.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    234
    ·
    edit-2
    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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      47
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        27
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        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
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          edit-2
          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.

    • Zalack@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          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

    • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        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.

      • jet@hackertalks.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        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

        • LexaMaridia@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          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.

      • subversive_dev@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        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.

      • oyenyaaow@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        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.