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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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. 🎶👌
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
What is hard too, is if all the posts to get things started are the mods or creator, the same ghost town might occur. It’s hard to tell or know what will be interesting to get people talking so to speak. Some should also be put on the subscribers as well who also have an interest. It’s a double edge sword sometimes.
Yes, but if you don’t know what people would find interesting, neither would the first few subscribers. It’s better to have at least some stuff there (even if it’s all posted by you).
I only have so many interesting things to say. I don’t really want to post for the sake of generating content, so making 5-10 posts right off the bat seems like the wrong way to go about it. I think it’d be better to make one post a day or one every other day or so that anyone who comes in can see that it’s recently active.
I am trained in nonstop content generation for steemit.com and Hive.io where being a spammer was the key to success. I would post 100 comments a day and 1 post a day because that was the maximum amount of posts per day. Now on Lemmy it seems my spammy instinct came out and I comment and post dozens of times a day on multiple accounts. 🤐
Yeah, you’re right, I’m going to try posting something at a daily cadence to build up content in the communities I made, and hopefully more people will join in.
The only way Lemmy can maintain its momentum is by generating original content.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
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:
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.
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
https://lemmy-federate.com/
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
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
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.
[email protected]
Now moved to [email protected].
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.
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.
Thanks! All i can do is try to mention it where I can, and hopefully more people will see this.
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.
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!
Might be weeks even, this sort of thing really can’t be predicted at the very early stages.
Very true.
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
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.
Is m/<community name> the notation for any fediverse community or for a specific platform like Lemmy or mastodon?
m/<community name> = kbin.social magazine
Oh gotcha. Thanks!
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.
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. 🎶👌
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.
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.
Good advice indeed
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
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.
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).
I’ve created a new community /c/housing_bubble_2. How do I get it featured on newcommunities?
Just create a post about it
If you mean about getting it featured on LW, you should ask that to Lemmy.world admins
What is hard too, is if all the posts to get things started are the mods or creator, the same ghost town might occur. It’s hard to tell or know what will be interesting to get people talking so to speak. Some should also be put on the subscribers as well who also have an interest. It’s a double edge sword sometimes.
Yes, but if you don’t know what people would find interesting, neither would the first few subscribers. It’s better to have at least some stuff there (even if it’s all posted by you).
I only have so many interesting things to say. I don’t really want to post for the sake of generating content, so making 5-10 posts right off the bat seems like the wrong way to go about it. I think it’d be better to make one post a day or one every other day or so that anyone who comes in can see that it’s recently active.
I am trained in nonstop content generation for steemit.com and Hive.io where being a spammer was the key to success. I would post 100 comments a day and 1 post a day because that was the maximum amount of posts per day. Now on Lemmy it seems my spammy instinct came out and I comment and post dozens of times a day on multiple accounts. 🤐
But then why create a community then?
You can always at least post YT videos or links to articles so that people can see there’s activity on the comm and it’s not dead.
Yeah, you’re right, I’m going to try posting something at a daily cadence to build up content in the communities I made, and hopefully more people will join in.
The only way Lemmy can maintain its momentum is by generating original content.