While larger, more general communities are thriving on the Fediverse - I'm missing out on the niche communities ( kbin.social )

Gaming, news, tech, general literature. All of these are somewhat thriving, with a steady influx of posts and comments. At the same time, the userbase is sorely lacking for more niche communities. In my case it'd be stuff like poetry, yoga, religion, linguistics, meditation. Or many other communities I'd doubt they'd form a larger userbase here, at least to the degree that it'd foster good discussions. Communities where there are a larger amount of "normal people", that are not tech-aware, and who have no interest in migrating off centralized corporate solutions. That just want a large space to discuss what they're interested in.

This for me at least, makes it hard to completely leave reddit (or even Facebook and their groups!). Do you think the fediverse will ever reach the point where this would become a non-issue?

exohuman ,
@exohuman@kbin.social avatar

It just takes time for these communities to form.

donuts ,
@donuts@kbin.social avatar

On top of that, we can't expect communities to POOF into existence.

We have to be part of them to build them, which means making them if they don't exist yet as well as posting and commenting in the ones that do exist. I hope that people who are used to lurking on Reddit will go out of their comfort zone a bit and start to participate in fediverse communities so that we can build things up more quickly.

sadreality ,

Yesterday lurkers are going to need to be today's commenters and posters!

I see y'all lurkin'
Not postin'

defeater ,

I feel attacked

sadreality ,

You are being drafted. We are sending you out to colonize the fediverse!

metaStatic ,

I'm doing my part

Usually_Lurker ,
@Usually_Lurker@lemmy.world avatar

And my axe! something something name checks out.

TechDiver ,

yesssir!

NotTheOnlyGamer ,
@NotTheOnlyGamer@kbin.social avatar

They're just following rules, man:

Rule 33. Lurk More - It's never enough.

And yes, the pool is still closed.

samus12345 ,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

Patrollin’ and tryna catch me lurkin’ dirty

TechDiver ,

i was a reddit lurker for 10 years. i didnt even have an account. today i made my second comment here. hello world

sadreality ,

Chad!

Orbitrix ,

Yea I was a prolific commenter but I think I only created maybe 6-8 posts in 14 years on reddit, and certainly never created a community. So I might have to step up. Regardless of reddit, I absolutely love the idea of the fediverse and the decentralized nature of it, so I really would like to see it succeed. It really does have to be the way forward on the internet to avoid corporate interests.

warden ,
@warden@kbin.social avatar

Same here. The voice in the back of my head says "be the change you want to see in the world", then I'm like "nah that's too much work"...

DrNeurohax ,
@DrNeurohax@kbin.social avatar

Same. I think we need some way to coordinate the initial burst of content for some of the smaller subs. I hate to say it, but maybe we need to assign "homework" - Request (not require) new subscribers to contribute unique stories or info relevant to the mag/comm on some type of schedule.

Something like:
"As we try to grow this new community, we want to hear from you. We're asking (not requiring) all new subscribers to start a new post within their first week covering some aspect of the topic they find personally interesting or that they feel could help others. Just add "(1P)" to the title of the post. It doesn't matter if it's something you said elsewhere, if you're new to the entire topic and just want to post a bunch of questions, you have a funny story to tell, or have a super niche specialty.

Also, we should consider having more moderator-level users in subs to reduce the burden of moderation. It's more daunting if you're asked to be one of 3 mods than it is to be one of 15. We should also look into incentivizing moderation duties, but there's probably a much longer discussion to be had about that.

Izzgo ,

This sounds like a great tradition to encourage and support. On Reddit I was pretty danged chatty & responsive, but almost never started my own post. Maybe at most once a year. I hereby commit to upping my participation game to include some actual posts to some of the quiet magazines I've subbed to. Thanks for the push.

DrNeurohax ,
@DrNeurohax@kbin.social avatar

And YOUR exuberance has inspired me to commit to upping my post game. I was never a big poster on Reddit, but mostly because I just didn't want to deal with the contrarian and amateur professionals fallout. It might be best to focus on the niche communities, since that's where the real valuable stuff exists on Reddit.

Good luck out there!

NomadJones ,

What is the consensus on the etiquette of creating new communities/magazines with the names of the still extant old subreddits (particularly when you're not a mod of the old subreddit)?

donuts ,
@donuts@kbin.social avatar

I'm not really sure... but the way I see it it's probably fair game.

Communities aren't something that somebody (reddit, specific moderators, etc.) owns, they are just concepts that people latch onto. And, for me at least, I would rather see popular communities exist here if people want them to, especially since you can have multiple communities under the exact same name on different servers in the fediverse.

In other words, if you want to bring over a specific reddit community I think you should just do it.

flta ,

I was on Reddit for over 10 years and it only became a place for niche communities when they got rid of defaults. Kbin/Fediverse will get there in a few years.

SunburyStudios ,

I personally think that's when the front page turned to crap. It was nice, curated, not insanely covered in alt-subs with bad actors.

hariette ,
@hariette@kbin.social avatar

Yup!

ForestOrca ,
@ForestOrca@kbin.social avatar

Redifugee here. I got here and created a community for Santa Fe, NM, USA (@SantaFe ), and another for Photobiomodulation/ Red Light Therapy (@photobiomodulation ). LoL, it's ain't much, but it's honest work.

victron ,
@victron@kbin.social avatar

Bro, the boom is still under way, be patient.

drumdonuttea ,
@drumdonuttea@kbin.social avatar

I noticed there didn't exist a niche community that I'm passionate about so... I created it! It's like any other new platform, it just takes time.

TriLevelSync ,

I really want to take this attitude but I just don’t have time to become a moderator.

borzoiteeth ,
@borzoiteeth@kbin.social avatar

My hope is once a community has built up enough that I can dump the mod powers on someone else.

TriLevelSync ,

I’m not mad at that. I’ll probably hold off until there are decent mod tools then start seeding some niche places.

borzoiteeth ,
@borzoiteeth@kbin.social avatar

Best of luck getting your old niché communities back!

eleitl ,

Delegating is a good approach. Picking people you can trust is however not easy.

borzoiteeth ,
@borzoiteeth@kbin.social avatar

It's not easy at all! However there is less pressure with the federation system now. If the community goes way off base one can make another.

dumples ,
@dumples@kbin.social avatar

I've been pretty disappointed with the DnD community so far. So I've been trying to post a lot about the new playtest material in a magazine I want to grow. So far it's like 5 of posting often but I hope the engagement will bring more

ArtieShaw ,
@ArtieShaw@kbin.social avatar

I think what you're doing so far is key. And it's really the hard part. The rest is just being a friendly place.

No one wants to be one of those 5 people howling into the void when something is getting started, but it needs to be done to demonstrate that people are willing to participate. You might also consider posting easy polls or open ended questions to invite engagement. (If you haven't)

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

I just came across https://ttrpg.network/, a Lemmy instance that's specialized toward tabletop roleplaying games. Haven't explored it much but I suspect we'll be seeing this pattern more in the future - whole instances devoted to a particular topic, with the specialized subgenres being communities on there.

NotTheOnlyGamer ,
@NotTheOnlyGamer@kbin.social avatar

The more that happens, the more fractured the community becomes, and the easier it will be for a new centralized corporate platform to suck up users. That's how Reddit started in the first place, and how Twitter started. Heck, it's even how LJ started. You look at fractured elements of communities, and build a site for the whole community to come together.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

Except that the "for the whole community to come together" part is already provided by the Fediverse, built right in to the foundations. There's no "service" for the next Reddit to provide to these separate forums because they can already freely exchange with each other. They are not fractured.

NotTheOnlyGamer ,
@NotTheOnlyGamer@kbin.social avatar

Sure, just show me the combined DnD/D&D or TTRPG community | magazine | group. It doesn't exist. There are a hundred, or a thousand, individual groups. That's not a whole community. That's a thousand fractal shards, each one with its own voices, independent of one another. Yes, occasionally they do share content or users, but that happens only rarely and with effort. TTRPG Network, Lemmy.ML, KBin.Social, Mastodon.Social, etc., all have various groups dedicated to RPGs. These groups are not able to be combined.

The inability of these groups to combine and independently organizing is a severe weakness of ActivityPub.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

What you're asking for never existed. Reddit had multiple subreddits devoted to those subjects. Forcing there to be only "one true" community for any given subject is antithetical to the whole concept of free association and free speech, there's always going to be people who disagree with how the subject matter has been divided up and how it's being moderated. They'll want to create their own groups.

You're probably wanting something like Reddit's "multireddit" functionality. I know of this issue for Lemmy, with some links to related issues in the comments. Kbin has one here.

NotTheOnlyGamer ,
@NotTheOnlyGamer@kbin.social avatar

No, what I want is r/RPG - a single, central hub for RPG-related topics. Yes, there are also subs for RPGDesign, DnD, DM advice, etc., but RPG serves as both a central community and as a hub for all those more specific groups. There is no way to have a “hub community” on the Fediverse, or to efficiently find all groups which share interests. Groups which had a “largest community” on Reddit will now find themselves shattered and separated. Sure, you can say Federation will save them, but it really won’t. All federation means is that now instead of one community, there’s one per server, and you have to know to subscribe to each and every one of them.

Sure, there’s Mastodon’s Lists feature, which works like a Multireddit, but that’s honestly a lot of effort, and doesn’t cover Lemmy or kbin posts like this one. We need a way to automerge common communities, at least in the user’s view.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

What you want never existed in the first place. Not only because of those other subreddits you mention, but because Reddit was not the entire sum total of RPG discussion on the Internet. The RPGNet Forums, TheRPGSite forums, RPG PUB, EN World forums, RPG Codex, and innumerable other smaller forums were scattered all around the Internet. You never saw them or their content because none of them are "federated", and so you thought Reddit was the center of the RPG universe.

We now have an opportunity to restructure how diverse separate fora like that can work. If they were all federated then you'd be able to seamlessly view content from all of them, and communicate back without needing to have a separate login at each and every one of them.

If you really want to continue treating /r/RPG as the center of the universe and ignoring all the other fora, well, these new ones on the Fediverse merely add a few more onto the enormous list you were already unknowingly ignoring.

NotTheOnlyGamer ,
@NotTheOnlyGamer@kbin.social avatar

I was actually on the RPGNet forums for several years, but the topics, mechanics, and games which I care about became less-discussed over time.

curiosityLynx ,

I was part of the Linguistics subreddit, but I don't feel qualified to open a kbin magazine or lemmy community for it. While I did have linguistics as my major in university, I had to quit after getting my bachelor's credits but before finishing my thesis (due to depression).

I edited loads of my old comments to suggest people join kbin, but it seems the mods of /r/linguistics hate that. They were all removed with no exceptions.

Gull ,

This post is helpful for highlighting some of the reasons the migration is slow. People who want to chart the future of the Fediverse need to listen to this kind of feedback and think about how to fix the pipeline.

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski ,

Hi there. I wasn't in the linguistic community in Reddit, but I am a linguist and I would be willing to create one here and moderate it. Linguistics is very broad. What were the topics discussed in the reddit community? I am a psycholingusit, so the focus of my contributions would be mostly in that field, and I imagine mostly scholarly content being shared and discussed, but I would like to know what someone like you, who used to be a member, would expect from such a community.

EDIT: There's already one! : https://kbin.social/m/linguistics

curiosityLynx ,

The posts I saw fell into these rough categories:

  • Sharing articles that are interesting or important to know
  • People asking questions about linguistics (a frequent one was people asking about what some kind of feature is called in the field, kind of "what do I have to search for to learn more about this?")
  • Linguistic studies that were featured in general media (as long as neither the study nor the media coverage is garbage)
  • Stickied FAQ post and a regular general questions post
  • People sharing their own work that they think others might find interesting
  • Podcast episodes and YouTube videos about linguistics that are worth promoting

I think the only things related to linguistics that weren't welcome were posts where people come up with folk etymologies, spreading disproven theories or claiming one language being superior than another.

Conlanging: You'd sometimes see questions about linguistics in general (usually typology) by a conlanger, but I don't think I ever saw anything other than that. I would guess that links relating to conlangs/conlanging were deleted, with a suggestion to post them to /r/conlangs instead.

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski ,

Thanks for the info 👍

delirium ,

why do you doubt it? there are thousands of new people flooding in daily. set up the mags and post for engagement? sounds like a lot of work but I understand what you're missing, my communities are not here either, but I'm going to do my best to make a space for them.

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