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?

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.

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.

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

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.

frogman,
@frogman@beehaw.org avatar

i think that's an intrinsic value of beehaw. if someone wants a more "reddit" experience, other prominent instances give that. beehaw curates a safe environment for discussion and by default i think that will make it a smaller community.

hawkwind,

That doesn’t make any sense, other than beehaw can moderate. Anyone can read, post, upvote or subscribe. All fediverse users.

can,

All fediverse users.

Not lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works presently.

nihilx7E3,
@nihilx7E3@beehaw.org avatar

That doesn’t make any sense, other than beehaw can moderate.

i mean, yeah. "beehaw can moderate" is the whole point of beehaw existing

Gaywallet,
@Gaywallet@beehaw.org avatar

It is absolutely an intrinsic value. We are not a reddit replacement. We don't want to be.

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 ✋

    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,

    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!)

    ArtVandelay,

    I think it aligns with Beehaw's values. Not sure if a couple 100k of users, specifically, but not wanting to be so big that the sense of community is gone (and that's only achievable with smaller numbers).

    Cube6392,

    I'm coming to recognize people from this instance, and not just from communities I frequent. This @ArtVandelay person, for example, had a conversation with me recently about digital accessibility and the hamburger menu icon.

    It'd be super dope if we could maintain that!

    baggins,
    @baggins@beehaw.org avatar

    Art Vandelay? Is he your latex importer?

    ArtVandelay,

    I'm an architect! 😂

    ArtVandelay,

    lol! I always whisper to myself "the cuuuuube!", kind of like Crush from Finding Nemo, whenever you pop up in a post.

    Cube6392,

    I don't know the reason that when I discovered I could set a display name, I thought I should display it with 5 U's. But we're here now, and my secondary account, @Quill7513, also follows the same 5 U display convention. I'm glad my weird decision making has led to some small little inside joke with yourself

    baggins,
    @baggins@beehaw.org avatar

    Upvote for your username ;-)

    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.

    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.

    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

    nihilx7E3,
    @nihilx7E3@beehaw.org avatar

    100% agree. in my experience in various internet communities (both centralized & federated) over the years, small-medium sized communities have a lot more fruitful, intelligent, high quality content & discussion than larger ones, & once a community starts to go above the size of medium, a large part of the content takes a nosedive no matter how much the community tries to preserve the same vibe. the problem is simply scale - while it's definitely possible to have a well-run large community, it's a lot harder, & requires a lot more people & logistics than many internet moderation teams even have. thus, enshittification ensues.

    hell, even large companies like facebook & twitter have basically given up on moderation recently, & while part of that is no doubt due to apathy on the parts of leadership, i'd bet my dinner that the other large part is just simply a result of just how hard it is to moderate sites that big. at some point even growing the team & hiring/volunteering more moderators doesn't even help, because now you have to deal with the issues that come with coordinating across such a large team (setting consistent rules/lines, ensuring everyone is moderating to code, power mods, etc). once you get to the point where your commmunity & team are that large, moderating just becomes a mess & a chore for everyone.

    imo small communities are where the fediverse shines, & where a lot of people are just missing the point by trying to grow as big as possible. trying to grow an instance to be as large as possible... just doesn't make much sense on the fediverse. the issue with small communities on centralized platforms has always been simple numbers - when there's not enough people in a community, it dies. you can't talk with other communities or import the minds that feed them content, so the only choice is to grow the one you're on. therefore, the only way to survive is to have more & more users on a single server.

    federation resolves this issue by letting small communities congregate & interact with each other. it essentially eliminates the above problem by letting all the small, scattered communities form into a large community on posts/threads/comments without having to take on the issues that comes with taking said community fully under their wings. i could make a single user instance right now, & still be a part of the overall community here & everywhere else. here we don't have to follow the tenet of infinite growth to ensure our survival, & we can actually focus on cultivating our community instead. (defederation is imo just as crucial to this aspect as federation, but this comment is already getting too long so that's another topic for another day)

    from what i've seen, the only reason why people want lemmy to grow as big as possible is either because they want lemmy to be reddit, or because they want to get "revenge" on the reddit app situation by seeing the company bleed users & die. but lemmy is not reddit in any sense but the ui & basic concept, most lemmy instances cannot hold all of reddit's users, & despite some of our best efforts, reddit is not even close to dying. imo lemmy users focusing so much on reddit is just like when people focus on their ex after a breakup - it's a lot healthier & more rewarding to just move on & focus on building something better.

    baggins,
    @baggins@beehaw.org avatar

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

    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.

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