1y ago

While larger, more general communities are thriving on the Fediverse - I'm missing out on the niche communities

Gaming, news, tech, general literature. All of these are somewhat thriving, with a steady influx of posts and comments. At the same time, the userbase is sorely lacking for more niche communities. In my case it'd be stuff like poetry, yoga, religion, linguistics, meditation. Or many other communities I'd doubt they'd form a larger userbase here, at least to the degree that it'd foster good discussions. Communities where there are a larger amount of "normal people", that are not tech-aware, and who have no interest in migrating off centralized corporate solutions. That just want a large space to discuss what they're interested in.

This for me at least, makes it hard to completely leave reddit (or even Facebook and their groups!). Do you think the fediverse will ever reach the point where this would become a non-issue?

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162 comments

It just takes time for these communities to form.
- On top of that, we can't expect communities to POOF into existence.
  We have to be part of them to build them, which means making them if they don't exist yet as well as posting and commenting in the ones that do exist. I hope that people who are used to lurking on Reddit will go out of their comfort zone a bit and start to participate in fediverse communities so that we can build things up more quickly.
  
  Yesterday lurkers are going to need to be today's commenters and posters!
  I see y'all lurkin'
  Not postin'
  
  I feel attacked
  
  You are being drafted. We are sending you out to colonize the fediverse!
  
  I'm doing my part
  
  And my axe! something something name checks out.
  
  yesssir!
  
  i was a reddit lurker for 10 years. i didnt even have an account. today i made my second comment here. hello world
  
  Chad!
  
  They're just following rules, man:
  Rule 33. Lurk More - It's never enough.
  And yes, the pool is still closed.
  
  Patrollin' and tryna catch me lurkin' dirty
  
  Yea I was a prolific commenter but I think I only created maybe 6-8 posts in 14 years on reddit, and certainly never created a community. So I might have to step up. Regardless of reddit, I absolutely love the idea of the fediverse and the decentralized nature of it, so I really would like to see it succeed. It really does have to be the way forward on the internet to avoid corporate interests.
  
  Same here. The voice in the back of my head says "be the change you want to see in the world", then I'm like "nah that's too much work"...
  
  Yeah! I mean, of course it's nobody's job or obligation or anything, but if we want this place to pop off we gotta put something into it. :)
  
  Same. I think we need some way to coordinate the initial burst of content for some of the smaller subs. I hate to say it, but maybe we need to assign "homework" - Request (not require) new subscribers to contribute unique stories or info relevant to the mag/comm on some type of schedule.
  Something like:
  "As we try to grow this new community, we want to hear from you. We're asking (not requiring) all new subscribers to start a new post within their first week covering some aspect of the topic they find personally interesting or that they feel could help others. Just add "(1P)" to the title of the post. It doesn't matter if it's something you said elsewhere, if you're new to the entire topic and just want to post a bunch of questions, you have a funny story to tell, or have a super niche specialty.
  Also, we should consider having more moderator-level users in subs to reduce the burden of moderation. It's more daunting if you're asked to be one of 3 mods than it is to be one of 15. We should also look into incentivizing moderation duties, but there's probably a much longer discussion to be had about that.
  
  This sounds like a great tradition to encourage and support. On Reddit I was pretty danged chatty & responsive, but almost never started my own post. Maybe at most once a year. I hereby commit to upping my participation game to include some actual posts to some of the quiet magazines I've subbed to. Thanks for the push.
  
  And YOUR exuberance has inspired me to commit to upping my post game. I was never a big poster on Reddit, but mostly because I just didn't want to deal with the contrarian and amateur professionals fallout. It might be best to focus on the niche communities, since that's where the real valuable stuff exists on Reddit.
  Good luck out there!
  
  What is the consensus on the etiquette of creating new communities/magazines with the names of the still extant old subreddits (particularly when you're not a mod of the old subreddit)?
  
  I've seen some magazines put a note in their description that the owner is willing to hand it off to the mod team of the corresponding subreddit. I think that's a decent compromise in order to welcome the old subreddit to migrate over and maintain continuity, while also not waiting around for other people to act.
  
  I would suggest using great care in accepting new mods coming from Reddit. Do look at their history with their community and what they shaped the community into.
  
  Well, yes. Obviously only do this if you thought the mods were doing a good job with that subreddit. :)
  
  I'm not really sure... but the way I see it it's probably fair game.
  Communities aren't something that somebody (reddit, specific moderators, etc.) owns, they are just concepts that people latch onto. And, for me at least, I would rather see popular communities exist here if people want them to, especially since you can have multiple communities under the exact same name on different servers in the fediverse.
  In other words, if you want to bring over a specific reddit community I think you should just do it.
  
  I'm okay to help re-create some spots I'll miss, but up I have to mod them?!
- I was on Reddit for over 10 years and it only became a place for niche communities when they got rid of defaults. Kbin/Fediverse will get there in a few years.
  
  I personally think that's when the front page turned to crap. It was nice, curated, not insanely covered in alt-subs with bad actors.
- There are existing communities and there is an exodus, so it shouldn't be necessary for the entire process to repeat from scratch.
  
  From culture perspective, sure... But content don't generate itself.
  
  But content don't generate itself.
  With enough bots and karma farmers it sure seemed to lol.
  
  What if we had some kind of artificial intelligence that just generated content? 🤔
  
  Except it generate corpoporate PR and ads :/
  First few times it was cute, than it turned into spam
- Yup!

162 comments