Fedigrow

For [email protected], it's a big enough category that it should be more active than it is. The corresponding subreddits for JRPGs and retro gaming aren't super far apart at 255k and 404k subscribers respectively, but [email protected] is more active by orders of magnitude here on Lemmy.

I've started to focus more on discussion prompts in the community as news isn't enough; the JRPG community has been an excellent news aggregator for over a year now (although it's a slow news time for the genre currently). I'd love to hear from other niche communities about what's worked and what hasn't to drive engagement.

I wonder if instance admins should start closing old/redundant communities, just so the good ones are easier to find

I think part of it is that searching isn't intuitive. Some of the apps make it easier, but some are bad at it. The web interface for a newcomer isn't set up where you can just scan the page and see a friendly spot to go at it. You have to look for it. It isn't hard to find, and anyone familiar with the internet should know where to look, but it is a barrier.

I say that because I've had people irl complain about it when trying to use lemmy for the first time.

I think that there are a few things to consider here:

1. Lemmy has a smaller userbase than Reddit so that does mean that we can't have all those niche communities. There are simply not enough people active here to fill a community like /r/writerdecks
2. If you are starting a community, you have to do the effort to post there. Nobody is posting to a dead community with 2 subscribers and 1 post from 7 month ago. Be active, be kind and post stuff. People will come if that stuff is good. This will help all of Lemmy - federation is great, but you want to read cool stuff and that is bringing people here
3. There might be room for ... an algorithm. We currently can sort the global feed by "Active", "New", "Last 6 hours" and so on, but there might also be an opportunity for an option like "popular posts in smaller communities".

I went to lemmy.world, the biggest community, searched the community list for my various interests, and picked one to subscribe to from there, generally favoring the largest community for it. Then I subbed to [email protected]. That's how I did and do community discovery.