this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Fedigrow

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One way to grow the small niche communities. (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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So one thing I miss about reddit is the idea that I can just find any random topic, and there's an active sub for that.

Reddits biggest problem is knowing these subreddits exist. I was there over 10 years, and still finding new subs until the end.

Lemmys biggest problem is that these communities DON'T exist, and even if they did, theres no audience to support them. No point in making a niche community if theres 0 posts, and 1 subscribber.

But, I found one small fix. This won't be the thing that boosts Lemmy to the top. This will be more like the small spark that could lead to a bigger fire. Without more steps, this won't be the answer. But think of this as one step of many.

So over at [email protected] they have a content bot. I assume it's just reposting the posts on reddit from a predesignated source.

But, what if we did that all over Lemmy? Start up /c/Archer and repost everything from ArcherFX. I don't see a place to post Archer stuff to.

Now do this for thousands of different subreddits over here.

Yes, at first the content bot would have 0 posts. But thats where WE come in. We all start posting on these threads, to give them the sense of activity. Activity breeds activity. And soon enough you'll have enough organic activity that you slowly start reducing these bots roles. But thats years from now.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (3 children)

We saw lots of this during the big Reddit migration a year ago. Personally I'm not a fan at all - I feel like it just floods mostly empty communities with posts that get barely any interaction. Any posts made by actual people get lost in the flood.

If I open a community and I see a handful of posts from people over the past few weeks, I might check them out, comment, maybe subscribe and contribute something. If I see a page of posts from a bot, mostly with no comments, I lose interest. And that was definitely something I ran into while first exploring Lemmy a year ago.

I'm not 100% against all bots - for example, something making daily posts might not be so bad.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

This.

The bots can be helpful to grow an existing community with more content, but if they drown out legit users then you end up just hurting interaction.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Yes. I think to populate a community something reposting the top reddit post of the day, or maybe even just the week could be good. However more than that is too much.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I agree completely. I actually set it so I don't see posts from bots. Before that I was manually blocking them.

Im actually going to try enabling them again though, so I can check out the fediverser project. Maybe things will be different this time.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The general consensus is that people prefer scarce content posted by a human than regular content posted by a bot.

Fandoms such as Archer would probably need a few people to get some traction.

I'm the only poster on [email protected], I expect an Archer community to be the same.

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

I's over at [email protected] the other day, love your work!

I noticed the same fact and wondered about posting myself, but i had a quick and i know super basic question, where do you find those panelled cartoons?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

To be completely honest, Reddit 😅

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Haha nice!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I hate those communities that spam Reddit reposts. If I comment on them, there's no engagement. The actual OP isn't going to see my comment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

What if I told you... soon you'll be able to comment on Lemmy and notify the OP on Reddit about it?

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

This has been tried and everyone hated it

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

I don't think it has. Can you point me to any instance that is doing two-way bridging?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh, you're the one who was talking about it before. I guess it hadn't been built yet but did you get positive feedback?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

The big criticism was for the unrestricted reddit -> lemmy mirroring, not the two-way bridging. The idea to have two-way bridging was better received, but I didn't get to work on it until now that I received the grant from NLNet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I see, well, sorry for being so negative. I'd be curious how it pans out. There are a few small subreddits that maybe I'd be interested in bridging but I'm not sure how the redditors will respond either. I guess now that you have funding there's nothing to lose?

Edit: if this does end up happening I do have a specific low traffic one in mind

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

Tbf I'm not so sure how I feel about posts/comments being federated to reddit. I left for a reason. At least they won't be able to harvest my data but idk if I really want to even post there anymore.

Would it be that I have to avoid certain communities or certain instances that are federated with reddit, or would there be a way to choose per account, post, or comment?

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

The idea of two way bridging now is to have only as an option for community ambassadors and they will be sent as DM to users on Reddit, to let them know about the response here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Ah gotcha, so very optional it sounds. Well cool!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The problem is this dilutes the comments.

If you have 2 posts and one of them has a comment, people might see that comment and join in on the conversation, also the human OP gets a notification about the comment and is likely to reply. What Lemmy needs is more comments not more posts.

But with bot posts you have 1000 posts and maybe 1 of them has a comment but no one will ever see it, people will see the community has lots of posts but no comments and that isn't interesting, it's just a glorified RSS feed at that point.

Communities are supposed to be comprised of people not bots. The Google definition of "community":

a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

There are a few communities with auto content bots.

There's more content, but look at the way Reddit communities interact with that content.

Mostly just a mob saying the clever comment a commenter is expected to post that 100 other people have already commented.

I'm much more comfortable with Lemmy growing into itself organically than trying to turn it into something like Reddit.

I do also like that there was a subreddit for everything, so I started a community here for animorphs, and I'll probably start other niche communities.

I think building what you want to see here is key.

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

What you are proposing is basically half of what I've done with fediverser and https://alien.top. The bots reposting content were regarded by the majority (or by the loud minority) as "not a good idea".

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

Re: community for Archer and/or any community you think is missing. Please sign up to https://fediverser.network and open a community request. I am automating the process of community creation and I will use the requests from there as the starting point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Told me there was an error. Probably because my reddit account is banned.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Sounds like something @[email protected] might be interested in...

Leveraging bots is an idea which holds a lot of promise, though it must be treated with care so it can support human interaction and not replace it.