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.
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.
If I created a community, would I become it’s (lone) moderator automatically?
What consequences, requirements and things would I need to keep in mind as a moderator?
Is it advisable to copy-paste content from Reddit to kickstart new communities (given that the link source to the original content was added as well when making new posts)?
f I created a community, would I become it’s (lone) moderator automatically?
Yes. But you can also immediatly appoint new mods and/or un-mod yourself if there are other mods present, so it is easy to give a community away when there are other interested users. It’s not a permanent thing.
What consequences, requirements and things would I need to keep in mind as a moderator?
Your community needs to be compatible wih the Fediverse Code of Conduct … but that boils down to “don’t be a dick and don’t post illegal stuff” which is pretty much just common sense. It’s not exactly hard to follow those rules ;)
Apart from that, you can set whatever rules you want. But keep in mind that the Fediverse is still a lot smaller than reddit, so if you are TOO niche / narrow / strict with the rules, you’ll have a hard time finding people who want to engage with your community. General, broad-themed communities with easy-to-follow rules have a bigger chance to thrive.
… and a personal little tip: don’t slam down the ban hammer at every opportunity. As a mod you are able to ban, silence, remove or otherwise “punish” people for bad behaviour, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do that. It’s a lot better to give users the benefit of the doubt, explain instead of punish (as they might not be aware that they did something bad in the first place), and give them a reasonable chance to fix their mistakes on their own before taking action. Post removal, bans and the like should be reserved solely for when the user in question is unwilling to cooperate OR did something obviously super shitty (like threatening other users, using slurs, posting illegal stuff etc.)
Is it advisable to copy-paste content from Reddit to kickstart new communities (given that the link source to the original content was added as well when making new posts)?
Well … as a last resort, yes. Original content or stuff from non-reddit sources is always preferable as it gives users of the Fediverse an incentive to visit communities here instead of going to reddit, but copypasted content is still better than no content at all, so if you can’t find interesting / worthwile stuff elsewhere, then copypasting from reddit is okay-ish too.
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.
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.
I’m trying to get into the habit of posting everyday, I fell out of it on reddit because it grew so big and would often go nowhere.
Mods rejecting posts willy-nilly, users who sit on /new thinking they can be the gatekeeper, shadowbanning of a post without being informed. It’s going to take some time to get used to posting more.
What might be a good idea is to spend a bit of time each week gathering content and then using https://github.com/RikudouSage/LemmySchedule to spread out the posting throughout the week. Then you can comment on it as it shows up on your feed.
I understand the desire to automate this sort of thing and I can understand the utility at first but I think we should absolutely be afraid of that in long term use. Instead I think people should use the built in cross posting function to link conversations from different communities. I think this is a great way to build slow diffusion of communities into the fediverse.
Yeah, automatic posts drive me away faster than anything. Good point on cross posting though, I just followed your advice. It’s pretty much free if your post fits in multiple places and there are lots of nearly empty communities right now.
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.
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.
I made [email protected] and I’ve been thinking about posting once a day so that I don’t exhaust my content to post, but is that enough? Should I try to make a couple posts a day?
r/vans is in the top 5% of subreddit size. I’ve got one subscriber other than myself! Haha
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. But you can also immediatly appoint new mods and/or un-mod yourself if there are other mods present, so it is easy to give a community away when there are other interested users. It’s not a permanent thing.
Your community needs to be compatible wih the Fediverse Code of Conduct … but that boils down to “don’t be a dick and don’t post illegal stuff” which is pretty much just common sense. It’s not exactly hard to follow those rules ;)
Apart from that, you can set whatever rules you want. But keep in mind that the Fediverse is still a lot smaller than reddit, so if you are TOO niche / narrow / strict with the rules, you’ll have a hard time finding people who want to engage with your community. General, broad-themed communities with easy-to-follow rules have a bigger chance to thrive.
… and a personal little tip: don’t slam down the ban hammer at every opportunity. As a mod you are able to ban, silence, remove or otherwise “punish” people for bad behaviour, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do that. It’s a lot better to give users the benefit of the doubt, explain instead of punish (as they might not be aware that they did something bad in the first place), and give them a reasonable chance to fix their mistakes on their own before taking action. Post removal, bans and the like should be reserved solely for when the user in question is unwilling to cooperate OR did something obviously super shitty (like threatening other users, using slurs, posting illegal stuff etc.)
Well … as a last resort, yes. Original content or stuff from non-reddit sources is always preferable as it gives users of the Fediverse an incentive to visit communities here instead of going to reddit, but copypasted content is still better than no content at all, so if you can’t find interesting / worthwile stuff elsewhere, then copypasting from reddit is okay-ish too.
OC is still way better tho.
Great idea, I posted my own photography work here and people joined afterwards. https://lemmy.world/c/macrophotography
wow those photos look amazing!
Thanks!
Thanks. I’ll try to kickstart mine once I have some free time.
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.
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
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.
(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]
I hard agree.
In fact, I’m finding that NOT focusing on these small interests, is largely more enjoyable of an experience.
I’m trying to get into the habit of posting everyday, I fell out of it on reddit because it grew so big and would often go nowhere.
Mods rejecting posts willy-nilly, users who sit on /new thinking they can be the gatekeeper, shadowbanning of a post without being informed. It’s going to take some time to get used to posting more.
I make a content box and ration it out for good measure.
What might be a good idea is to spend a bit of time each week gathering content and then using https://github.com/RikudouSage/LemmySchedule to spread out the posting throughout the week. Then you can comment on it as it shows up on your feed.
I understand the desire to automate this sort of thing and I can understand the utility at first but I think we should absolutely be afraid of that in long term use. Instead I think people should use the built in cross posting function to link conversations from different communities. I think this is a great way to build slow diffusion of communities into the fediverse.
See my post here for an example: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/217550
Yeah, automatic posts drive me away faster than anything. Good point on cross posting though, I just followed your advice. It’s pretty much free if your post fits in multiple places and there are lots of nearly empty communities right now.
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
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.
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.
I made [email protected] and I’ve been thinking about posting once a day so that I don’t exhaust my content to post, but is that enough? Should I try to make a couple posts a day?
r/vans is in the top 5% of subreddit size. I’ve got one subscriber other than myself! Haha
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.
ok, i’ll post every couple of days.
Awesome! and thank you for caring enough to do 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.
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!