I don't think we should strive to have as big a userbase as reddit.

Many of us have seen it happening in the last 4-5 years. reddit subs, and reddit in general has become a bit s***. Of course there are still good subs, especially the truly niche ones can often have a small helpful crowd. But with 100s of thousands of users, some sub drown in hate and negativity.

I've been thinking about why. With the offical reddit app, reddit is as easy as facebook, many people even refer the the platform as an "app". Perhaps this ease of use attracts the wrong kind of people. This place is currently very far removed from this. You applied to get in, you chose this instance on the fediverse among a selection of other instances.

Calling it a concern would overstating things, but I think maybe we shouldn't strive to become as ubiquitous as reddit has become. A couple of 100K users on this instance and maybe a couple of million spread across the fediverse is enough users. The 'gate' you have to go through to register actually makes this place so much better than reddit.

What are your thought?

HandsHurtLoL,

I am reading this and commenting from kbin.social.

I hear you and agree that reddit was peak awful in the past few years, but I do in my heart of hearts want a reddit-like experience.

What I think is intriguing about the Fediverse is that it almost doesn't matter how many people seem to be on any on instance because they mostly talk to each other.

I commented elsewhere two weeks ago that I think reddit's redesign attracted a bunch of users who were looking for a facebook-like experience, and at the risk of falling into the false dichotomy of normies vs redditors, I think the redesign brought too many normies who didn't want to learn reddiquette. I think something that will help kbin immensely is how (I say this lovingly) ugly and mostly featureless it is. There aren't bells and whistles to make it an attractive draw for any other reason besides you want to be here and engage the content and community.

I do hope that as many of these early instances who seem to be "in it" for the right reasons quickly and unequivocally defederate from instances started up by companies like Meta, though.

Phanatik,

I fully agree with you. My only concern is that we're missing some quality of life improvements. Like it takes two clicks to either go to the All page or my Subscribed mags, these can take one. Just put it in the header. Notifications need to be more visible, I didn't know I had any until I was trying to switch to my Subscribed view. Images should be viewable without having to go through multiple clicks. It's small things that make the experience a little less tedious.

HandsHurtLoL,

Okay now this is completely dictated by which instance you use. I see that you're on kbin.social as well, but other instances may have this fleshed out already.

These QoL features - and others, such as comment collapsing - are in the pipeline. Ernest knows people want these features or are frustrated with parts of the kbin UX for now.

Phanatik,

Glad to hear it! I've been enjoying my time with kbin so far so I'm happy to wait for features to be implemented.

ASK_ME_ABOUT_LOOM,

You're allowed to say 'shit' on the internet.

puchaczyk,

But what if we offend advertisers? /s

Leo722,

This guy right here, officer.

upforitbutnotdownforit,
upforitbutnotdownforit avatar

Not buying it. The main subreddits got crappy when they got flooded with people, but part of having a million billion users is that some of them go off and make the niche subs that are great. A lot of quality is a function of quantity. If I can dodge mud-slinging titans ala r/movies and r/videos with a single "block magazine" click, but get 40 active niche magazines, 3 of which I care about, in exchange for it, that makes the site better.

AnActualFossil,
AnActualFossil avatar

The quality of the moderation and the tolerance of the community also plays a large part. A lot of what is tolerated on sites like reddit doesn't have to be on the fediverse (paradox of tolerance), making the place much less toxic.

OTOH, a large community makes moderation much more strenuous, which will end up being problematic.

There's probably a balance, and a tipping point after which it's no longer worth the effort. Needless to say we're way below that point.

Jorgelino328,

Agreed. I love small communities, but i love small communities about topics i actuallly care about. And so far the only magazines i've found on Kbin/Lemmy that have any activity in them are about super generic stuff.

I don't want r/movies, r/anime or r/games, i want r/moviesfromthatoneobscuredirectorilike, r/thatonenicheanimenobodyelsewatches and r/thatoldassgameonlymeand10otherpeopleplay

NausetJF, (edited )

I can see the logic in it, but it’s a tough pill to swallow for me. Sometimes not seeing much activity can feel pretty lonely. IDK, Im afraid a lot of my favorite topics will not transition to Lemmy cus of its complexity.

Ignacio,

My experience with Reddit agrees with everything you said. It's true that niche subreddits had very few posts through the day, but at least they hadn't overcrowded comments with nothing substantial to say. And engagement was easier, despite being Reddit and its karma fuckery.

It wasn't the same, for example, posting a meme on r/memes, with millions of users, or posting a meme on r/adhdmemes, with almost one hundred thousand users. And user mindset was also very different between them.

Yes, quality over quantity.

Autumnal,

I definitely prefer a smaller community over a large one. I actually feel more inclined to interact with others in a small community like this. It feels less intimidating.

baggins,
@baggins@beehaw.org avatar

No! Most certainly not. Keep it small, keep it safe!

cityboundforest,
@cityboundforest@beehaw.org avatar

I personally see Beehaw as like a nice little cozy community and while large communities can be nice and potentially cozy as well, they can also be kind of intimidating.

jcarax,

I think that’s the potential beauty of the fediverse. We can have some redundancy across instances, as users and communities sprawl across them, developing cultures and ideologies.

Warped,
Warped avatar

Quality over quantity is what should be aimed for. The internet evolves and social sites get to a point of imploding. For whatever reason, and people then move onto something else. Some of us can remember BBS and IRC.

Each place shouldn't set out to be the previous sites' replacement. It should take what worked, the good parts, and build on them. Mix them with something new, and experiment. This way, you are not directly competing with the competition, but are close enough to draw some people away from the older websites.

Everything gets too big, too popular. It happens. Reddit was at its best 7 to 10 years ago. It's well past its best before date. It has gone mouldy, started to smell, and taste funny. Time to chuck it out.

aeternum,

deleted_by_author

    •
    mitexleo,
    mitexleo avatar

    Me too ✋

    terny,

    I would say that any online community at some point reaches critical mass. Heavy modding can mitigate it but it's bound to happen.

    esaru,

    The upvoting system rates a post in relation to other posts and does not depend on a large user base.

    The quality of posts depends on the type of users, and that can be better managed in medium-sized platforms like Beehaw and its application-style subscription.

    On those two aspects, the Fediverse is already better than Reddit for me, especially on Beehaw.

    Only in niche areas is a large user base still beneficial. However, I am confident that over time, niche communities will emerge on the Fediverse.

    Nonameuser678,
    @Nonameuser678@aussie.zone avatar

    Quality over quantity 👌

    KnoxHarrington,
    @KnoxHarrington@beehaw.org avatar

    This 100%. When I was reading threads on Reddit, I was looking for a few good comments that were among hundreds of chaff. It seems that here most of that other stuff is gone. Sure, there are comments numbering in double digits and less, but so far they've been more thought provoking or at length (or at least more clever!)

    Spudger,
    @Spudger@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    As someone that never had a Reddit account* but still read about 18 subs on a daily basis (via Teddit) I was a bit sceptical about the value of signing up for Lemmy. So far, so excellent. It reminds me of the newsgroups I used to frequent 25 years ago. Big enough to be useful, small enough to be comfortable.

    *I never had a Facebook or MySpace account either. I used Twitter for a year about a decade ago but it all seemed a bit “look at me” for my taste.

    can,

    Agreed. This is reminiscent of an earlier time on the web. Everyone complaining about potentially needing a second lemmy account doesn't know what it was like to have an acount at several bb forums.

    pixel,
    @pixel@beehaw.org avatar

    Here's the thing, for beehaw? yes. absolutely. But for lemmy? we don't get to choose. That's the cool part about federated social media though, is that as a corner of it grows, the whole concept grows. Which is really cool but also kind of an interesting problem for scalability

    TheLastOfHisName,
    @TheLastOfHisName@beehaw.org avatar

    I'm not looking for "the next Reddit". I'm looking for community, and reddit lost any semblance of that years ago. If that means we're a smaller instance, fine.

    Pantoffel,

    I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.

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