Since my favorite reddit app came to Lemmy I’m really keen on getting more people into the fediverse to pump up the volume of content around here. Are there any initiatives that we can assist to get folks onboard?
I had my wife join, and she likes it, but laments the slow pace of new material in the communities.
laments the slow pace of new material in the communities.
Participation. We need more of it. Like…a lot more of it.
Lurkers shouldn’t lurk, and people should give others the benefit of the doubt far more often than they ever did on Reddit, if they ever did at all. Make Lemmy a community where engagement is valuable and fun and actually useful.
It took a serious change in attitude for me to not become a lurker anymore. I always figured that if I have nothing interesting to say, I should just be quiet.
Eventually I realized that people are often happy to just get some feedback and interaction, even if it isn’t the most interesting or original response. As long as it’s done in a positive and friendly manner, you’re creating a sense of community.
Make valuable original content here that’s not found elsewhere, post and comment thoughtfully as much as possible(No. Pun. Chains). Don’t try to turn this place into reddit, be better than reddit.
People who are on reddit that wanted to come here right now has already done so, so it’s important to drew in people who has never used reddit before here instead of always waiting for reddit to do something stupid.
Also less celeb gossip please, need a place where I can get away from that on the Internet.
the last point should be ignored, the whole point of lemmy is to have as many communties as possible and subscribe to the ones you like. you can defederate ones you dont like
I respectfully disagree. The goal should always be to foster high quality discussion over raw quantity of comment and artificial engagement and the devs have said as much in their documentation of Lemmy’s design.
Otherwise, this place would be no different from 9gag or imgur comment sections, much less reddit.
From Margot Robbie. Got it.
Community grouping. It would massively increase the available content, and make lemmy much easier to browse.
Stop shitting all over people just because they don’t agree with you on everything
Purge reactionaries so that minorities feel safe
This. Reddit levels of nazi apologia right now. Huge room for improvement.
Fix the design flaws first. Especially broken incentives for toxicity and lack of moderation tools. It’s too big already right now.
We need a better site to link to than join-lemmy.org. It should concisely pitch lemmy to everyday users and suggest an instance for them to sign up at. Don’t get into the weeds about federation or choosing instances or selecting apps. Just select a sane default and point people to it. Rotate defaults to avoid overloading a given instance or making it too powerful.
It’s not only the “base” instance IMO, most servers have wildly different communities.
There should IMO be some way to search for communitues from any server (and subscribe to them, which is a real hassle especially if your base server doesn’t yet know about them). I like the endless flow of memes as much as the next person, but what I really want is a bunch of communities I’m interested in so that I can lurk, ask questions and eventually create some hi quality content.
There should be an instance with an actual registered organization behind it - privacy policy & all to back up its legitimacy. Without this, Lemmy is a hard sell for a lot of people who don’t want to just hand off their information to a person who may or may not be doing certain things with it.
I think that’s fair, yeah. Explaining that some person I don’t know runs the server doesn’t quite sound the same as saying this instance is run by company XY
It also doesn’t require that this person you don’t know have any legal obligations regarding data handling.
Relay for Reddit stopped working for me today. I won’t pay for content I partly create, so my shift will be final to Lemmy, unless my social media addiction finds another way.
Thing is, what Reddit still has, is the available history of content. If Lemmy has new topics and new content, it will at one point become second nature to also add “Lemmy” to a search query. And at some point hopefully without Reddit ever crossing the mind. For now it’s a slow and painful process as contribution is the only way to push Lemmy.
So whatever you do, contribute as much as possible. Then we can do it. I’d say push the bigger communities first, the smaller will follow, like how it was with early Reddit.
I also stopped using Reddit forever today, since Relay stopped working.
But I feel like there will never be a way like searching on Google for thing I’m interested in + Lemmy.
The problem is that content is duplicated on many instances, and those instances may even don’t have “Lemmy” in their websites
Don’t focus on looking for ways to find new members. Focus on ways to make people who find the fediverse want to stay. Accomplish that by putting something here that they like to see and want to see again.
When they join the Fediverse, or when they come to visit and consider joining, they’re going to search for the stuff they want to see. They might look for memes, but more likely, they’re going to look for their hobbies. If the only hobbies reflected here are gaming and programming and the fediverse itself, most people are not going to want to stay, the userbase is going to develop an even heavier bias towards certain types of people, it will become more alienating to other types of people, and it will stagnate.
Make an effort to post about and comment about other things. Cooking, movies, TV, sports, fashion, hair, plants, decor, architecture, history, religion, travel, a nearby city or town. Join those communities. Remember, when you see a cool article about nutrition, or a cool video guide to Copenhagen that you think people will enjoy, share it here. Post it, even if the community is small and you don’t think people will care, because we need to seed communities with something. This is what I’ve been doing in a few communities, but mostly in !malefashionadvice. It’s been frustrating, I haven’t really been able to build the community up yet, but it’s okay.
While we’re at it, don’t alienate people by posting, commenting about, or upvoting things that… suck. Keep all forms of bigotry at the door. If you’re a hardcore libertarian or tankie or militant atheist… I’m not going to tell you to stop believing what you believe, but try to cool it, like 10%? Please? Nobody wants you breathing down their throats with extremism.
And… I’ve done this too, but let’s make sure that we’re not focusing too much on meta posts. They can be worthwhile, but they also are not what new people want to see.
I dig. I’ll make an effort to post in my hobby subs (woodworking and 3d printing) to get some good shit in there. 😉
Good comments in here about the need for better mod tools etc. Not something I normally think about myself.
I say we should dress up in nice suits, and go door to door asking if people have heard of our great community haven, thanks to the Great Lemming who we keep forgetting the name of. Ramen.
If you build it, they will come.
It’s the reason I’ve been motivated to post as much as I do, both in broader communities and a handful of niche ones that I want to see grow.
If you’ve thought about posting/commenting but just haven’t yet, take the plunge! I never used to post on reddit at all, and I’ve been pretty active since joining Lemmy.
Have you tried moderating yet? With your posting frequency you’d likely make a good mod. The tools kind of suck but its better if you’re on more like you are.
I created the XCOM community on lemmy.world, but I haven’t had to mod a single thing yet, because it’s slow (only 300-something subscribers, and mostly me posting).
I might look into it. The only catch is that I’m usually just checking lemmy on my phone, and I haven’t looked into how many apps have the ability to mod stuff.
- Participate. Comment, post, mod, support the software, make tools to help new users, donate to instance providers, write blog posts, review apps, whatever you’re interested in and can do. Don’t force yourself too hard cause this is still supposed to be fun and nobody benefits from burnout.
- BE KIND. The more of a wholesome, open community we can create, the better. Don’t feed the trolls. Report and move on.
- If you’re on other social media, maybe include a link to lemmy somewhere. Cross post lemmy posts, that kind of thing. PR never hurts. Try to stay away from “Lemmy army” kind of posts cause that usually pushes people away more than inviting them in.
All this being said, I’m not sure Lemmy is new-user friendly enough to expand quickly right now. I want my technology illiterate grandma to be able to sign up and use it without help. It’s been amazing to join and be a part of this community. Like a lot of others I came here after Reddit API changes and I’ve loved seeing Lemmy grow.
I actually think Lemmy needs more work before it grows much bigger. The mod tools are really lackluster currently. And that was a big reason people wanted to leave Reddit.
The mod tools are really lackluster currently. And that was a big reason people wanted to leave Reddit
Fair point. The same was said of Mastodon many moons ago. A lot of people put a lot of time and energy into detailed feature requests, describing the problem to be solved, and exactly how their proposed solution would work.
Given that I’ve also seen the same complaint about apps in other federated networks like matrix, maybe what’s needed is a general solution? A website where experienced mods describe the problems they strike, and how social software developers could help them with mod features.
Be careful who you invite.
Describe it as “openly leftist, there’s tankies on there” and if it turns them off, bullet dodged.
