If you create a community, please try and populate it with content. I see a lot of new communities with 0-1 posts from the mod. That’s not nearly enough to get people engaged - users are going to see that it’s a ghost town and leave.

If you have enough interest to create a community, you probably know something about the subject matter, so PLEASE add some posts (5-10 would be a good start). Maybe some questions to get people talking, even popular reposts from other sites. It sucks shouting into a void, but if you don’t do it, everyone else will also be shouting into a void.

Also please consider whether you need to create a community! When there are 100 million users of the site, there may be 1000 people who are interested in the same exact niche tabletop RPG as you, but there are <500,000 users here for now, so you’ll be lucky to find 10. Consider creating a thread in a broader community (like boardgames) until you have enough people talking in the thread that it gets messy - then it’s time to create a separate community.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

@[email protected]
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26M

I think a “suggest a community” community could help prevent some dead communities before they happen. I made a separate post to discuss it: https://lemmy.world/post/27963154

There are already a couple of communities (almost) along those lines. Would be great if the mods here could add them to the sidebar here.

threelonmusketeers
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12M

Now moved to [email protected].

@[email protected]
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252Y

I wonder if years of fleeing the front page to niche subs conditioned us all to try and make niche subs here when we should just be shooting the breeze right here on front street.

It feels so alien to actually put a run on sentence idea out and not parrot a meme.

That said I made some shit posts on one of the nichest of niche communities.

@[email protected]
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42Y

Agree with this sentiment. The night’s young here, so I think a little consolidation would do more to help us at this point in time

@[email protected]
creator
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42Y

That’s very true. For example, a general “anime” community would be better, until it gets hard to keep track of what’s on the first page - after which some series could splinter off.

Its hard to get people to agree on this though. And I think the other extreme of not letting people create communities isn’t the best either.

@[email protected]
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37M

(plug) Speaking of general anime communities, https://ani.social/c/anime is the most active non-meme anime community in Lemmyspace.

The meme group https://ani.social/c/animemes usually has slightly more activity, according to Lemmyverse.

There are plenty of TV show/manga-specific communities around as well, and you can find them in the ani.social/c/anime sidebar.

@[email protected]
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32Y

I hard agree.

In fact, I’m finding that NOT focusing on these small interests, is largely more enjoyable of an experience.

@[email protected]
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12Y

How do you create a community? I dont even have the option.

@[email protected]
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142Y

I wish more people understood this concept in general. Whether it be making communities on a network like this, making discord servers, or even starting a small business – many times my friends and acquaintances have tried to create something that relies on people to keep it alive, but give no one a reason to want to engage with their platform/service/etc, expecting there to be a flood of people out of nowhere that will cause the system to support itself.

Good talk, needs more exposure.

@[email protected]
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22Y

Thanks! All i can do is try to mention it where I can, and hopefully more people will see this.

HidingCat
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102Y

Also to everyone creating a community, it takes time. Don’t get too discouraged if uptake is slow!

Its not about how popular it is, its about having a space to talk to fellow like minded people.

@[email protected]
creator
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62Y

Yes, this can’t be stressed enough. Expect to be shouting into a void for 2-3 days. That’s the price of being an early adopter!

HidingCat
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92Y

Might be weeks even, this sort of thing really can’t be predicted at the very early stages.

@[email protected]
creator
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22Y

Very true.

m3t00🌎
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16M

and once you get a few regular posters, ask if they’d mind helping with modding. I’m guilty of skipping the asking part now and then. going on a road trip etc.

@[email protected]
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12M

While I agree on every community needing at least a little content, I’m not sure I agree on the second point: if this place had a lot more communities, even with two active people each, it would also attract more users, or at least it would make me visit the site more and would have reduced the time I spent indecisive on signing up.

A community isn’t just a bunch of content but also a possibility for it. It’s the reassurance that there is at least another person on this site who shares your interest. It’s somerhing that makes it more attractive not to jump from site to site for each different interest. Those who create them are doing their part by being available as moderators, which is already something that should not be taken for granted.

I have plenty of ridiculously niche communities I’d like to see that would be lucky to get 3 members each, from lichens to cron diet (longevity diet with a little less calories than mantainance and very micronutrient dense) and scientific (or just fanboy like and excited sometimes, waterhomies style) discussion of nutraceuticals (such as garlic and ginger and turmeric) and of mitochondria and of microbiome, to specific anime/manga fans, to animal movements (crawling in various ways as a sport), and I could go on, but I don’t create them because I don’t want to mod them since my relationship with tech makes me go through unpredictable offline phases

MisterMoo
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22Y

I’ve been doing just that. If you’re a fan of The Office, get on over to m/DunderMifflin. Although I’ve never been a fan of the name. It’d be better if it was m/PaperGreat. Where Great Paper is our Passion.

@[email protected]
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02Y

Is m/<community name> the notation for any fediverse community or for a specific platform like Lemmy or mastodon?

puddlexplorer
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2Y

m/<community name> = kbin.social magazine

@[email protected]
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12Y

Oh gotcha. Thanks!

@[email protected]
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132Y

Another thought: making a community can also be a nice structured incentive to check in on your hobby regularly. I like looking for videos or articles to link to for my yugioh community even though there’s not many people subscribed - it gives me an opportunity to interact with and think about the game in different ways than I normally do.

Truck-kun
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62Y

Yes. That’s why good literature and good philosophy community. It helps think and read. Also music community for what I listen to. Collaborative playlist hopefully. 🎶👌

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21Y

Yes, when you the sole poster on thé community, it is almost like writing a blog. You’re doing something for you and showing the word the results. Maybe one day, people will like it enough to participate.

It will all be effective ONLY IF your content is being pulled in by other instances. Otherwise people in other instances dont know your community exists. It will still be screaming into the void

It’s for instance admins, so I can’t unless I make my own instance

Even then you have to create the same comminity you made from another instance, and you have to tell them where you moved the community to

threelonmusketeers
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22M

It’s for instance admins

No, it’s for everyone. Anyone can submit a community to lemmy-federate, and it will autosubscribe from a bunch of popular instances to trigger widespread federation.

I’m talking about having to opt-in your instance FIRST as an admin before your users can enlist their magazines to that site

lixus98
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22Y

If you want to crosspost content from reddit automatically use: https://github.com/daniel-lxs/BotIt,
It’s intended for links and I wouldn’t encourage using it for anything else cause you know, stealing content from others is not good.
But if you need a link aggregator for your community this might do it.

Edit: this is a work in progress, so expect bugs.

Is there a way to ensure it only posts links and not OC?

GankTopPlz
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12Y

in theory, you can exclude anything that is a text post, but a lot of the content posted on sum subs that you want are self posts. like sports post games, weekly resets in games, or transcripts of twitter threads.

lixus98
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02Y

Yup, I made it so it would only post links. In my opinion is not a good idea to let the bot take every post it finds.
Also it currently only posts 1 post at a time on each fetch so as to not flood the magazine and let users post by themselves.

GankTopPlz
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02Y

Does it let you use it on specific users? Some bots would be useful to put it on. I know of a few that post relevant videos automatically or aggregate game API data that would be good to add to a few subs.

@[email protected]
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2Y

Fanny_B already set up a game bot for the baseball communities. If you run any other sports maybe check to see if he could help you out!

ThePowerOfGeek
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61Y

Tip for those creating new communities: don’t slam your fresh community with loads of new posts all at once. Pace yourselves. Create 2 or 3 new posts initially. Then over the next day pop a new post every few hours.

The net result is the same (content!), but you greatly reduce the risk of people blocking your community. I look a lot in local, sorting by new. And when my feed is deluged by posts for the same brand new community, I tend to block that community because it’s smells like spam. And I’m probably not alone in doing this.

Blaze (he/him)
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21Y

Good advice indeed

SpeedOfDark8
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92Y

An idea for people like me that still use reddit alongside lemmy, if you make a post on lemmy, post the lemmy link to the corresponding subreddit. That way if the post gets traction on reddit, all the clicks are leading them to the lemmy post

@[email protected]
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21Y

Crossposting is also a good way to start. For example there is community like [email protected] or [email protected] that focus on specific part of France. They have almost no original content but someone interested on Lyon’s local story may not be subscribe to all the community about tourist, politic, urbanism, activism, fun stories and so on that publish stories about this place.

@[email protected]
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32Y

I make an effort to comment on interesting posts or links I appreciate! But I haven’t had much in terms of inspiration to post (might be because I don’t have reliable desktop access rn).

New Communities
[email protected]
Create a post

A place to post new communities all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion.

Rules

The rules for behavior are a straight carry over of Mastodon.World’s rules. You can click the link but we’ve reposted them here in brief, as a guideline. We will continue to use the Mastodon.World rules as the master list. Over all, be nice to each other and remember this isn’t a community built around debate. For the rules about formatting your posts, scroll down to number 2.

1. Follow the rules of Mastodon.world, which can be found here.

A. Provide an inclusive and supportive environment. This means if it isn’t rulebreaking and we can’t be supportive to them then we probably shouldn’t engage.

B. No illegal content.

C. Use content warnings where appropriate. This means mark your submissions NSFW if need be.

D. No uncivil behavior. This includes, but is not limited to: Name Calling; Bullying; Trolling; Disruptive Commenting; or Personal Criticisms.

E. No Harrassment. As an example in relation to Transgender people this includes, deadnaming, misgendering, and promotion of conversion therapy. Similarly Misogyny, Misandry, and Racism are also banned here.

2. Include a community or instance title and description in your post title. - A following example of this would be New Communities - A place to post new communities or instances all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion.

3. Follow the formatting. - The formatting as included below is important for people getting universal links across Lemmy as easily as possible.

Formatting

Please include this following format in your post:

[link text](/c/[email protected])

This provides a link that should work across instances, but in some cases it won’t

You should also include either:

[email protected]

or instance.com/c/community

FAQ:

Q: Why do I get a 404?

A: At least one user in an instance needs to search for a community before it gets fetched. Searching for the community will bring it into the instance and it will fetch a few of the most recent posts without comments. If a user is subscribed to a community, then all of the future posts and interactions are now in-sync.

Q: When I try to create a post, the circle just spins forever. Why is that?

A: This is a current known issue with large communities. Sometimes it does get posted, but just continues spinning, but sometimes it doesn’t get posted and continues spinning. If it doesn’t actually get posted, the best thing to do is try later. However, only some people seem to be having this problem at the moment.

Extra FAQ information

Image Attribution:

Fahmi, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons>>

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