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HipPriest ,

From a user point of view there's definitely that initial rush of 'wow, this group looks great!' to scanning across to see 0 posts, 0 comments, 0 users access feeling sad...

That's not too say that these should necessarily be removed but it's a lot harder to get people in to niche communities. Unless you outright went into the Reddit equivalent and said politely you were trying to start one here. But they'd probably be happy in Reddit by this stage so...

Bozicus ,

This might actually be a good time to invite people from Reddit, while the new unpopular decisions are still fresh in people’s minds…

Pandantic ,
@Pandantic@kbin.social avatar

I did this while the whole API thing was happening and only a couple people liked and joined, and one user said “what’s going on with Reddit?”

Bozicus ,

Tough crowd, I guess. :-(. But you did have a couple people join, which is a couple people more than would have joined before. That’s not zero.

We’re all used to these massive platforms with 9-digit numbers of users, but there’s no need to be that big for everyone to have a good experience. I doubt anyone on Reddit regularly interacted with more than a tiny fraction of the total userbase, even if they hung out in the big subs.

Pandantic ,
@Pandantic@kbin.social avatar

Yeah, but the sub I made a replacement for was small and specialized, but the super low numbers here don’t really facilitate a good community because most of the content was people telling their stories. I’m not running back to Reddit by any means, but I do miss that community (r/Narcolepsy if anyone’s curious).

Bozicus ,

That’s definitely a case where absolute numbers matter, yeah. I miss the shared-experience subs most, too, though there’s a surprising amount of stuff here already. You might try posting about narcolepsy in some of the broader health [or whatever category you’d put it in] communities, and see who’s there. That’s the kind of thing people might not expect to find at all at this point.

But I think a lot of people are talking about hobby communities, which can be made active by either a large number of people who post rarely, or a smaller number who post frequently, without having to change the overall content very much (I think a lot of people who share any projects could share more projects than they do). The number of people required for “critical mass “ in a forum is a lot lower than people think, and also, a lot more affected by who the people are, and the climate of the community. It’s something I (and I’m sure many others) remember from before massive platforms existed, but apparently it is not obvious to people who didn’t see it. Different experiences, different internet, but I think the essential desire for community is the same, and small communities can flourish in the same way.

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