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I wish people would write some descriptions for their communities (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by WhoRoger@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I often browse /all, come across a post that looks interesting but I have no clue what's it about, so I check the sidebar - and all I find is "An unofficial Lemmy community for X", " A place to discuss everything about X", or the best kind, "A continuation of r/X from Reddit".

Can't people write just some basics? What is that thing, a TV show, a music band, a sports team, a tabletop game? Sometimes I really can't tell even after looking at a few posts.

Your community may be of interest to someone who stumbles upon it, not only to diehard fans.

I know sometimes that's the joke, but most times it would be simple to just use a few words. "Discuss X, a Zimbabwean spy-thriller public theatre show." There we go, now everyone knows what it is.

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[-] fucker@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago

Some communities have pinned posts that explain their community in more detail, but I generally agree with you.

[-] Capricorny90210@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

Cheers to that username.

[-] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

not sure which I like more, the squares or @fucker

[-] ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago

Your avatar gave me a seizure and I died.

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

That avatar really isn't cool for people with sensitivity to flashing images, please don't do that.

[-] G59@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Your profile is hilarious 😂

[-] willya@lemmyf.uk 11 points 1 year ago

[-] coldhotman@nrsk.no 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

[-] willya@lemmyf.uk 1 points 1 year ago

True 😂 I apologize.

[-] DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

That's what we did at !japaneselanguage@sopuli.xyz

Which is honestly not a spin-off of r/japaneselanguage because that subreddit was a complete mess. But so was r/learnjapanese. I don't get the optics of a Reddit spin-off because that's like tying your community to the expectations and behaviour of a previously community that could will be improved upon.

[-] Ilikecheese@lemm.ee 46 points 1 year ago

This was a problem on reddit too, and it looks like it’s carried over here. People make new communities and just assume that everyone in the future who finds it will just automatically know the purpose.

[-] fubo@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Way back on Olde Usenet in the 1990s, there was a whole voting process for creating new forums ("newsgroups"), where you had to get supporters to say they would actually use your new forum if you created it. Creating the new forum soc.women.lesbian-and-bi required a whole democratic voting process, and it passed!

soc.women.lesbian-and-bi is a moderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by 458:56 as reported in news.announce.newgroups on 14 Aug 1995.

Alternately, you could create your new forum in the alt space, where you just had to have an argument in alt.config about creating the new forum.

Either way, the theory was that real news servers would only carry your forum if you won a vote and/or argument about it. The point of this was, supposedly, that cluttering-up the list of forums with a bunch that nobody was using would be a bad idea, so it would be valuable to show that people wanted a forum before creating it.

In practice, this depended on the ability & interest of news server admins to follow the democratic and/or anarchic processes for the creation of new groups.

[-] BD1sHappyFeet@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

I remember when rec.arts.disney split. There was the voting process whether to split as well as a vote to how it would split, if I remember correctly. I hadn't thought about that in years.

Alt was the free for all. I learned a lot on alt.atheism, including how threads devolve into chaos and when to walk away.

Thanks fubo, I feel super old now.

[-] fubo@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Hah! Better to learn from alt.callahans than alt.religion.scientology ...

[-] fuzzybee@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Who could forget alt.buddha.short.fat.guy and alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork?

[-] cybercitizen4@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago

Agreed! I started a community a couple days ago and I also browsed through the descriptions of other communities to get an idea of what we should put in one (I have no experience moderating subreddits or anything like that) and I found that many had little to nothing in the sidebar.

[-] kabe@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In case this is of any use to you or others, here's what I've found to work well:

Summary of what the community is about
Community rules of conduct
Links to related communities that offer similar content
Some additional info/useful links that are related to the topic.

Good formatting also makes it look clean and professional.

Shameless plug: check these out

!skeptic@lemmy.world
!debunkthis@lemmy.world

[-] cybercitizen4@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

This is super helpful, thank you very much.

[-] MaxVerstappen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Did you have to do anything special to start one? I just tried and I keep getting an error: {"error":"rate_limit_error"} when I hit create.

[-] cybercitizen4@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

It was actually easy to create it (I’m on lemm.ee instance) the hard part is I think just being able to maintain engagement.

[-] TheShitAbyss@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 year ago

Rules included would be good too. I don't know if I can post external links or discussion sometimes.

[-] ijeff@lemdro.id 3 points 1 year ago

We do include rules in the lemdro.id communities. Unfortunately, many don't read the sidebar.

[-] Machefi@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Everything which is not forbidden is allowed

[+] gelberhut@lemdro.id 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

[deleted]

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

I think I do, I think "watches" designates what it is, and Galaxy is a well known branding... At least that's my feeling, maybe someone has a different opinion.

[-] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

While we're on the subject of feedback. Would you like to take a look at my communities? I'm always looking for people who have suggestions for improvement.

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

In my opinion, theism and sustainability have decent descriptions, albeit a little complicated (someone who e.g. isn't a native English speaker may need a few takes).

Minimalism and libertarianism could use a paragraph to explain just some basic idea instead of a link outside. I mean, minimalism sounds kinda self-explanatory, but some may think it's about the art style.

Particl just had me confused honestly. It sounds like another bitcoin alternative with a good stuffing of grand-sounding keywords, and a link to a PDF whitepaper isn't helping. I don't like downloading random PDF and hate it when web sites do that.

Well, you can look at my communities in return and tell me what you think. (I know formuladank needs a better desc too. That's one I haven't updated properly since launch, when I didn't know if Lemmy will even take off at all.)

[-] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Hey your community descriptions are very pleasant to read and descriptive. But sometimes I have the impression that there is perhaps too much text which becomes a bit of a wall of text, especially on mobile devices (SWMemes). Also, you could perhaps format lists as such, as this can also save significantly more space (listing of other communities).

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

On SW memes I had a survey, and one of the questions I asked was if people want more descriptive rules and stuff, and most said yes. There was also demand for the special days, and people were asking about the pending subscription issue... So it just gets more expanded.

I'm only on mobile too, so it's a bit much for my taste too (I'm trying to be minimalist with this, e.g. not repeating server rules etc. which won't stop anyone from being a twat anyway).

But the actual members seem happier with this, so that's why it is that way.

As for links for related communities, I wanted it to be easier to tap the right one on a phone screen.

Numbered lists on Lemmy have the following problem:

You start with a list

Then you make a line break to add a paragraph to the first point, but it looks "outside" of the list

Now we're in the list again

But I'll see if there's anything else I can trim...

Thanks for looking.

[-] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

If they are happy let it be. I also see the problem with lists but maybe when listing nice communities to join you could go with the unsorted lists. Like that you have bullet point for each community that save up a lot of space.

I have also reviewed my community descriptions and made some significant changes to particl and libertariansim. If you want you can go over it one more time ;)

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Libertarianism looks great! Particl I'm still not sure about, but then I guess I'm not the target audience anyway, so I'll leave it in your hands :p

[-] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Haha thanks. I can see that Particl's text is not explaining much but I like it like this. Actually the other text was copied over from reddit and was written by the devs themselves.

[-] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Wow thank you for taking your time and providing such valuable feedback! I'll defo look at yours too.

[-] cheerjoy@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

I agree. If they can't take the time to write anything in the sidebar or have a community image, I lose interest pretty quickly.

[-] TheInsane42@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I was messing up with my community, added the description pretty early, just completed the whole shebang with rules, game season info, links,...

Yes, it's a continuation attampt of the reddit variant, as it looks like the other mods have left that sub as well. I'm still there, lurking, but it's dying after a vote to stay. The main contributers went silent there and moved to the community discord server.

[-] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I'm doing my best! This is my first time modding, and I'm not sure how to run a good community. Feel free to stop by any of my communities and suggest better sidebar content and I promise I'll update it.

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't know what "OL Reign" is, maybe you could add what sport that is. Altho I guess "FC" kinda gives it away.

But sports team is something I have no interest in so I'm adding these to my huuuuuuge block list of everything sports-related. Don't take it personally :p

Btw I'm also trying to get people to use the fanaticus.social instance that's apparently dedicated to sports. Or the country instances.

[-] Cralex@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago

You might be able to make a [Meta] post in said community and ask for the sidebar to be expanded. Who knows, maybe it’ll work.

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I've commented to a couple where e.g. there was a sticky of the mod asking what people want (but still no description), but sometimes I'm lazy and just want to browse :p

[-] leftylibra@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

c/menopause is pretty much self-explantory

[-] Ilikecheese@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

Exactly, clearly that’s a subreddit designed for cavemen to discuss their disdain for temporarily halting their music and videos. Me No Pause!

[-] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 4 points 1 year ago

just like !trees@lemmy.world is...

[-] grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 year ago

Tbh, I'm surprised that community is about trees. I was expecting an r/marijuanaenthusiasts situation.

[-] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Damnit! Because of you I'm now addicted to weed lol

[-] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah its really weird. Instead they leave the default info about the server its on.

[-] Today@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Those ones with words that i don't recognize - i usually assume it's a video game.

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I usually assume it's an anime.

[-] blanketswithsmallpox@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty confident if people expect you to participate in their community they either want you to already know about it, or learn about it through osmosis by not telling you the insular gatekeeped references.

If it's something you should know and you're either young or just one of those rare things you've never encountered... You're on the internet dude. Use Google lol.