[Discussion thread] How are you all guys doing on your niche communities? : fedigrow

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Well, I don't know if "niche" is the best term, but I'm still pretty alone posting on

I also started two others recently

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 6 points 5 months ago

Part of the problem is the smaller instances don't even see those communities when you post, I was unaware of 75% of the communities you just listed. I have a micro instance, and if I don't subscribe I don't see it.

It's probably not much of an issue, given that most people are on a couple mega instances...

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 7 points 5 months ago

Hey, nice to see you here!

I know community discoverability can be an issue. When I launched !imaginary@reddthat.com and !dragonball@ani.social, I used my alts on the top 10 instances to subscribe to them so that they would show in the All feed of those instances.

For small instances, I tried to post too to !newcommunities@lemmy.world and !communitypromo@lemmy.ca, but beyond that there isn't really much I can do.

There was a tool that could help address that (I don't have the name right now), but last time I tried it, it wasn't working, so I'm not sure it's that useful.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Good to be seen! Smart of you to preseed The larger instances good strategy

I think the clients are going to have to solve this, maybe look at the all feed on multiple servers, and then only show you what's different compared to your own server.

Discoverability is the key weakness of Lemmy, just like mastodon

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 5 points 5 months ago

Not sure clients might be the solution here, I think at the end people will have to choose

go to a large instance and rely on other people to populate the All feed for you
go to a small instance but know that you'll have to subscribe to most of the communities yourself

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Are you familiar with Lemmy Federate? Participating instances get a bot that follows submitted communities to get them in feeds and then unsubscribes once a real user from the instance subs.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 4 points 5 months ago

Ah, that's the cool I was looking for! Are we sure this tool is completely functional? The large number of "in progress" instances always gives me doubt

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 5 points 5 months ago

It used to be Lemmy Community Boost and I think it still works despite the status. I do keep meaning to track the developer down and give them a nudge.

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago

I do see now that many instances have auto-add turned off, that could be what were seeing.

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago

I'm not sure tbh. Pretty sure it's run by the lemy.lol admin?

[-] iso@lemy.lol 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The tool relies on community local subscriber count to unsubscribe and that value was not available from 0.19.0 to 0.19.3. I fixed the problem about 8 months ago but due to unfortunate timing, it didn’t reach prod from then.

In the end, the tool is working. The only problem is, it doesn’t know if it should unsubscribe on 0.19.0 to 0.19.3. So it stays in in progress state but still federates the community.

Once all instances upgrades to 0.19.4, it will work correctly both functionally and visually.

@Emperor@feddit.uk @Blaze@reddthat.com

Also @can@sh.itjust.works; the auto add feature is for adding new local communities to the tool automatically. With it, users don’t need to add their communities manually to the tool because it will do it automatically.

But the federation is not relies on that tick. If the instance is enabled, it will subscribe to all communities no matter if auto add is enabled or not.

I guess I need to improve the explanations cuz at this state it is so confusing :) Maybe a FAQ page could be useful.

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 4 points 5 months ago

Thanks for the information - very useful. And yes, an FAQ would be handy, although if you wait long enough it'll be less necessary.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 3 points 5 months ago

Thank you for the update! Maybe you should make a dedicated thread with that info here, in !fedigrow@lemm.ee ?

It's a nice tool BTW, thanks !

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 5 months ago

The second scenario is viable, if Lemmy was a lot more vibrant, and had enough population that the niche communities could keep you busy. Right now I wake up and check Lemmy and I've gotten through all the new posts in 20 minutes. So it's getting kind of quiet

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 3 points 5 months ago

It is indeed quiet.

I wanted to try something and blocked all news/memes/tech/politics communities last week, my All feed is definitely much more quieter.

Which I don't mind, but there is definitely stuff to do to get it the communities "beyond memes-tech-news" active

[-] Die4Ever@programming.dev 5 points 5 months ago

Yeah you pretty much have to use https://lemmyverse.net/communities

There's a feature request here that would help https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2951

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 3 points 5 months ago

There’s a feature request here that would help https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2951

I remember this one, doesn't seem to get much traction unfortunately 😔

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] neme@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago

Checking !trendingcommunities@feddit.nl can be useful sometimes

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Consider participating in lemmy-federate.com/ ? That should help.

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 5 points 5 months ago

Dragged Dragonball over to my instance.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 4 points 5 months ago

Thanks!

[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 4 points 5 months ago

@rgullis@communick.news can you create !football@soccer.forum so we can try and transition that community over to there blaze is doing amazing work in terms of making it feel active, but I'm all about decentralization. I also think @kameecoding@lemmy.world and @baatliwala@lemmy.world would both be great as part of the moderation team.

[-] kameecoding@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

I do own lemmy.futbol if someone would want to co create an instance, but frankly I do not have a lot of free time so I could only help out in a supporting capacity

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 4 points 5 months ago

To be honest as mentioned elsewhere I'm not the most convinced about having all of the theme instances managed by rglullis.

Raphael, don't get me wrong, you are doing a very good job, and I really hope you'll succeed with your new NLNet grant, but having all of those instances depending on you, even if you seem to have a backup person, seems risky.

@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al, also the Euro 2024 is starting later this week, I think it's just too late to migrate now if we want a decent level of activity during the event. We can always revisit later, but I wouldn't move now.

load more comments (15 replies)

[-] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 5 months ago

You really dislike "main", huh?

There is also !talk@soccer.forum, if you prefer.

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Ashtear@lemm.ee 10 points 5 months ago

I've been most invested into helping !jrpg@lemmy.zip get going. It seems like there are plenty of lurkers and a growing amount of engagement by comments, but people are still shy about posting links or discussions. News in the genre has been slow the past couple months, though.

I tried with !gamemusic@lemm.ee. As a general rule, I'll prioritize posting content to smaller instances, and I picked out that community on my home instance to do so, but I think it's just not happening. I'm moving over to !vgmusic@lemmy.world.

I'm also glad !houseplants@mander.xyz is doing well. Seems like they've got a good plan going on over there, with relevant stickies, a useful sidebar, and link exchange.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 5 points 5 months ago

Houseplants community seems great!

[-] AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

I like the houseplants stuff. I will add something useful to the bicycletouring sidebar too.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 9 points 5 months ago

I started to post recently to !linux@programming.dev, good activity over there (after all, it's Linux on Lemmy), other people have started posting there too

[-] zcd@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 months ago

I'm really digging the Linux content on Lemmy, it's already pretty lively

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 4 points 5 months ago

To be fair, that's probably the one topic the vast majority of users care about ha ha

[-] AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

Kinda happy how at the start of the season !bicycle_touring@lemmy.world got a bit of traffic. But i'm not all that hopeful really because the regular bicycling subs with way more subscribers have also very little traffic. I sometimes wonder if all that even makes sense here if it isn't about computers, memes or politics.

The camping, ultralight, outdoor communities are pretty much just dead.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Kinda happy how at the start of the season !bicycle_touring@lemmy.world got a bit of traffic. But i’m not all that hopeful really because the regular bicycling subs with way more subscribers have also very little traffic.

Nice that you got a bit of traffic. Maybe it stays low because people interesting in bicycle touring aren't that much on Reddit, without even mentioning Lemmy?

The camping, ultralight, outdoor communities are pretty much just dead.

Can you please provide links? Should they maybe try to consolidate at first, to get more activity in one place?

[-] AchtungDrempels@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah it is a niche activity, sure.

!camping@sh.itjust.works
!outdoors@lemmy.ml
!ultralight@lemmy.world
!solarpunktravel@slrpnk.net
!outdoor@slrpnk.net

Camping i think theoretically has some actual users, the solarpunkers seem to mostly repost stuff, not do or plan to do something. I don't think consolidation will do much.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 3 points 5 months ago

Maybe try to redirect people from !camping@sh.itjust.works to !outdoor@slrpnk.net ? Some subscribers might like to be told there is another active community

load more comments (5 replies)

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 7 points 5 months ago

Good activity on !movies@lemm.ee, thanks to post from @Emperor@feddit.uk and @UKFilmNerd@feddit.uk

There is some progress on a potential bot, that would help for sure

Still a bit frustrating to see that the moderation team on !movies@lemmy.world isn't doing much with that place, but that's life I guess

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Good activity on !movies@lemm.ee, thanks to post from @Emperor@feddit.uk and @UKFilmNerd@feddit.uk

Happy to have somewhere to post film news - I get a tonne in my feed but there are so many film communities I hadn't got round to figuring out which to commit to. You helped that choice along.

Still a bit frustrating to see that the moderation team on !movies@lemmy.world isn’t doing much with that place, but that’s life I guess

In the end, you can only worry about your own communities.

[-] UKFilmNerd@feddit.uk 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I have a habit of sharing news that only really interests me. That's why I don't share everything I come across. A friend and I used to run a website together, and I got quite used to posting the latest film trailers and interesting news that I came across. Although sometimes I found it really hard to post news about films I didn't really care about. I had to write something to accompany the video.

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 3 points 5 months ago

Me too - the algorithm offers me a range of film news and I tend to only pass on stutt that interests me but I will try harder to share a wider range.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (5 replies)

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I've been trying to get a bit of life into !starwarsfigures@lemmy.world and !legostarwars@lemm.ee - Rome wasn't sacked in a day though and experience suggests bloody minded persistence is the key.

I also started !starwarshunters@lemmy.zip - still early days.

[-] Rolando@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

A couple weeks ago I started occasionally posting to !cyberpunk@lemmy.zip when the main daily poster said they were taking a week off. That worked out nicely. They were offline for a week again recently and I "filled in the gap" again with daily posting.

I was posting music links daily to !gothindustrial@lemmy.world last August but ran through my main playlist by March. I've been trying to post at least once a week since then.

!synthwave@lemmy.world only gets sporadic posting. I'm trying to post once a week.

On !fullmoviesonyoutube@lemm.ee the regular poster said they were out of content. A couple of us said we'd post, but personally I only have like 4-5 more posts worth of content.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 4 points 5 months ago

Nice communities!

[-] anon6789@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

!superbowl@lemmy.world is still doing ok, though not quite at its peak. I don't think new subs are going up by much these days. I have seen comments by a few new names, which is very nice to see. Overall comment levels are about the same. Upvotes seem steady, but not as high as they were around the new year. I do think the year end festivities really boosted things though.

I'm happy to be ahead of !opossums@lemmy.world again though (no offense, I love opossums too, but I want to be #1 wild animal sub!) and I look to be top of the 2nd page of communities overall, so even though I'm not doing quite as well as I perhaps feel I should be doing, I feel I can't complain too much.

I still get a few positive compliments each week and people are sharing their personal stories with owls, which is always nice to hear. As long as I know the content is making people happy, I feel it's worth the work.

I've enjoyed having a few things to share with the !digitalbioacoustics@lemmy.world community. I've gotten some great recommended reading materials from that group in return. Maybe I'll have to look into more collabs and get some cross promotion going.

Fedigrow