but I don’t think I’ve got any subscribers on that one…

        I also had a night where I was pretty tipsy early on in my Lemmy days where I created a number of other communities… Only one or two have any subscribers and I’m usually still the .ain one who generates content.