Kind of a companion thread to the recent one on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com asking people which community there were missing.

I had a quick look, and most of those seem to be niches that can’t be filled until we reach a higher population.

There is still maybe some potential improvement about some less well-known community that other people are interested in and that could some additional activity.

I try to help to make less known communities known with the regular threads on !newcommunities@lemmy.world (now moving to !communitypromo@lemmy.ca ), but there is probably only a level of detail we have to stop at with 47k monthly active users.

One example is !jrpg@lemmy.zip, it seems reasonable active, and is probably a better compromise than having each game having its own community.

Similar with !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works, or !showsandmovies@lemm.ee. I posted a thread about Ted Lasso a few days ago, it got some nice comments, but probably not enough to have a full fledged dedicated community.

  • Ashtear@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    For !jrpg@lemmy.zip, it’s a big enough category that it should be more active than it is. The corresponding subreddits for JRPGs and retro gaming aren’t super far apart at 255k and 404k subscribers respectively, but !retrogaming@lemmy.world is more active by orders of magnitude here on Lemmy.

    I’ve started to focus more on discussion prompts in the community as news isn’t enough; the JRPG community has been an excellent news aggregator for over a year now (although it’s a slow news time for the genre currently). I’d love to hear from other niche communities about what’s worked and what hasn’t to drive engagement.

    • Microw@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      I might be completely wrong here, but could it partly being an issue of people not thinking about searching the term JRPG?

  • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    I wonder if instance admins should start closing old/redundant communities, just so the good ones are easier to find

  • Bassman1805@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    The expectation that a social media that optimistically has 0.1% the user base of reddit, can support the same level of community fragmentation, is not realistic. I’ve been here long enough to see numerous failed attempts at starting a community for My Favorite Niche, rather than just posting about it in More General Community. You usually get a single “welcome” post by the creator, and then nothing more. If you’re lucky, the creator will make a small handful of their own posts before giving up.

    Post about your favorite TV show in a tv/movies community, don’t make a new one just for your show. You’ll get way more engagement

    • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Post about your favorite TV show in a tv/movies community, don’t make a new one just for your show.

      I agree, but I also don’t want to spam those communities lol.

      Like !deus_ex_randomizer@lemmy.mods4ever.com or !stauf_mansion@lemmy.mods4ever.com would be too much spam for one of the gaming communities, or patient gamers.

      And it’d be even more spammy for the communities that are in-between in specificity (like !adventuregames@lemm.ee or !deus_ex@lemmy.ml)

      I just do rare cross-posts for the most notable posts

        • StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          I think it’s a comm where some guy posts whatever they’re interested in at the moment. Kind of like c/Gondaily

          • scsi@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            nod the point was (in fun) to exemplify not doing what the GP comment to this thread was talking about; here we have a positive example of a user creating a single space to post any/all of their “niche” (eye of the beholder) content, rather than creating tiny communities for each interest. It was a light-hearted comment “see, like this”. :) (disclaimer: I’m subscribed)

            • Vespair@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              4 hours ago

              And I think this is how people should start thinking of Lemmy communities maybe, or at least as an option for Lemmy communities; to be less like subreddit ls and more like personal pages frankly more akin to Myspace. Part of the appeal of Lemmy, to me at least, is the decentralization and reclamation of some level of ownership. So maybe lemmy is less a place where you go to join c/deathmetal and c/crotchet and c/vintagesmurfpornography, but instead it’s a place where you start c/yourusername and declare it your personal shrine to needlepoint, cannibal corpse, and blue cartoon-fuckery.

              But I also smoke weed, so I might just be having a moment

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    I think part of it is that searching isn’t intuitive. Some of the apps make it easier, but some are bad at it. The web interface for a newcomer isn’t set up where you can just scan the page and see a friendly spot to go at it. You have to look for it. It isn’t hard to find, and anyone familiar with the internet should know where to look, but it is a barrier.

    I say that because I’ve had people irl complain about it when trying to use lemmy for the first time.

    • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I just checked, LW still has this on their banner:

      Not ideal, but probably something other instances could maybe emulate

      • crimeschneck∈🇩🇪⊂🇪🇺@feddit.nlEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        Maybe it would also be helpful to have a “welcome message” that a new user of a lemmy instance receives as a notification after registration. This message could include information about community discovery, information about different instances, frontends, and so on. (Each instance should be able to have their own “welcome message”, of course.)

  • stardust@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Finding active community is bad with how you might get multiple results that don’t have much activity giving impression it is dead for niche communities.

    Might help if there was some collaboration between those type of communities redirecting to the “main” community to find activity.

  • Libb@jlai.luEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Discovery still needs to be improved. And we need more active members, that would be delusional to say otherwise.

    But I also think a unified linking mechanism between instances, communities, threads and to a specific message in any thread no matter the instance the reader is clicking the link from would help encourage people to link a lot more. I don’t link as much as I would like to mostly because of that reason. And more links would also help discoverability of interesting content.

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago
    1. Just like default theming, I think it suffers from a problem of “it works for me [the developer] so who cares.” Community discovery could be so much better. As far as I know, PieFed is the only project that’s actually looking at it from first principles instead of “here’s a totally useless “trending” box, we good right?”
    2. To me, the root cause analysis is that the nature of Lemmy’s design makes it tough to customize. You can’t have a custom sort order. You can’t (easily) have an admin change what the “trending” box is based on, or whether it exists at all. I think it leaves things in a weird state where a handful of Lemmy developers have to do everything, instead of needing to focus on a core set of robust functionality and letting a little ecosystem develop of customizations and tweaks with a tight feedback loop between developers, admins, and users.
    3. It honestly could be as simple as a box that assembles the last five posts from !newcommunities@lemmy.world or !communities@ponder.cat. Do something. I think it would honestly be super motivating if someone posted to !newcommunities and then saw their community start to show up in the box. You’d need to moderate some spam of course.
    4. I actually don’t think the “please federate my community everywhere” tools are as necessary as they seem like they would be. I’ve always seen from even a single post to one of the promo communities, it seems like the community pretty much goes everywhere.
    5. I think a lot of the “niche communities go quiet” problem could be solved with better interoperation with Mastodon. It’s fine if only 3 people on Lemmy talk about JRPGs, if they can talk to a whole community external to Lemmy about it, on Lemmy. That was the whole point of ActivityPub, but unfortunately ActivityPub isn’t all that well-designed, so it’s a lot harder to make happen than it should be.

    Those are my thoughts, in no particular order.

  • fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Community discovery 100% needs to be improved somehow. No matter how many popular posts you make you will heavily struggle getting the ball rolling, if you ever do.

    This practically guarantees the death of niches, which is [obviously] not good for the fediverse as a whole.

    • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Don’t people use the Subscribed feed for their niche communities? So once they are subbed, it’s all good?

      If the issue is people not knowing about communities, then those posts on !communitypromo@lemmy.ca should help

      • FundMECFS@slrpnk.netEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        My reflex moving over was to subscribe to everything I’m interested in and never use all, because I’ve never used it on reddit.

        This created a problem where since lemmy’s sorting all basically sort by most popular (except scaled but that sort is problematic for other reasons), I basically only saw the meme and news communities I subscribed to on my feed and the niche stuff never made it.

        I know @Aurelius@lemmy.world is working on an algorithmic alternative !quiblr@lemmy.world but it’s not got support on any apps.

        • Microw@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          3 hours ago

          I usually use scaled for my subscribed feed and it works decently. Recently was advised to try out “newest comments” sorting for the subscribed feed and I like that even more!

        • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          have you tried Scaled sort? I use Scaled for my subscribed feed and it does a great job showing new posts in niche communities

      • MajorHavoc@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        Oh! Today I learned about community promo. Yeah, I guess we could use awareness raising about the existence of that community. Sounds like an awesome resource.

  • muelltonne@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    I think that there are a few things to consider here:

    1. Lemmy has a smaller userbase than Reddit so that does mean that we can’t have all those niche communities. There are simply not enough people active here to fill a community like /r/writerdecks
    2. If you are starting a community, you have to do the effort to post there. Nobody is posting to a dead community with 2 subscribers and 1 post from 7 month ago. Be active, be kind and post stuff. People will come if that stuff is good. This will help all of Lemmy - federation is great, but you want to read cool stuff and that is bringing people here
    3. There might be room for … an algorithm. We currently can sort the global feed by “Active”, “New”, “Last 6 hours” and so on, but there might also be an opportunity for an option like “popular posts in smaller communities”.
    • Microw@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      Well, niche communities can work if you get a big niche community to be on lemmy. For example, the F1 community was super huge and active in 2023, far outranking many other specific communities. However a lot of F1 people seem to have left lemmy in the off-season between 2023 and 2024.

    • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      We currently can sort the global feed by “Active”, “New”, “Last 6 hours” and so on, but there might also be an opportunity for an option like “popular posts in smaller communities”.

      The “Scaled” filter?

  • Libb@jlai.luEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    I had a quick look, and most of those seem to be niches that can’t be filled until we reach a higher population.

    100% agree. And I know it first hand with !journaling@sh.itjust.works: it could be much larger as one just easily see when comparing with the similar reddit sub, but we don’t share the same user base to begin with ;)

    As it is I don’t think we need more communities. We need more active members and simpler way to promote specific content. Like I said in my other answer, for me the real issue is there: for something that is proud to be ‘federated’, linking anywhere from anywhere should be rock solid and dead simple. It is not, far from it. If it’s even doable. Heck, even within my own community: I don’t know how I can safely put links to any previous thread or message in a thread that I’m sure will work for anyone clicking them no matter the instance they’re logged in.

    Maybe I’m missing something obvious and it’s already a thing? But I think getting that ability to link stuff would be a huge win for Lemmy, no mater the number of active members ;)

    • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Apologies for only arriving now. The app I use is pretty hit and miss with sending notifications and mentions are in another tab and rare. I really need to do some more shopping around for apps but I’m in a comfort zone with this one I’ve been using since before the API debacle on Reddit.

      As far as discoverability goes, as a simple user I’m not sure it’s so different from Reddit. On Reddit, niche communities coming through /r/all were rare and easy to miss. So the main way of finding these communities was by directly searching for them or coming across mentions of them in comment sections. I’m not expecting to come across a community for some random '90s show in the wild, so that’s just something to search up if I think of it (and probably be disappointed because this platform isn’t quite there yet).

      As for more general communities, they’ll have higher activity so will come through whatever feed you’re looking at more often. I’ve found that by the end of the day, I’m just starting to scroll through the things I’ve seen before, so it’s not easy to miss things. Plus users such as yourself do a fantastic service of pointing others in the right direction and making suggestions.

      And I think that for now, super specific communities would probably flop. I would love a community for the Harley Quinn show, for example, with memes and discussions throughout the week and between seasons like on Reddit. But there’s not enough people yet, so the DC Studios community for anything related to DC Comics adaptations is the way for now. Just as an example. Or to go with your example, a general JRPG community is going to do much better than a Golden Sun specific community.

      Certain missing features here versus Reddit definitely play a role too though. If there were multicommunities or some sort of custom feeds for people to add, any niche communities that tried to take off would have a much better chance. Also, I don’t see too many OnlyFans workers coming to LemmyNSFW as long as they can’t make a post with all of their links to their own profile and pin it, and they can’t pick up followers. It can’t completely fill the role of a Reddit alternative as long as it only has half the features that Reddit has. At least as far as the end user is concerned.