Comment on Is there any way to reverse degrowth of the niche communities on Lemmy?
Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
IMO, where lemmy is right now. Niche communities are counter productive. Especially as there is often 3 times the same niche communities on 3 different instances.
Try to talk about your niche content in a larger community. Talk about Oshi no ko in a generic manga/anime community. Try to talk about Kult RPG in a generic rpg community. Talk about french politics in a general France/Europe community.
Today we have generic community with like 10 posts a day and under them a bunch of niches with a post per week. Uf you move these posts to the general community above you now get 15 posts a day.
Content is what drags users, not yet another niche community.
Lemmy is still on the verge of usability, there is few very engaged user who make a large fraction of the content. Keeping it alive, but if in 6 month they have less time some /c will deperish
Content is what drags users, not yet another niche community.
Absolutely not, I had to make a post last week to find something that’s niche in reddit and not on lemmy because it had a sub and lemmy didn’t have a community on it. I always make posts on any niche community if I have to. I don’t mind whether it’s dead or not. I am sure many people feel that way too.
Well, but that basically means I’d have to rely on different platforms if I want to post and discuss, say, niche music that’d just be buried immediately in the usual “popular” music communities (that often have a slightly rockist slant).
Even on reddit, the ambient music or IDM communities are fairly small.
If the community is so large that your post is immediately buried, it’s large enough for a subcommunity.
However, most communities on the threadiverse are not that large. In that case, fragmenting the tiny communities even more just hides your post from the users who might be interested but are not subscribed to a niche subcommunity of a small community.
Hmm I get your point, but on the other hand, I suppose nowadays many people are just used to look for a niche community … and finding it. So it’s not a huge surprise if the first reaction is disappointment when you don’t find anything like it or just an empty community.
But you’re seeing the effect of having multiple niche communities right now: they are mostly dead. Quite simply, there is not a sufficient user base to keep niche communities active. Along with lemmy search being as bad as (maybe worse than) Reddit search and the issue of having niche communities dispersed and duplicated through multiple instances.
It looks to me like the numerous, inactive niche communities we have now largely sprung up during the Reddit protest. People came over her for a few days, created a whole bunch of niche communities, but then those communities never got traction. It seems most users quickly went back to Reddit, and now we have all these little ghost towns.
“Solutions”:
I see a few fixes that may help this issue, but I think the largest barrier is the size of the user base. There probably are not enough users on lemmy right now to have a bunch of active niche communities. From that perspective, as others her are saying, the practical solution seems to be to keep your activity to broader communities that cover the niche topic, and use those communities until there seems to be enough discussion on a niche topic to warrant a niche community.
Other fixes:
Aggregate communities: this is something that has been discussed on lemmy, but I haven’t followed in depth. But essentially, being able to have a “multilemmy”, which aggregates communities across instances. Eg, there may be 10 different “model_trains” communities spread across 10 instances. This means that there could be enough discussion across those 10 communities to have one active niche community. But there isn’t an easy way to get users to participate in one particular community/instance combo. Some way to aggregate those communities could really help connect users and content. I get the impression that we are unlikely to see this kind of feature any time soon (but like I said, I haven’t been following this issue).
The other solution is finding a way to hide/remove/mark inactive communities. There are lots of niche communities with zero or one post from months ago with no active owner or moderator. It is up to the instance owner to decide how to deal with those communities on their instance, which means there is not going to be consistent handling of these communities.
Especially as there is often 3 times the same niche communities on 3 different instances.
This is why I haven’t tried to do anything with !fire@lemmy.world even though I asked to take it over. !fire@lemmy.ml had already gotten going a little bit, so I’d rather direct folks there.
Oshi no Ko is not niche lol
BURN@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Unfortunately some niches don’t fit with other, larger communities. Simracing, for example, makes no sense in gaming communities, but also makes no sense in car communities.
I’m spending more and more time back on Reddit because that’s where the community is. Otherwise it’s just empty with the occasional post here.
ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Do you also enjoy other non-sim racing games? You might post about some of those and then if the opportunity rises also bring up the other simracing games you’re into and direct some folks to a simracing community that way.
It’s roundabout, but I think that’s often how one makes paths to more niche subjects.
BURN@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I do, but I don’t post about them. I don’t like making posts and try to avoid doing so at all costs.
Other gaming pretty much has nothing in common with Simracing. It doesn’t use any of the same hardware, tends to take a lot of money to get started in and isn’t something for casual players.
I don’t like generic communities overall. I find them boring and tending to lack in creativity. The reason I liked Reddit so much was I didn’t need to interact with other subjects, I could find my niche and stay there without needing to deal with other gaming groups.
ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Ah, I gotcha. Maybe with some luck someone with your interests that doesn’t mind general communities and posting may help grow a simracing community here.
Tbh I’m a little surprised there aren’t more sim fan communities around here, since it seems to fit some of the demographics of tech-inclined people.