You could always go over level up. Like instead of a crochet community and a knitting community you could have a yarn community that incorporates all types of weaving with yarn.
Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself.
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is kind of bullshit. On a big platform, like Reddit, where there are orders of magnitude more users, the likelihood is that there are a good number of people interested in whatever niche topic you want. That’s a draw for a lot of people. I left Reddit for Lemmy for good, but we’re just not up to that kind of user base.
And it’s not zero effort to get a community going and keep it active, especially with a small user base. It’s perfectly reasonable for someone to want a place that discusses their niche interest without wanting to be responsible for running that place. It doesn’t make them bad or lazy.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
For sure, though that really doesn’t solve the problem. If I’m really into sports-themed shot glasses, making a post in a community for drinking ware, or for sports merchandise, isn’t going to mean I get more content about sports shot glasses, and it doesn’t increase the number of people on the site who have something to say about them. On a platform with millions of users, there might be enough other people with the same interest to generate a critical mass of content.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah but everyone seems to be expecting Lemmy to just turn into the high point of Reddit. Reddit wasn’t built in a day and neither will Lemmy be built in a day.
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Completely agree. I personally I’m fine with the trade-off I made. There’s even some benefits to a smaller site. I remember on Reddit there were lots of times I didn’t make a comment, even when I had something to say, because there were already literally thousands of comments, some with thousands of upvotes, and I figured anything I said would be lost in the din. Here, if you’ve got something to say, it’s very likely to be seen.
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
[deleted]Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think you clicked the wrong comment to reply to.
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I did, thanks.
Sc00ter@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I look at the nfl community here. It really only gets a handful of posts on Sunday and that’s it. It blows my mind that there isn’t more engagement
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I wonder if that’s related to a user base that skews heavily toward techies.
Sc00ter@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Im sure youre right. My point is thats not even a niche topic. A quick Google estimates there are 21 million viewers PER GAME every week. There are literally hundreds of millions of fans of the nfl, but even a subject so popular can’t maintain a healthy community on lemmy, how are these niche topics supposed to stand a chance at survival?
OpenStars@discuss.online 3 weeks ago
It is a niche topic, here, where we all use Linux btw (or at least we keep our mouths shut if we don’t, for fear of being mobbed:-D).
We talk about what we want to talk about here. Linux, memes, TV, uh… Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, beans, jeans, not pooping - and I think that’s pretty much it, except for politics, am I missing anything? 😁
Vespair@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Like another user said, if Lemmy doesn’t have the numbers to support the niche communities you want, maybe you need to move one level up the niche.
Like maybe there isn’t enough NFL activity on Lemmy yet to keep the NFL community active… But could there be enough sports fans to keep a sports community active? Could you perhaps settle for sharing a space with NHL, MBL, and/or soccer fans in a community that sacrifices a little bit of specificity for broadness to encourage activity?
bufalo1973@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
“US sport” with hashtags for NFL, NHL, … could be a way.
Vespair@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Sure, whatever. The point is I think the key to Lemmy, at least during this community-building stage, is narrowing in on the right level of specificity of niches which can be supported here. Maybe “NFL” is too niche, so we try “sports.” But then maybe “sports” is too broad so “US sports” is the solution. The point is negotiating the level of specificity to find the more zeroed-in on option that can still receive enough engagement to be viable.
Blaze@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
!football@lemmy.world is the same. I’m quite surprised too, but I guess the Lemmy demographics is just not into professional sports
Jesus_666@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Especially if you didn’t have a lot of spare time. With an active community you can just dip into discussions when you have the time. With a community you’re trying to establish yourself you absolutely have to provide a steady stream of content until it (hopefully) takes off.
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Right, exactly. And let’s not forget that a healthy percentage of all online communities is made of lurkers who don’t really want to post at all, but they enjoy reading stuff they’re interested in.
OpenStars@discuss.online 3 weeks ago
Genuinely… why though? Why not post once a week rather than per day? Or per month? Who is counting? If people want to join then they will, if not then they won’t, but either way will one post per day for the last six months make any difference to their decision vs. one post per week?
I am no good at what I do. I try to enjoy it anyway.:-) Do with that what you will.