this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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New Communities

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A place to post new communities all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion.

Rules

The rules may be more established as time goes on, but it's important to have a foundation to work on.

1. Follow the rules of Lemmy.world - These rules are the same as Mastodon.world's rules, which can be found here.

2. Include a community title and description in your post title. - A following example of this would be New Communities - A place to post new communities all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion.

3. Follow the formatting. - The formatting as included below is important for people getting universal links across Lemmy as easily as possible.

Formatting

Please include this following format in your post:

[link text](/c/[email protected])

This provides a link that should work across instances, but in some cases it won't

You should also include either:

[email protected]

or instance.com/c/community

FAQ:

Q: Why do I get a 404?

A: At least one user in an instance needs to search for a community before it gets fetched. Searching for the community will bring it into the instance and it will fetch a few of the most recent posts without comments. If a user is subscribed to a community, then all of the future posts and interactions are now in-sync.

Q: When I try to create a post, the circle just spins forever. Why is that?

A: This is a current known issue with large communities. Sometimes it does get posted, but just continues spinning, but sometimes it doesn't get posted and continues spinning. If it doesn't actually get posted, the best thing to do is try later. However, only some people seem to be having this problem at the moment.

Image Attribution:

Fahmi, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

If you create a community, please try and populate it with content. I see a lot of new communities with 0-1 posts from the mod. That's not nearly enough to get people engaged - users are going to see that it's a ghost town and leave.

If you have enough interest to create a community, you probably know something about the subject matter, so PLEASE add some posts (5-10 would be a good start). Maybe some questions to get people talking, even popular reposts from other sites. It sucks shouting into a void, but if you don't do it, everyone else will also be shouting into a void.

Also please consider whether you need to create a community! When there are 100 million users of the site, there may be 1000 people who are interested in the same exact niche tabletop RPG as you, but there are <500,000 users here for now, so you'll be lucky to find 10. Consider creating a thread in a broader community (like boardgames) until you have enough people talking in the thread that it gets messy - then it's time to create a separate community.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

Tip for those creating new communities: don't slam your fresh community with loads of new posts all at once. Pace yourselves. Create 2 or 3 new posts initially. Then over the next day pop a new post every few hours.

The net result is the same (content!), but you greatly reduce the risk of people blocking your community. I look a lot in local, sorting by new. And when my feed is deluged by posts for the same brand new community, I tend to block that community because it's smells like spam. And I'm probably not alone in doing this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

I've created a new community /c/housing_bubble_2. How do I get it featured on newcommunities?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)
  • If I created a community, would I become it's (lone) moderator automatically?
  • What consequences, requirements and things would I need to keep in mind as a moderator?
  • Is it advisable to copy-paste content from Reddit to kickstart new communities (given that the link source to the original content was added as well when making new posts)?
[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

f I created a community, would I become it’s (lone) moderator automatically?

Yes. But you can also immediatly appoint new mods and/or un-mod yourself if there are other mods present, so it is easy to give a community away when there are other interested users. It's not a permanent thing.

What consequences, requirements and things would I need to keep in mind as a moderator?

Your community needs to be compatible wih the Fediverse Code of Conduct ... but that boils down to "don't be a dick and don't post illegal stuff" which is pretty much just common sense. It's not exactly hard to follow those rules ;)

Apart from that, you can set whatever rules you want. But keep in mind that the Fediverse is still a lot smaller than reddit, so if you are TOO niche / narrow / strict with the rules, you'll have a hard time finding people who want to engage with your community. General, broad-themed communities with easy-to-follow rules have a bigger chance to thrive.

... and a personal little tip: don't slam down the ban hammer at every opportunity. As a mod you are able to ban, silence, remove or otherwise "punish" people for bad behaviour, but that doesn't mean that you have to do that. It's a lot better to give users the benefit of the doubt, explain instead of punish (as they might not be aware that they did something bad in the first place), and give them a reasonable chance to fix their mistakes on their own before taking action. Post removal, bans and the like should be reserved solely for when the user in question is unwilling to cooperate OR did something obviously super shitty (like threatening other users, using slurs, posting illegal stuff etc.)

Is it advisable to copy-paste content from Reddit to kickstart new communities (given that the link source to the original content was added as well when making new posts)?

Well .... as a last resort, yes. Original content or stuff from non-reddit sources is always preferable as it gives users of the Fediverse an incentive to visit communities here instead of going to reddit, but copypasted content is still better than no content at all, so if you can't find interesting / worthwile stuff elsewhere, then copypasting from reddit is okay-ish too.

OC is still way better tho.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

What might be a good idea is to spend a bit of time each week gathering content and then using https://github.com/RikudouSage/LemmySchedule to spread out the posting throughout the week. Then you can comment on it as it shows up on your feed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wish more people understood this concept in general. Whether it be making communities on a network like this, making discord servers, or even starting a small business -- many times my friends and acquaintances have tried to create something that relies on people to keep it alive, but give no one a reason to want to engage with their platform/service/etc, expecting there to be a flood of people out of nowhere that will cause the system to support itself.

Good talk, needs more exposure.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Thanks! All i can do is try to mention it where I can, and hopefully more people will see this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Great idea, I posted my own photography work here and people joined afterwards. https://lemmy.world/c/macrophotography

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

An idea for people like me that still use reddit alongside lemmy, if you make a post on lemmy, post the lemmy link to the corresponding subreddit. That way if the post gets traction on reddit, all the clicks are leading them to the lemmy post

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Would you mind if I pin this post? I feel like it will be helpful if people can see this post the second they enter this community, to help with the 0-1 post problem

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I wonder if years of fleeing the front page to niche subs conditioned us all to try and make niche subs here when we should just be shooting the breeze right here on front street.

It feels so alien to actually put a run on sentence idea out and not parrot a meme.

That said I made some shit posts on one of the nichest of niche communities.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I hard agree.

In fact, I'm finding that NOT focusing on these small interests, is largely more enjoyable of an experience.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agree with this sentiment. The night's young here, so I think a little consolidation would do more to help us at this point in time

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

That's very true. For example, a general "anime" community would be better, until it gets hard to keep track of what's on the first page - after which some series could splinter off.

Its hard to get people to agree on this though. And I think the other extreme of not letting people create communities isn't the best either.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I understand the desire to automate this sort of thing and I can understand the utility at first but I think we should absolutely be afraid of that in long term use. Instead I think people should use the built in cross posting function to link conversations from different communities. I think this is a great way to build slow diffusion of communities into the fediverse.

See my post here for an example: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/217550

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Yeah, automatic posts drive me away faster than anything. Good point on cross posting though, I just followed your advice. It's pretty much free if your post fits in multiple places and there are lots of nearly empty communities right now.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Another thought: making a community can also be a nice structured incentive to check in on your hobby regularly. I like looking for videos or articles to link to for my yugioh community even though there's not many people subscribed - it gives me an opportunity to interact with and think about the game in different ways than I normally do.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Yes. That's why good literature and good philosophy community. It helps think and read. Also music community for what I listen to. Collaborative playlist hopefully. 🎶👌

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I made [email protected] and I've been thinking about posting once a day so that I don't exhaust my content to post, but is that enough? Should I try to make a couple posts a day?

r/vans is in the top 5% of subreddit size. I've got one subscriber other than myself! Haha

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also to everyone creating a community, it takes time. Don't get too discouraged if uptake is slow!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Its not about how popular it is, its about having a space to talk to fellow like minded people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, this can't be stressed enough. Expect to be shouting into a void for 2-3 days. That's the price of being an early adopter!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Might be weeks even, this sort of thing really can't be predicted at the very early stages.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm trying to get into the habit of posting everyday, I fell out of it on reddit because it grew so big and would often go nowhere.

Mods rejecting posts willy-nilly, users who sit on /new thinking they can be the gatekeeper, shadowbanning of a post without being informed. It's going to take some time to get used to posting more.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I make a content box and ration it out for good measure.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I only have so many interesting things to say. I don't really want to post for the sake of generating content, so making 5-10 posts right off the bat seems like the wrong way to go about it. I think it'd be better to make one post a day or one every other day or so that anyone who comes in can see that it's recently active.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I am trained in nonstop content generation for steemit.com and Hive.io where being a spammer was the key to success. I would post 100 comments a day and 1 post a day because that was the maximum amount of posts per day. Now on Lemmy it seems my spammy instinct came out and I comment and post dozens of times a day on multiple accounts. 🤐

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, you're right, I'm going to try posting something at a daily cadence to build up content in the communities I made, and hopefully more people will join in.

The only way Lemmy can maintain its momentum is by generating original content.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What is hard too, is if all the posts to get things started are the mods or creator, the same ghost town might occur. It’s hard to tell or know what will be interesting to get people talking so to speak. Some should also be put on the subscribers as well who also have an interest. It’s a double edge sword sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Yes, but if you don't know what people would find interesting, neither would the first few subscribers. It's better to have at least some stuff there (even if it's all posted by you).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I make an effort to comment on interesting posts or links I appreciate! But I haven't had much in terms of inspiration to post (might be because I don't have reliable desktop access rn).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

If you want to crosspost content from reddit automatically use: https://github.com/daniel-lxs/BotIt,
It's intended for links and I wouldn't encourage using it for anything else cause you know, stealing content from others is not good.
But if you need a link aggregator for your community this might do it.

Edit: this is a work in progress, so expect bugs.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sounds like something AI would be good at.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I kind of hate that you're right

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Doesn't matter how you do it - if you can figure out how to automate it, good!