this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy

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Since my favorite reddit app came to Lemmy I'm really keen on getting more people into the fediverse to pump up the volume of content around here. Are there any initiatives that we can assist to get folks onboard?

I had my wife join, and she likes it, but laments the slow pace of new material in the communities.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 150 points 11 months ago (11 children)

laments the slow pace of new material in the communities.

Participation. We need more of it. Like...a lot more of it.

Lurkers shouldn't lurk, and people should give others the benefit of the doubt far more often than they ever did on Reddit, if they ever did at all. Make Lemmy a community where engagement is valuable and fun and actually useful.

[โ€“] [email protected] 84 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Artificial engagement only gets you so far.

I only say something when I have something to say. If I don't, then it becomes a chore.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I try to say it when I have something to say though. I didn't always bother on Reddit.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh, right. The poison. The poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

To add to this, artificial engagement is disingenuous. It's akin to corporate-owned comment sections inviting people to "speak their mind" which, of course, no one does.

It's a balance that should be kept: being willing to contribute, but not feeling forced to contribute. Quality begets quality, and if we compromise on quality chasing quantity, we would end up copying the worst of Reddit.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

OC brings people. Adopt a community you wish was bigger and make a personal commitment to post to it daily.

For bonus points convince two other people to adopt their own community. We'll pyramid scheme this sucker with content.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's what I did over on kbin. I'm responsible for posting 95+% of pro wrestling news on Lemmy/kbin, and another person sets up most of the discussions. The community wasn't picking up speed back during the early redditpocalypse. Now we're getting tons of activity.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It took a serious change in attitude for me to not become a lurker anymore. I always figured that if I have nothing interesting to say, I should just be quiet.
Eventually I realized that people are often happy to just get some feedback and interaction, even if it isn't the most interesting or original response. As long as it's done in a positive and friendly manner, you're creating a sense of community.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Lurkers shouldnโ€™t lurk

you're not my real dad!

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Very much this. Every time you see something interesting make a post about it please. It doesn't need to be polished. You don't need to worry about it.

Save hot takes and negativity for posts made by bots. Pay attention to who is posting what, because the poster has to see that negativity and it is not sustainable. You are making every comment to a person. When you bitch about a title or article, it is going to a person that gets a notification and has to see it. Everyone that has tried to do this regularly with the goal of just making regular posts has quit, myself included. It is straight up unhealthy from a mental health perspective to have to read or see what the bottom 5% sludge post. This is one reason why we have so many bots and memes.

The single biggest change that would make this place better would be a negativity filter to wreck the few mental health patients that are always on here down voting every new post. Simply filter for the 0.01% of users with abnormal negativity and sandbox them so they are the only ones that see their own negativity. Posting something here for the first time and seeing this kind of response right away is totally disenfranchising. People that troll the world like this belong in little sandboxes of their own sadistic self gratification. I think down votes are useful and important, but their abuse should be eliminated systematically.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 73 points 11 months ago (8 children)

I actually think Lemmy needs more work before it grows much bigger. The mod tools are really lackluster currently. And that was a big reason people wanted to leave Reddit.

[โ€“] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

It's tough to sell some of the niche communities without proper spoiler tagging, too. Need something easier to use that works on all platforms.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Proper spoiler tagging is important

I Jerboa uses this format

: : : spoiler Title

Without the spaces between the colons, this is just to show what it looks like.

: : :

Title

This is with the spaces removed

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Lemmy in general uses this but a lot of mobile UI's don't have proper implementations (or at least they didn't for a while). I'm not sure if liftoff is still in development but the reason I switched back to Jerboa was because spoiler support was finally added

[โ€“] TheSaneWriter 7 points 11 months ago

I completely agree. I'm personally holding off on heavy promotion of this platform until we hit 1.0. If people join too early and are turned off by the lack of polish, they may not come back after it's fixed.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 50 points 11 months ago (5 children)

We need a better site to link to than join-lemmy.org. It should concisely pitch lemmy to everyday users and suggest an instance for them to sign up at. Don't get into the weeds about federation or choosing instances or selecting apps. Just select a sane default and point people to it. Rotate defaults to avoid overloading a given instance or making it too powerful.

[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's not only the "base" instance IMO, most servers have wildly different communities.

There should IMO be some way to search for communitues from any server (and subscribe to them, which is a real hassle especially if your base server doesn't yet know about them). I like the endless flow of memes as much as the next person, but what I really want is a bunch of communities I'm interested in so that I can lurk, ask questions and eventually create some hi quality content.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 49 points 11 months ago (6 children)
  1. We need to cut back the bot traffic a touch. All new people coming and see are a million posts with no participation. It's good to have the content but we're kind of lacking in curation and a lot of what's coming over is not stuff we're interested in commenting on. As long as we just keep carbon copying Reddit and Twitter and the Verge and hundreds of other places, we're going to have a lot of empty post sitting around.

  2. Actual discourse and discussion needs to happen. We're fairly low on trolls currently, which is a fantastic thing. But we also don't have a lot of spicy takes either.

  3. More moderation, administration tools, better filters, easier ways to shut out bad actors. Right now the best we can do is defederate when somebody can't manage their clientele. And we're still way too bot-able.

  4. More migration tools something I can to what mastodon does if you need to move instances.

[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

#1: Absolutely.

#2: I've seen some spicy takes, at least in the politics communities. Others, people are generally just more chill. I consider that a feature.

#3: The upcoming 0.19.0 will let users block instances as well as users/communities. Filters are unfortunately a client-specific feature right now, but fortunately there are a lot of clients to choose from now.

#4: 0.19.0 has this. Users can export their profile settings data (including subscriptions and blocklists) and import those elsewhere.

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

The upcoming 0.19.0 will let users block instances as well as users/communities

Oh hell yeah! Finally!

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I just block the bots, I want to see what real people care enough to post.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Don't focus on looking for ways to find new members. Focus on ways to make people who find the fediverse want to stay. Accomplish that by putting something here that they like to see and want to see again.

When they join the Fediverse, or when they come to visit and consider joining, they're going to search for the stuff they want to see. They might look for memes, but more likely, they're going to look for their hobbies. If the only hobbies reflected here are gaming and programming and the fediverse itself, most people are not going to want to stay, the userbase is going to develop an even heavier bias towards certain types of people, it will become more alienating to other types of people, and it will stagnate.

Make an effort to post about and comment about other things. Cooking, movies, TV, sports, fashion, hair, plants, decor, architecture, history, religion, travel, a nearby city or town. Join those communities. Remember, when you see a cool article about nutrition, or a cool video guide to Copenhagen that you think people will enjoy, share it here. Post it, even if the community is small and you don't think people will care, because we need to seed communities with something. This is what I've been doing in a few communities, but mostly in !malefashionadvice. It's been frustrating, I haven't really been able to build the community up yet, but it's okay.

While we're at it, don't alienate people by posting, commenting about, or upvoting things that... suck. Keep all forms of bigotry at the door. If you're a hardcore libertarian or tankie or militant atheist... I'm not going to tell you to stop believing what you believe, but try to cool it, like 10%? Please? Nobody wants you breathing down their throats with extremism.

And... I've done this too, but let's make sure that we're not focusing too much on meta posts. They can be worthwhile, but they also are not what new people want to see.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

I dig. I'll make an effort to post in my hobby subs (woodworking and 3d printing) to get some good shit in there. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Good comments in here about the need for better mod tools etc. Not something I normally think about myself.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Not-so-secret of Reddit success (vs other link aggregators) was that they allowed NSFW content. Set up a separate opt-in corner of Fediverse to post that stuff and a big chunk of reddit will migrate over.

[โ€“] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago (6 children)
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[โ€“] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago (5 children)

CW: Unpopular opinion?

I've looked back at a few reddit threads, and I'm thankful most of those users aren't coming here. I'm alright with the current level of content and participation. What little there is here is still better than most of what's on r/all, and it's not like we want to attract advertisers and self-promoting accounts.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

I agree with you, I like that it feels more cozy and there are way fewer trolls/devil's advocate types that I've run into here. And that's from my multiple different accounts that I've test drived on different instances. I personally think that lemmy is too confusing for people to settle into due to the nature of federation and such so its only gonna be people really committed to getting away from mainstream social media that will come over long term.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The discourse I've observed thus far has felt more honest, less pugnacious than on Reddit. Obviously I've seen a drop in the bucket, but anyway, it's good so far.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Make valuable original content here that's not found elsewhere, post and comment thoughtfully as much as possible(No. Pun. Chains). Don't try to turn this place into reddit, be better than reddit.

People who are on reddit that wanted to come here right now has already done so, so it's important to drew in people who has never used reddit before here instead of always waiting for reddit to do something stupid.

Also less celeb gossip please, need a place where I can get away from that on the Internet.

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (3 children)

the last point should be ignored, the whole point of lemmy is to have as many communties as possible and subscribe to the ones you like. you can defederate ones you dont like

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[โ€“] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
  • Publish useful content on lemmy. Link to that content on other social media sites
  • Anytime you see a negative article about reddit particularly on reddit, remind users this will continue to get worse, link them to lemmy and explain what it is/how to join.
  • Donate to lemmy development to improve UX.
[โ€“] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have always loved these great tits.

Something about their body language. I imagine the one on the left is telling a funny joke, or maybe it's laughing at something the one on the right has said.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think Reddit is going to make some new even more moronic decision after they IPO and there will be another exodus. This time around it can handle it and it's mature enough to not have the same issues as before.

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Nah. New wave of incommers will lead to more defederating drama I'm guessing.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

Just casually mention it on other forums where appropriate. For example, any thread about how sucky Reddit is, explain there are other places to go, like Lemmy.

[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (7 children)

If you build it, they will come.

It's the reason I've been motivated to post as much as I do, both in broader communities and a handful of niche ones that I want to see grow.

If you've thought about posting/commenting but just haven't yet, take the plunge! I never used to post on reddit at all, and I've been pretty active since joining Lemmy.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

Unfortunately it's just a waiting game really, we grow slowly. Bringing people over is good, but they'll follow the content. As people come, posters will come too, and commenters, and then that's what ultimately brings over the rest.

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

Give it time. The platform exploded in popularity in a few months, let us [current users] let the last batch of newcomers to settle in before calling more folks in. Plus we don't even have much control over it, at the end of the day Lemmy grows as Reddit does stupid shit that makes it lose trust with its userbase.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (5 children)

More political memes. Also more cringey conversatuions about how, actually, everything is political. Victory awaits.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Don't forget posting pics of funko pop collections

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[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Post things relevant to a hobby or interest that isn't Lemmy itself or something closely related.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

I say we should dress up in nice suits, and go door to door asking if people have heard of our great community haven, thanks to the Great Lemming who we keep forgetting the name of. Ramen.

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Let it happen organically. It will happen in waves.

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Relay for Reddit stopped working for me today. I won't pay for content I partly create, so my shift will be final to Lemmy, unless my social media addiction finds another way.

Thing is, what Reddit still has, is the available history of content. If Lemmy has new topics and new content, it will at one point become second nature to also add "Lemmy" to a search query. And at some point hopefully without Reddit ever crossing the mind. For now it's a slow and painful process as contribution is the only way to push Lemmy.

So whatever you do, contribute as much as possible. Then we can do it. I'd say push the bigger communities first, the smaller will follow, like how it was with early Reddit.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Fix the design flaws first. Especially broken incentives for toxicity and lack of moderation tools. It's too big already right now.

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