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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.

    • 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

    • 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.

      • 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

        • 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.

      • 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.

      • 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.

      • 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

  • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    My guess: They were created expecting an in rush of users and content from R/ but when that didn’t happen, they got bored and moved on.

    There are many, many, r/sub clones that were created during the API shit. The people creating the subs had no intention of creating content, they just wanted to be a mod. Now they lie as empty as the day they were created.

    • Fondots@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      they just wanted to be a mod

      I don’t know how many other people had the same thought, but I thought about snagging a couple community names, not because I have any interest in being a mod (I really don’t at all,) but to hold onto them until either former reddit mods showed up or at least someone else who seemed like they had real interest in actually running the place and didn’t seem to be an opportunistic power-tripping asshole who would run it into the ground.

      I didn’t end up doing it, but I gave it some serious consideration.

  • small44@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    They are afraid that most of lemmy users will be on lemmy.world and want people to join diverse small instances. The other reason is the amount of attacks lemmy.world got

  • dorkian_gray@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    To be honest, I feel a little guilty of this; I started c/starsector because it didn’t exist when I searched for it, but it’s not active and I’ve only posted once. I’m planning on making content, I love that game, but I have a full time job and a side project I’m investing actual money into, not to mention social obligations and travel and family and making sure to take care of my home and my body… where am I supposed to get time to make content too?

    I guess it’s not abandoned, just quiet, but I felt compelled to respond. And if you like Starsector or games like it, drop on by, we’d love to have you! I’m a lot better at commenting than I am at posting 😊

  • mtcerio@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    And what’s the way to reinstate those communities? They might have very valuable names.

    • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      We’re on the fediverse, you can create a community with the same name on another instance.

      Most instances are well federated. So if it’s not on Lemmy.world it can be on feddit.de or sh.itjust.works it still works, and considering .world uptime issues, I would advise any other lemmy instance or even a Kbin instance to a newcomer

  • TheFogan@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I mean I’d imagine it’s pretty expected.

    Lemmy.World was kind of the go to instance for exiting redditers during the mass exit over the API changes, while a majority of subreddits protested. As we all know, most of the subs did not stay closed. So a majority gave up

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It’s very good that these people were not mods in the first place. They just wanted first dibs and to let everyone else make content for them.