Back with newsgroups the general rule was to go from general to specific. You start with a general discussion group and when discussions about video games get annoying you create a games group. If then there are too many Baldur’s Gate discussions you create BG. If they are dominated by Baldur’s Gate 3 you create a Baldur’s Gate 3 group. If everyone is fawning over Withers you create a Withers group which of course will be flooded with discussion about the Withers’ tits mod, which shall get its own group.
Meaning you should create a group when demand is there and not the other way around.
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I don’t know, this kind of reasoning seems to create too much empty “content” and not enough real communities. Yeah, creating a bunch of generalist coms will get traffic and engagement, but the people there don’t actually share anything in common, it’s just a time waster.
I don’t want Lemmy to be a time wasting app, I want it to have genuine communities with valuable content instead of endless AskReddit, AITA, AIO, etc etc etc. Therefore, I’m of the opinion that people should create communities about their hobbies and create high quality content there, which will drive demand. If the community ends up too specific, they can always just cross post to a more generic one as well.Hello,
I see you commented on !movies@lemm.ee. Would you qualify it as a community with discussion, or just a time waster?
I guess movies would be a specific enough topic for me, but what I mean is people with a passion for, say, film noir shouldn’t wait for film noir fans to show up on a thread, they should just create the content and hope the others find it.
I want to be clear that I’m not judging any “time waster” type of communities. It’s fun to discuss random questions during downtime at work, it’s just not where a strong community is formed. Reddit lives on through everything precisely because of the niche communities, not because of r/pics or somethingI suppose part of the problem with many nicher community concepts is that on here, for many, it is often screaming into the abyss. You can’t keep a flow of content going in many cases. Meaning it just sits there quietly. And if someone down the line happens to join lemmy and be interested, it’s conceivable they’ll see the small community you made, think its dead, and then make their own. I think niche communities can work, but there needs to be a way for the owner to post new content every day without just seeming to talk to themselves.
I actually think the answer to this is that lemmy needs some kind of built-in categorisation system.
There are some people I have noticed just screaming into the void and I somehow stumbled on their community by chance. If I have any interest I follow and try to post too, and even if I don’t have interest I at least toss them a quick “I see you, community building is hard, good luck!” message. I cannot lift up every community by myself, but I can at least try to help a bit with anything I fall into that I have at least a mild interest in.
That’s what the weekly fedigrow post is for too, feel free to redirect them there, it might help them
Yeah, I was holding off because I’m still compiling the list lol, that is why I only ever popped it in that comment and not in a new thread yet. Want to find gaming genre communities that aren’t just my personal Subscribed list to add, that feels selfish otherwise
Piefed has topics: https://piefed.social/topic/tv-movies
Who adds to them?
Instance admins
Yeah television@lemm.ee isn’t there so its a bit outdated (as is television@lemmy.world still there) so its very outdated. I get the concept tho.
Oh, I forgot about this site. I certainly can use it to do proof-of-concept for ideas here, but I’m thinking more of beyond me. A wider-used tool (and imo with more/better categories)
with more/better categories
Users can create feeds too: https://piefed.social/feeds
Absolutely. It’s just that redditors are used to the existing order and want to see it replicated in lemmy immediately, jumping over the underlying steps of community growing.
Agree. Most of them weren’t there when reddit started and just think their niche communities were always there. Before everything there was just /r/technology. Then that splintered. And again, and again. I think same thing happens here. When communities get big enough they splinter.
When communities get big enough they splinter.
The issue is that community don’t get big enough because people want to replicate the niche communities from the get-go, without ensuring a sufficient user base for the niche
The problem is that trying to talk about very specific things in a general community will just result in silence if no one in the general community knows/cares about the very specific thing.
On Reddit, you can type /r/nameofanygame and find a sub populated by people who also found it that way. This obviously cannot work on Lemmy, not outside of a few very very very popular games. But for games that are too niche to have fandom spaces here, directing the niche fandom elements to !games@sh.itjust.works isn’t likely to fit there either. Some of my favorite games are titles that I might just literally be the only person on Lemmy who plays them, so I just don’t think there’s any kind of space for them, general or specific.
I play a lot of Riichi Mahjong, and I saw that !mahjong@lemmy.nerdcore.social already exists, so when I see some interesting content I try tossing it over there in the hopes that if I keep doing so, maybe at some point more people will eventually join me. Would I be better off posting to !boardgames@sopuli.xyz because generalist good, specific bad? Probably not, I doubt anyone there is interested in deep technical What Would You Discard? analysis. Maybe the most surface level casual/beginner content might fit in, I could crosspost a basic How to Play tutorial there, but content that is too specific doesn’t make sense in that kind of community.
Some of my favorite games are titles that I might just literally be the only person on Lemmy who plays them, so I just don’t think there’s any kind of space for them, general or specific.
What genre are those games? There is
- !jrpg@lemmy.zip
- !citybuilders@sh.itjust.works
- !tycoon@lemmy.world
- !strategy@lemmy.world
- !soulslike@lemmy.zip
- !arcaderacing@lemm.ee
So maybe there is a genre category that your game could belong to?
I play a fair amount of stuff, some mainstream enough to post here, some not. But genre-wise I’d say my biggest favorites are fighting games and versus puzzle games.
!fgc@lemmy.world exists, and I do post there occasionally. But the games I play (Skullgirls, Them’s Fightin’ Herds, Under Night In-Birth) are the niche-within-a-niche, I’ve drifted off from the wider mainstream FGC.
Versus puzzle games… I’m the guy who been very disgruntled over the fact that the genre as a whole is dead and buried. There’s just not much of a community for these games anywhere anymore.
Last year I published a video essay about how Sega’s mismanagement slowly killed Puyo Puyo. I did post that one to a few communities here, because “In-depth video essay about a game you’ve never played but will still find interesting by the end of this video” is a genre that can fit into a general space.
But that kind of video essay is the only type of content that I think I could post here. I don’t expect anyone to take an interest in competitive highlights, coaching, analysis, etc. Last week we got some more news about Sega screwing up again, but that’s still not something I’d expect to generate discussion here.
It’s not just how niche the games themselves are, but the distinction between the type of content that fits a general space versus content only hardcore fans will even understand, let alone take an interest in.
Somehow !adventuregames@lemm.ee has also absorbed puzzle games there. Not where I’d think to look but okay.
If you made a puzzle game community I’d totally follow and post whenever I see one.
Sadly I do not really engage with video essays because… ugh, video, I’d rather read an article. Shame, because I wish I could say “I’ll engage with this high quality content!” but truth is I have some I reject on personal tastes too. But I promise there are people who will, even if it is only a few. Speaking as someone trucking on with some communities of like… one other person, and I am lucky to have even gotten them because I was screaming at the void for awhile now.
lol I have been trying to compile a list of all active video game genre communities to release here at some point, thanks for helping me with some I did not know of, here’s what I had so far
- !adventuregames@lemm.ee (also has puzzle and interactive fiction)
- !automationgames@lemmy.zip (replaces dead feddit.de community)
- !citybuilders@sh.itjust.works
- !cozygames@lemmy.world (replaces dead feddit.de community)
- !crpg@lemmy.world
- !dailygames@lemmy.zip (for quick once-a-day web games like Wordle)
- !incremental_games@incremental.social
- !jrpg@lemmy.zip and !jrpg@lemmy.world
- !lifesimulation@lemmy.world
- !otomegames@ani.socialo
- !rhythmgames@lemm.ee
- !shmups@lemmus.org
- !soulslike@lemmy.zip
- !tycoon@lemmy.world
- !visualnovels@ani.social
Depends. There is also value in growing a niche community one post at a time, even if you are the only poster there for weeks or months.
The main risk is community building fatigue when you see another community getting most of the activity.
I stopped starting to grow !photography@discuss.online because of that when I saw that !photography@lemmy.world was getting most of the posts.
I think both ways work. Obviously if there is a demand not being filled, filling it would be good.
But also, sometimes people don’t even know they want a thing until they are presented with it. Example: Funhole.
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I try and join the smaller communities for that reasons. Its nice to see when they catch on and become active.
I agree, but at the same time there is something as community building fatigue when you see another community getting most of the activity.
I stopped starting to grow !photography@discuss.online because of that when I saw that !photography@lemmy.world was getting most of the posts.
Also hopefully by this week-end the LW and aussie.zone delay will be solved (more details on !meta@aussie.zone)
There’s also the other case where you start a comm on a smaller instance, and then later on someone starts the same comm on l.w. and gets by default more activity >_<
Yeah definitely…
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Oh, cool one, I didn’t know about it. Seems quite active too, thanks!
Oh that’s a great idea especially for a pictures community. That’s actually making me think about moving !deus_ex@lemmy.ml to fedia.io
Edit: I don’t think I see any Mastodon or Pixelfed posts there? I see a lot of LW
At this point just moving off .ml might be a reason in itself as there appears to be a large contingent of people who outright refuse to touch anything hosted there. Or maybe those are just a vocal minority, I don’t know.
Or maybe those are just a vocal minority, I don’t know.
Not sure. At this time, the .ml communities are still more active
So I guess some people want to move off .ml, but the majority just prefers to use the most active comms
Yeah I’ve definitely thought of that issue too lol (I didn’t create that community), moving people is hard but maybe that doesn’t matter cause the community is kinda dead anyways
I stopped starting to grow !photography@discuss.online because of that when I saw that !photography@lemmy.world was getting most of the posts.
Do you think there’s a technical reason for this? I wouldn’t expect this considering we have https://lemmy-federate.com/
Maybe it’s just the UX of Lemmy-UI preferring local communities?
The generalist advice only works for topics that are not controversial. If there is any outrage in the discussion talking in the general area will be very negative and never get into the core issue you want to discuss
As someone who runs multiple niche health and diet communities I can literally feel the burn everytime the topic comes up in a general discussion.
Here is a community promo post for a diet community https://hackertalks.com/post/8398344 50% downvotes and 31 comments all negative
You just shouldn’t start a community and expect others to post in it a lot 🤷 Most people are lurkers anyways, and the prolific posters are probably already busy with their own communities. So especially in the beginning, it is yours to carry, so chose a topic you are personally interested in and know enough about to regularly post and make good comments. People will come if the community is worth it, the specialisation doesn’t matter.
People will come if the community is worth it, the specialisation doesn’t matter.
!eurographicnovels@lemm.ee has been kept active by @JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee and the other mod since the creation of the community 2 years ago, so I’m not sure people will come whatever the specialization of the community.
Oh rabbits-- you know something– I will always try to do my best, for BLAZE.
You just shouldn’t start a community and expect others to post in it a lot 🤷
Also, that’s not what the post says. The post says to only fork a niche community once the more generic community sees a lot of content from that niche. It’s not opening a community and waiting for people to magically arrive.
Not easy for a single user to constantly posts content for weeks or even months and still almost nobody else is posting
For some groups there is no visible demand because they are too niche for general discussions.
Do you have any examples in mind?
A good example would be !formula1@lemmy.world. I don’t remember seeing anything about Formula 1 outside of this community, yet it exists, and people have some discussions.
I was also thinking about !flightsim@lemmyfly.org and !xplane@lemmy.world. Theoretically, the chain should look like this: general discussion -> gaming -> flightsim -> xplane. In practice, the last two are so small that it’s hard to imagine them manifesting in a general discussion about games. The example of Baldur’s Gate 3 is way too simplistic given how enormously popular that game is.
Both flightsim communities are practically dead. Does that mean they shouldn’t exist and that they can’t grow without notable demand elsewhere? I don’t know. I want to try and test that hypothesis by adding content. I just know from my experience that when I’m searching for a niche community and see it’s dead, I drop it. But if there’s even minimal activity, I might subscribe and participate.
I think what needs to be tacked on is you need the generalized communities to point to the niches. Sure, you can start the formula1 or flightsim community immediately - that group already exists outside the fediverse and you just need to give them a new location. Sure.
But for your niche communities, you need the general community to be a launching off point for the others. You need the gamer who’s interested in different controllers to see the other flightsim community exists and decide to follow it too. You need to give the average person a way to discover the community without already knowing explicitly that it exists.
Otherwise, you’ll only attract people who are migrating from one service to another(and doing a 1:1 swap of their communities) and not reach the general audience. A lot of hobbies or communities I’ve joined were because of someone else mentioning it in a different but related community.
Think about people in general: no one starts by saying they want to program data tables in Python. They start with a general interest in computers and move on from there.
Otherwise, you’ll only attract people who are migrating from one service to another(and doing a 1:1 swap of their communities) and not reach the general audience. A lot of hobbies or communities I’ve joined were because of someone else mentioning it in a different but related community.
I don’t see how we contradict each other. I didn’t say we shouldn’t create general communities. My point was that we don’t necessarily need to wait for a visible demand in a general community because it might never manifest itself for smaller things, although people might be silently looking for them.
We don’t really disagree. I think you should make the communities. But I also think they won’t grow until they’re being mentioned on the general community.
FYI, lemmyfly.org is on sale, the instance doesn’t exist anymore
If you want to keep !xplane@lemmy.world active, you can promote it on !communitypromo@lemmy.ca, and probably other flight communities like !aviation@lemmy.zip
on sale
I’d probably use “for sale” in this context. “On sale” colloquially means “available at reduced price”, and GoDaddy’s price for lemmyfly (4.9k$) seems pretty high for a .org.
On Reddit there’s a couple (animal) trapping subreddits, one of which I run. While very active they typically have less than 100 people in them.
I could see a something like a generalist Hobbies communities leading to the creating of a more niche Trapping one
I don’t think “hobbies” makes sense as a generalist community. No one is interested in “hobbies” as a general concept, they’re interested in their own specific hobby. Trying to consolidate completely unrelated hobbies into one space in the hopes that more people will subscribe won’t work if those people have no common ground to discuss together in that space.
At this moment, there are at least a few manual hobbies that could coexist on the same community
They don’t have to be as interested in the other ones as their own niche, but at least they can share space and activity.
You could potentially have an “outdoor hobbies” with fishing, camping, animal trapping etc.
You kind of already see this when all of those hobbies can post to !imadethis@lemm.ee
I think something you’re missing is that “we create communities as needed” has an inverse as well. “We delete communities as needed”. Sometimes you create the general topic and it’s so general that all of the niches overtake it. When that happens and the general just isn’t needed, you prune it. No community has to exist forever and sometimes it’s only purpose will be as a reference point to others. And sometimes even that isn’t needed anymore and it vanishes too.
It’s a constantly changing, dynamic system. The point is that it should cater to what’s needed/being used at the moment.
I can definitely see the value in this. Just to use !dcstudios@lemmy.world as an example, there’s still little enough activity as it is. And if they tried to create separate communities for every series and movie and cartoon like it was on Reddit, instead of just one community with not enough activity, there would be 10+ completely dead communities.
And on that note, I’m still keeping an eye out for this general alternative community that was being floated the other day. Because while it’s nice having communities specifically for punk, goth, industrial etc, I think that right now it would be even nicer to have a general purpose alt community where people can discuss anything from music to style to attitude.
general alternative community that was being floated the other day.
Did anything happen on that regard? @Sergio@slrpnk.net @CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
You mean !gpral@hilariouschaos.com ? Yeah that’s there, I think when it was announced a lot of people disparaged it bc the community is on a pro-MAGA server, looks like the announcements were even removed (details).
One problem with an “alternative” general community is that, say, punk plays a big part of some people’s identity and life philosophy but they may not identify as “alternative”.
Yeah I saw that the thread had been deleted but before that, something gave me the impression that it was going to get remedied or moved to another instance. Pretty disappointing to hear that seems to just be the end of that, to say the least.
@CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al and @Sergio@slrpnk.net (can’t ping Alice as my instance defederates HC), would you want to move a general alt community elsewhere? @Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone , would you like to help building the community?
Nah, we just rebooted !gothindustrial@lemmy.world and have several daily posters now, I’d rather build on that than move and start all over again. Besides, there’s a lot of “alt” stuff that doesn’t really speak to me, so if everyone moved I’d just stay behind and wait for it to come to life again. (In fact, being alone on a dead community is kinda goth, lel.)
Hey, if you’re looking for communities to merge, !punk@lemmy.world and !punk_rock@lemmy.ca are both mildly alive, and their mods have been absent for a year or two.
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Thanks Alice has worked really hard on her community and there’s loads of posts there, so it’s not moving. Starting from scratch would throw that away. 😊
It entirely depends on whether you want to be a shepherd or a… I’m struggling a bit to come up with a metaphore that isn’t loaded somehow. Let’s go with “blogger”.
But if there’s a topic you want to discuss, log content for, and write your own articles about, there’s little reason to not create your own little space for it all that others can choose to participate in. Such a space can attract new users to the network who aren’t currently interested in Linux news and possum pics.
But creating a space that looks like a bunch of link spam with no human engagement can look fake, and dissuade participation, so you need to really put some effort into not looking like a bot.
It’s easier to fork an active community. Being a mod is work, but it doesn’t require you to write 3000+ words per week to try and catch attention from an unknown population.
Yeah I generally agree with the OP but this is basically how I use !deus_ex_randomizer@lemmy.mods4ever.com
I don’t really expect other people to post there (but it would be nice!). But making that many posts in any other community would just be self promotion spam.
Or !stauf_mansion@lemmy.mods4ever.com maybe didn’t need to be created but that’d be a lot of posts for any more general community like !adventuregames@lemm.ee or !dosgaming@retrolemmy.com or !dosgaming@lemmy.world or any of the generic gaming/games communities.
It’s definitely fine if you’re okay to be the sole poster on that community.
Based on the weekly fedigrow posts, it seems like the majority of people still prefer when they are other posters, as it kind of relieves them of the weight to keep the community active on their own.
I think it’s a discussion with having, but I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all answer to it. I think as a default, it’s probably a good idea. Don’t create more specific communities when more general ones will work.
As an example, Reddit has /r/Brisbane, /r/movingtobrisbane, and /r/brisbanetrains. But there’s only !brisbane@aussie.zone (there’s also a trains one, but it’s dead and irrelevant for these purposes, IMO), and I think this is for the best. Anyone interested in the more specific content can easily go to the more general community, and there’s likely to be at least a passing interest in that anyway.
But there are times when a more general community is inappropriate, because the audience for one of the specific parts is not interested at all in the other specific parts.
And I think your BG3 example is a good one of the latter. A general gaming community is not a good place for detailed discussions about a particular game, because most people in a general gaming community aren’t interested in that. They’re a good place for announcements about games and larger scale discussions about franchises, developments, and trends in gaming. But not about specific strategies, lore theorising, or patches of specific games.
If you can expect a majority of the audience for a particular Community to be uninterested in a significant amount of content, that’s the sign that a more specific Community should be made, IMO.
This makes sense! I do think if someone is carrying enough love for Withers’ tits that they think they can keep a community active for a while on their own, they should go for it, though.
The traditional art community was just one person posting most of the time for ages. They aren’t doing that anymore, but that one person got it established enough that it still gets regular activity. Even if it hadn’t worked that way, there’s still a cool archive of artists I can go back through.
I think this happens organically.
I agree, this is why I launched only a single community on my new instance called !generalbullshit@lemmitor.com - on instance !generalbullshit@lemmitor.com - federated for all your general bullshiting needs. Post whatever is on your mind, helps if you’re funny.
