this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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askchapo
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By individually inviting cool people we might randomly find around the internet.
We don't need a huge community to be a worthwhile community and it's evident that the staff are struggling to cope with the current pace of posting right now anyway. So we don't need to strategise about growing the site in some systematic way.
Let it happen organically. This isn't a growth-at-any-cost sort of site and every cool site I've been a part of that fell to the impulse to grooow eventually ended up a shitshow full of users who don't know/remember/understand the original purpose of the site, the history behind various rules and site culture etc.
Let corporate owned sites compete for user share. Let us avoid that impulse.
I get the impression we should be thinking more about user RETENTION than anything. This is the first day in a while where I've woken up from a fucked up nightmare, opened "my comfy favourite site" hexbear and then immediately felt a wave of dread at what I might find on the party agenda for the day.
And sure enough another pinned comment, another struggle, more upset users, more shitty bad faith replies to upset users from moderators.
The only growth desirable I see being valuable is in MAYBE federating with other like-minded sites and perhaps networking with similar efforts using different protocols and platforms, like for example matrix servers that share most of our positions and values but not actually administered by the same people who administer hexbear. Just an example. I dunno. I'm tired and grumpy and sad and adding MOAR USERS doesn't assuage any of my fears about the state of affairs here.