this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Fedigrow

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To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks

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Right now on Lemmy we have a bunch of dad-based communities with varying levels of discussion. From the ones I can find, we have:

[email protected] - last few posts were about a month ago. Mod was last active 10 months ago.

[email protected] - last couple posts were about 2 months ago. The post before that was about 5 months ago. Not sure about mod activity.

[email protected] - last post was yesterday, with some other posts in past few weeks. Mod was last active 6 months ago.

[email protected] - last post was a few weeks ago, with a couple months in between posts after that. Mod was last active 10 months ago.

[email protected] - last couple posts were a week ago. With about a month or so between posts after that. Both mods were last active a year ago.

[email protected] - last post was 3 months ago. Mod was last active 2 months ago.

[email protected] - last post was about a month ago, and the one before that was about 4 months ago. Mod was last active today.

To help facilitate discussion, what do you all think about consolidating the dad-based discussion to one of those groups (preferably a somewhat moderated one, which just seems to be fatherverse…) for now?

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago

Yup, this one seems like a no-brainer: [email protected]

  • Has an active mod
  • Is not on LW or ml
  • Has a great name

We don't often get all three.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I love the idea of a consolidated fatherverse.

You get back into reddit territory... But one place for new dads to be able to search for answers would be lovely.

When my wife became pregnant, daddit on Reddit gave me answers, support and tips for pregnancy, childbirth and bringing the rascal home.

It would be nice to have a place like that here.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago

It can be consolidated until the community has grown enough to split into its own niches.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I agree to the federation, just for the name of it: The Fathervers™ - that just sounds too cool!

In all seriousness: I think it would help to have one central community for dads

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Dadvice is a close second. Could be a decent tag section on Fatherverse.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I vote fatherverse, not only for the active mod but it has the best name.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Yes, makes total sense. Fatherverse sounds fine to me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Here's all you need to know about if you should consolidate. In general, every single topic will be best suited towards having one centralized community (Lemmy gasps!). To me the power of Lemmy isn't that it IS a series of seperate instances that can interconnect. To me the power of Lemmy is that it CAN BE a series of seperate instances that can interconnect.

And here's the difference. [email protected] is a hypothetical example. Lets say it becomes active, and the mods there get big britches. Well.........maybe they enact some policy that 40% of the community there do not agree with.

They are free to create [email protected]. They can create the instance THEY want. With THEIR rules.

But until that hand is forced, why split the communities?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Agreed

@[email protected], do you need help to link this post in the different communities, with the message that [email protected] would be the main community?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Great post!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

As a side comment, I started to post everyday on [email protected]

I just didn't feel like creating another community from scratch, and @[email protected] was already there as a mod, so I just used it.

I know it's not perfect as it's another LW community, but I guess that's good enough for now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

This is a great idea.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Consolidating communities defeats part of the purpose of federation and decentralization.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Having the community on an instance other than lemmy.world and lemmy.ml is decentralizing.

The other parameter is that with 50k monthly active users, there is only so much activity on a specific topic.

Having it spread over 7 communities kills activity rather than keeping 1 community alive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Having it spread over 7 communities kills activity rather than keeping 1 community alive.

Having three dad communities on lemmy.world is weird and needs sorting out but one of the advantages of subject-specific instances is that they can give a different spin to a topic.

On English-speaking social media, it all tends to become very US-centric - the UK (and, presumably, Canadian, and, hypothetically, an Australian one) allows for people to have more local discussion as the logistics (schools, benefits, the legal system, etc) can be very different.

By the same token, I wouldn't want all the other dad communities merged into the feddit.uk one (which is the most active, despite the Mod being AWOL, which is easily fixed) as it isn't just a general dad's discussion, although all dad's are welcome, of course.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I see where you come from.

That's why I try to keep both [email protected] and [email protected] active, while they have more or less the same topics.

Some communities are made to be "Internet inclusive", some other are more "location grounded"

I guess sometimes the Lemmy population is not large enough to have "location grounded" communities, so it might be better to merge into the "all inclusive" one

Last point: as a non-native European, I never really paid attention to the English-speaking social media being very US-centric, hopefully that's a bias we can correct here on Lemmy.

Lemmy.world is the biggest instance and managed by a team located (at least partially) in the Netherlands, so that's a nice change compared to Reddit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Last point: as a non-native European, I never really paid attention to the English-speaking social media being very US-centric, hopefully that’s a bias we can correct here on Lemmy.

I'm working on it. And there are Canadian and Australian instances doing their bit too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I know, and that's great! Lemm.ee, feddit.de, feddit.dk, feddit.it and all the others are great!

But on that topic, that still brings us to the question of "should an instance with a country TLD be limited to content of that country?"

Someone on Lemmy.ca brought that point up a few days back:

A sort of related more general comment. For the sake of my Local feed, I wish Lemmy.ca was only human-created Canada-centric content. That’s why I signed up to the lemmy.ca instance. A couple week’s prior to this community’s creation there was an influx of bot-run communities. I blocked them, because I don’t want to see 15 Cool Guide or Reddit-based Nostalgia posts in my Local feed, displacing human-created Canada-centric content. It’s not a perfect solution though, because I wouldn’t mind seeing those posts on my All feed. I know from community growth and server cost perspectives it doesn’t make sense to limit who or what can be posted (beyond blocking hate speech and other obviously objectionable material). I wish I could have multiple Subscribed feeds. In lieu of that, maybe I should choose another instance based on Local feed appeal and port Lemmy.ca communities that I like to my subscribed feed

https://lemmy.ca/post/22625492/9613729

So that comes back to the point I mentioned above. When I created [email protected] on lemm.ee, it was obvious that it wasn't going to be limited to Estonians.

However, when a community is created on feddit.uk, it can be centered on a local approach to a thematic (such as [email protected] ). Which is great, but as I said, we are probably still very early in the stage of having different dad communities on Lemmy, so having mainly one (whatever instance it is on) might be more effective for activity

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Encourage cross posting. The function is viable, and when it's used, it not only improves each community individually, it keeps awareness of other options.

The only thing "killing activity" is people nodding being unaware of cross posting existing and/or using it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Crossposts don't aggregate comments. If you ask "How was your father's day" on 7 dad communities, you are going to split the answers across the 7 communities.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Comments don't need aggregation.

Look, we obviously have a difference in philosophy of the fediverse here.

So, let me back up a second and explain that.

The fediverse should be about communities being disparate. No single instance, no single mod or admin owning an idea, or the consequent community that forms around an idea. Part of why reddit became so horrible was the inability to have a viable alternative community around a subject when one went off the rails because someone had total control over a word, like "parenting", or "knives" or "gaming".

The more you consolidate communities, the more you give fewer entities control of a idea/concept/subject.

Comment aggregation is nice, if all you want is a single feed to scroll through, but the price of it is too high.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Alright, so let's apply this principle.

You seem to be posting from time to time to [email protected]. Where is the alternative community on another instance you crosspost to?

Part of why reddit became so horrible was the inability to have a viable alternative community around a subject when one went off the rails because someone had total control over a word, like “parenting”, or “knives” or “gaming”.

Hm, I'm not sure you are aware, but I am among the ones pushing for

So I am indeed aware of what you are saying, and I agree to an extend.

But as I said, you still need a minimum amount of activity to keep a community, alternative or not, active. Dads and parents communities aren't active anywhere on Lemmy yet, so it's more important now to first identify people, and then allow them to move or split.

Star Trek communities seems to coexist and be active enough because the topic is popular enough among the Lemmy population. It's not the case for every topic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ummmm, welllll, I don't actually post much to any other metal communities because they tend to have different rules for posting, and different people. This is one of those things where I'm a bad example of the "advice" I'm giving. I'm not a big poster anywhere. Wasn't on reddit either tbh. I genuinely wish I could find the same "vibe" as the .world metal C/ that was also friendly to direct YouTube links. There's a couple of good metal communities on lemmy, but they tend to dislike the YouTube links, or you catch hell for it from other users lol. It's one of those where I'm not following my own beliefs because it screws up other people's flow.

I get where you're coming from about needing minimum activity to make a subject matter to build a true community. I even agree, it's consolidating the smaller ones into a central one and hoping it can split up later rather than just disintegrating after some schism in the user base that I object to on a meta level.

I just think that spreading awareness of the various communities and encouraging crosstalk is a better long term goal.

Also, I hope that my word choices and phrasing don't come off aggro or with ill intent. I've been reminded that tone isn't conveyed well via text today with an unrelated chat away from lemmy. Since there's been a few points where I might have taken my own words wrong, just want to clarify that if this was in person, my tone would be friendly and you'd see me smiling at someone that's wanting to build good community.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Also, I hope that my word choices and phrasing don’t come off aggro or with ill intent. I’ve been reminded that tone isn’t conveyed well via text today with an unrelated chat away from lemmy. Since there’s been a few points where I might have taken my own words wrong, just want to clarify that if this was in person, my tone would be friendly and you’d see me smiling at someone that’s wanting to build good community

No worries!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Was thinking the same, but it would be nice to have a way to group all the similar communities together, just for viewing organization.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The Summit app allows that

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I have used Summit and Sync that had that feature, where I got the idea. I currently use Boost, my favorite so far, but doesn't group yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

For easy grouping, until lemmy itself has a "multi" function, apps fill the gap okay. Not great, but it does work if one uses apps at all.