Is there any way to reverse degrowth of the niche communities on Lemmy?

Like others, I came over when Reddit was banning 3rd party apps. Many communities were being started and I wanted to help. So I chose one community to form here and try and grow. And we did! There was a time a short while in the little KC Chiefs community was in the top 100 communities on Lemmy world. I knew that wouldn’t last that we would be outpaced by many more broad appeal communities but I didn’t predict the reverse in engagement growth that has come. Stagnation sure, I didn’t think Lemmy was going to surpass reddit for a long while yet, but not the barren communities of today. Meme communities and the “small gripe” adjacent communities are doing fine, but it seems all others have shrunk. I tried to keep the Kerbal Space Program community active for a bit but had to return to the official forums and even subreddit for discussion. The post I made in the Go community here remains the only post in the community.

A platform led by a CEO who edits comments of users, lies about other professionals and then double downs on the lie when proven to be a liar can’t be trusted. And in general I prefer the decentralized open source backbone of Lemmy to the ad ridden, rage bait and bug filled Reddit. I’d love for this to be my full time home for discussing my niche interests but that’s not possible without others engaging with the content.

I posted a lot in the beginning, tried to comment a lot too but now it feels like talking to myself when I make a new post in the community I started and get few or no responses. What can be done? Community specific advice is nice, but I’m looking more for Lemmy World level solutions as I’m sure there’s many many other niche communities I’m not apart of experiencing the same thing.

mateomaui,

Probably an unpopular viewpoint, but Lemmy and Mastodon proponents need to suck it up and go be on Reddit and Twitter now and then just to advertise lemmy and mastodon. If no one is talking about these platforms there, no one will be thinking about migrating here. I went to Reddit for some specific emulation communities a day or so ago, and people there are asking where they can find piracy communities that don’t get banned, and it was appreciated when I mentioned you can find them here. Lemmy just isn’t talked about and given exposure unless someone already on lemmy makes the effort, and talking about it here constantly doesn’t make any difference.

veniasilente,

Been wondering about that.

A few years ago I took on the practice of (as a writer) posting on FFN only to announce that my stories are on AO3. Try and drive the reader engagement from the bad site to the cool site and all that. Presumably what is intended here is that eg.: if I find a post / subject of discussion that I want to comment on on Reddit, what I do is post in an equivalent Lemmy community (or Kbin magazine, for that matter) and point to it in a Reddit post? Kinda like “read my comments on this subject here [link]”?

Interestingly, that’d be not too different from how one does with a blog, yes?

I like the model in that it’s kinda instant awareness - there’s almost no way to miss that the link goes to a different domain, among other things. What I wonder however is how much effective would it be at drawing in people vs being disregarded as (and even being modop’d away as) an ad.

mateomaui, (edited )

Well, probably the best way is to just post a piece of actual content, original or stolen (edit: I mean like a meme, anything that’s recycled constantly), retweeted or whatever, with a reply of your own or a separate post that says something like “follow me on all my channels at” and list them. The common thread between these two services is that they are the main decentralized ones (but all other decentralized ones, like Pixelfed, the Instagram fediverse, suffer from the same problem), and it’s that structure that throws off a lot of people. It took me a while, too, just because I had to research wtf was going on and figure out where to get started. There’s one person on Twitter who sends out a daily reminder that they can be also found on bluesky, threads, post, spoutible, and their own website. Bluesky is the oddball as technically it’s part of the decentralized landscape, except there’s no decision making process at the beginning to choose what server to start on, everyone is onboarded at the same place. Regardless, that person would probably also add Mastodon to the list, if they weren’t confused by the lack of a single choice.

But then people stopped talking about Mastodon on Twitter, other than maybe to just have their Mastodon address in their Twitter bio if anyone happened to look, and the Reddit exodus slowed down as all the motivated people were already on Lemmy and not talking about it as an alternative on Reddit.

And it is effective, which is why Elon has at various time blocked links to Mastodon, Bluesky, Post, etc, and then unblocked later due to backlash over the obvious double standard when he’s complaining about freedom of speech so much. (Including Substack, which is where that Twitter Files guy Matt Taibbi tried to move his posts after his views tanked once Blue subscriptions and views got prioritized. I’m not a follower, just an observer on that one.) He’s afraid of the competition, and people finding out where else to be. And right now is a perfect time to be doing this, because people on Twitter want to get away from the antisemitic twat running the place where nothing is censored or banned, and certain Reddit communities are still annoyed by bans, or having content posts deleted by high-up admins due to takedown requests from Nintendo, etc. Or discord servers getting banned for similar reasons.

It’s just an issue of no ongoing exposure, and structural confusion from those used to a single place where everything happens for a platfrom.

dual_sport_dork,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

There is already a word for “reverse degrowth.” That word is “growth.” (Or “grow,” possibly “regrow” in your context.)

I have not much else to add other than I am continuing to post on Lemmy regardless of whether or not it becomes popular. I’m pretty much the only voice in the two communities I’m most active in, and if that winds up with me just shouting into the void about topics I like, well… I’ll still do it, because t that’s what I enjoy doing. Maybe some day, maybe not. Fuck it.

LemmyInRedditSux,

There is already a word for “reverse degrowth.” That word is “growth.”

😆 Love it, ya made me audibly laugh, because you are correct, and OP was so stuck in his head frustrated about this that he was thinking in double negatives 😆

moeggz,

The context I was trying to show that growing a community with continuous progress is different than taking a community that is shrinking, stopping the shrinking, and then causing positive growth.

magnolia_mayhem,

Time. This has happened a million times. The regular pattern is an explosion, a correction, then slow growth either until that platform becomes the new bad guy or gets destroyed by the government.

Rhoeri,
@Rhoeri@lemmy.world avatar

Reddit will continue to fuck up and people will continue to come here. Give it time. Eventually, Reddit will fall apart.

cybirdman,

I think it’s the same as any other platform. Right now the content in small communities is limited, but over time once there is a sizable amount of content that newcomers can get referred from or go through, Lemmy as a whole will get more traction. Since the Reddit exodus happened I definitely feel like Lemmy has grown a lot and I’m here for the long run.

Hjalamanger,
@Hjalamanger@feddit.nu avatar

I would suggest we add community nesting. It would allow people to easier find new communities and post in small communities without risking that no-one sees it

Raiderkev,

First and foremost, let’s get this out of the way…

Fuck the Chiefs.

Now that we’ve cleared up that order of business, yes, it is disappointing that there aren’t many niche communities. I still have to go to /r/raiders because there is little to no activity on the Raiders instances I found. Granted, I’ll admit, I’m kinda part of the problem bc when I looked them up, I just saw the posts were outdated and old, and never bothered engaging, or trying to make those communities happen. I remember they blacked out our sub for a day or week or whatever, and nothing really came of it. Engagement seems the same. I’m guessing sports communities as a whole don’t really care about the bs reddit pulled w 3rd party apps, and probably were less likely to have been using a 3rd party app or cared. I remember seeing comments along the lines of “good, glad the sub’s back. What were y’all even trying to accomplish with your little protest anyways?” I wish people did care because I have to use the shitty mobile site for reddit bc I’m for sure not installing their dumpster fire app.

JustZ, (edited )

I think you make a good point about whether the reddit bs is the kind of thing that certain communities would likely find offensive.

Obviously subs about data privacy would be more offended than a Raiders community.

mindbleach,

Based on the primary way I encounter new communities:

Spam.

Just submit a ton of crap to your favorite place, every now and then. Blow it up until people clicking Next will run into something.

And I guess post stuff and comment like regular, in a way other people will care about… but that’s a boring answer.

poopsmith, (edited )
@poopsmith@lemmy.world avatar

Here’s some things Lemmy could potentially implement:

Omgpwnies,

I would also like a sort that favours posts on subbed communities, while still browsing ‘everything’

DJSpunTheDisc,

a default sort that favors smaller communities

Someone should make an issue on that in the github!

poopsmith,
@poopsmith@lemmy.world avatar

I think there’s an update with that but I’m not entirely sure.

Microw,

They are already working on that, not sure if it’s in the 1.19 release that is coming soon or not - but it is being worked on

CoderKat,

The sorting algorithm changes are what I’ve been waiting for forever. A bit disappointed it’s taking so long. I basically never see many communities I’m subbed to. I miss having a local city community. It has me constantly thinking of just dealing with Reddit’s bullshit, cause if it’s not big news or memes, Lemmy ain’t cutting it.

ALostInquirer,

The sorting algorithm changes are what I’ve been waiting for forever. A bit disappointed it’s taking so long. I basically never see many communities I’m subbed to.

On that last point, are those communities fairly active? I’ve noticed similar but when I check the communities I’m subscribed to, it turns out it’s largely because they’re less active than those communities I’m seeing more posts from.

Even more apparent when I switch to viewing only my subscribed communities feed.

Die4Ever,
@Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

a default sort that favors smaller communities

the Scaled sort option is in v0.19.0, you can see a preview of this on voyager.lemmy.ml

Xylight,
@Xylight@lemdro.id avatar

Once scaled sort arrives on Lemmy, smaller communities will be ranked higher and not knocked out by the meme communities and stuff like that.

thegiddystitcher,
@thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee avatar

Counting down the days!

Mkengine,

Is there an ETA for that feature?

Xylight,
@Xylight@lemdro.id avatar

Once v0.19.0 releases (soon)

emptiestplace,

It seems this will only be useful for people who have subscribed to smaller communities - it’d just fuck up the default view if implemented there.

corsicanguppy,

degrowth

I know one way.

Agent641,

Un-degrowth?

Tier1BuildABear,
@Tier1BuildABear@lemmy.world avatar

Undegrowth, what happens when I see my wife naked for the millionth time

Evotech,

Regressive Reverse negative down-growth?

thegiddystitcher,
@thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee avatar

I’m sole mod (not the original creator, but took over when they went awol) for the knitting community at !knitting, and I do my best to contribute a lot to the cross stitch & embroidery one at !lemmy_stitch too. This is coming from a history of running various niche online groups. So a few things I would advise:

  • First, just accept that some topics are too niche. They were too niche for Reddit as well, at one point. People got overexcited and wanted to mark their territory by setting up a ton of communities when they were new to Lemmy, but reality doesn’t work that way and a lot of those spaces just aren’t needed. We’d be better served combining posts from these into slightly more general combined communities, and perhaps leaving a sticky post in the tiny niche ones letting everyone know where to head to for that topic.

But if your topic is big enough to in theory get decent traction:

  • Be grateful for what users you do have. You said you sometimes get “few” replies, so make sure you’re getting to know those people and replying to them and continuing the conversation where appropriate. You don’t need a lot of users, you just need a few engaged ones to make for a nice community.
  • Recruit your friends. You’re a Chiefs fan, you probably know other Chiefs fans. Get them interested.
  • Drop your community link wherever its relevant. People don’t like having to put effort into finding new communities but if they just happen to come across mention of it, they’ll click. Obviously I’m not saying spam, but there are plenty of sports fans here and it’s bound to come up in conversation.
  • Crosspost. Any posts you make to a Chiefs community are probably also relevant to the wider NFL communities or maybe fantasy football players. And again this just gives more people the chance to stumble across the fact that you exist.

Ok these next couple are more involved, but they do work well!

  • Consider Mastodon. I have a craft-focused account there too, and if I have a question about knitting or cross stitch or whatever then the more answers I can get the better, right? So I use the fact that we can post from Mastodon, to a Lemmy community, combining the replies from both audiences in one thread. Example of what I mean here.
  • Create value. Could be by posting pillar content that’s actually useful (in your case could be some kind of statistical analysis, we all know the football nerds love it, but whatever will be long-term useful / interesting to your audience). Or it could be a regular community event or something ("predict the Chiefs wins/losses for the upcoming season and win something, etc etc).
  • Ask your existing users what they’d like to see from the community. Some things you try will hit and some will miss, but getting feedback is going to up your chances!

That’s everything off the top of my head and it’s already a wall of text so I’ll stop there. It is absolutely difficult to be a mod, it can be a lot of work to get to the point of just having an active community that doesn’t need your input to keep rolling. But if your community see you trying, I think that goes a long way. Hope some of this was helpful!

governorkeagan,

I really like the mastodon suggestion, thank you!

thegiddystitcher,
@thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee avatar

Happy to help! I know it sounds kind of weird, posting from another platform. But if you look at it less as “how can I make MY community with MY name on it the BEST so everyone will worship ME” and more “how can I actually bring people together over a shared topic” it makes a lot of sense :)

I do wish the integration was a bit better though. It’s got its quirks, to put it mildly!

rufus,

I feel you.

schnurrito,

I really just think the reddit/lemmy structure isn’t very suited to small communities.

For small communities we should have a platform structured like a traditional web forum with flat threads and thread bumping. This causes people to get endless streams of discussion even with relatively few users.

MelonYellow,
@MelonYellow@lemmy.ca avatar

Thread bumping would help a lot actually!

schnurrito,

Yes. In my teenage years, these kinds of web forums were the norm, now they are almost as outdated as Usenet or mailing lists. I think that is a shame because I found web forums utterly addictive while on reddit and lemmy I tend to quickly run out of things to read.

Agent641, (edited )

Tags would be good. Rather than crossposting, tag your post in up to 5 communities. A photo of a bird might be tagged in Nature Photography, Birds, Animals, and horses.

If a the moderator of c/horses decides the submission is not apropriate, they can un-tag themselves. If all communities un-tag themselves, the submission is ‘orphaned’ its no longer visible in any C, but still exists in the OPs profile.

The user cannot re-tag c/horses, but can add a new tag if they want. If our man keeps tagging birds as horses, then they might be banned from submitting to the horse tag for a period.

This allows one post to be visible over many communities without crossposting, reposting, or having related overheads of duplication.

If the user does not want to be harrased by ornithologists arguing over whether they think its a western red breasted great titwarbler or a northern red breasted lesser titwarbler, they may also untag their submission from c/birds

Tags on a submission would be visible to users, so if I find this cool titwarbler photo through the nature photography C, but I want to see more titwarblers, I might check out c/birds, or c/horses.

Some of the larger Cs might opt-out of the multiple tag system, allowing submissions only if theirs is the only C tagged.

governorkeagan,

I really like that idea!

Xylight,
@Xylight@lemdro.id avatar

“new comments” sort is basically that.

amio,

Niche communities either need to cohere on their own, or live on a site that's large enough to sustain them. Spreading activity over too many communities/mags/subs/channels/whatever will make things seem even less active, and will make participation less appealing. People will always drop out, and if people don't "drop in" through search or discovery, activity obviously can only go down.

Meanwhile the fediverse has other issues - it is inherently "techy" and most major selling points are things "casuals" just don't give a shit about. Also, some of them just aren't true - it really sucks if you traipse up here with the expectation of less "site politics" and admin fuckery, and then run into you-know-which instances, instances being run maliciously, weird federation/defederation antics etc.

The fediverse as a concept and the lemmy.world-aligned part of it both have serious issues that could make activity hard to increase by putting off both existing and prospective users.

Kedly,

Yeah, the amount of Tankies here is JARRING. Up until this point I had been someone who fell in the “Communism is a nice ideal, but in the real world its never panned out and may be likely to always pan out the way it has done so so far when tried”, and it took like a WEEK on Lemmy to go from that to “No fucking WONDER communism has always ended up the way it has”

amio,

It absolutely is, although I'm not even talking about communism specifically. I'm basically a socdem and a leftist (as far as actual, normal society goes - less so for Lemmy, obviously), though that's completely irrelevant. It's all about... just shitty behavior, false flagging, wannabe-authoritarian, bad-faith, trolling, dishonest bullshit. Question communities like this and asklemmy are chock-full of thinly veiled soapboxing and questions loaded more heavily than a thousand cargo ships. Even if you agree with the basic points, it's fucking obnoxious. Not only that, it's bloody stupid and a prime example of shooting oneself in the foot, at least if the idea was ever that more than about forty people would use this thing.

Reddit was full of subs where the (often right-wing or particularly right-wing tolerant but not exclusively) twats-in-charge banned you from subs or the site at the drop of a hat. This was a major selling point for the fediverse - why if that happens on the fediverse, it's Decentralized so you'd just blahdiblahdiblah. In reality, though, several communities - the only active ones in many cases - are apparently sticking around on instances where the only difference from r/conservative or whatever is the paintjob on aforementioned twat-in-charge and their views. If they're not condoning "power" abuse, trolling and spam from even more blatantly bad-faith instances, they certainly aren't doing anything to mitigate it. That doesn't really look dramatically better as far as fairness and tolerance go.

Kedly,

I was wanting to respond to this, but tbh, you said everything pretty well yourself and I dont really have anything further to contribute other than I agree with a lot of your points here

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