this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Man, I really hope more traffic starts heading into some of the more niche communities because getting a new thread every day or there and getting 1 or 2 replies - if that - is not how you sustain a site.
Are there really that few people into cars or engineering or DIY stuff on Lemmy?! Where the fuck are my fellow car and tinkering nerds at? And no one does projects around the house? So few posts in some of the home owner communities as well.
We really need more bread-stapled-to-trees content. That shit held Reddit up
What are we waiting for guys? Get your beads and let's head outside!
I think part of the problem is finding communities.
I search for things, but they all look so small I assume that can't be the proper one and end up not joining it. I'm not convinced I'm seeing the full list of what's out there.
So much this! Can there really be only a dozen or so posts in a community as wide as cars? Like seriously? I must have some setting messed up.
This has been super helpful for finding communities outside of my instance lemm.ee, as many of them may not be discoverable without 1st searching for the exact community link
https://lemmyverse.net/communities
That's a really useful site.
I'm not sure why it's showing such a small number when I search for it using my instance. e.g. searching for "games" shows !games@lemmy.world has 83 subscribers, while your link shows 19,400. Is it just showing the number of subscribers from my instance on there, or some number when it was first found by my instance or what?
Yes, that's exactly it. It's an unfortunate product of how the backend works right now, as far as I understand it. I don't think there is a way to see the total sum of subscribers to a community from all instances right now. I think the issue has been raised on GitHub, though.
Okay. I'm going to be stupid and ask the basic question
I'm on lemm.ee and my feed is interesting enough so if I fuck with it I could make it worse.
But let's say I want to see more of https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy (or something smaller) on my feed how do I do that?
I was going to wait for an app and go from there. But I'm not sure which one has swam to the top of most recommended (I used rif on Reddit and enjoyed that)
Edit: I'm going to try sync. I'll work it out from that
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !asklemmy@lemmy.ml
True, I think the "lemmy is so confusing to join" concerns are overblown (just make an account?), but admittedly the community finding part is... not intuitive. People really aren't seeing everything that's out there through the standard search if their instance isn't federated with the instance where the target community is hosted, or no one on their instance has searched for that community before. Having to go offsite for tools to find communities is a poor experience.
I'll message my dude Mark to join up, mother fucker loves anything mechanical.
Looking forward to having Mark on here
I also choose that guy's Mark
Where tf is Mark?!?!
I am excited for Mark's presence!
Only Mark can save us now.
Is Mark single?
No response dude, he's stonewallin us. We might have to get creative.
Most of us are probably computer nerds right now.... And I think a lot of people are afraid of posting their own post. It's safer to just comment. But Lemmy is a very friendly community, so I think maybe people need to adjust from reddit a bit.
If you are reading this and haven't made a post, make one now. :) Even if it's just about asking why nobody posts in a specific community. Usually gets replies.
I have. And it did indeed get replies. Great! Then everything went dead again. Not so great.
Think we have to be the change we want to see. I try to post some interesting link every day but it's harder maybe to find good car or tinker articles.
I am afraid of posting because everyone is friendly and I post hostile stuff. Willtry to post more tho.
There are dozens of us!
Yeah, this is my experience with Lemmy so far: it has replaced the "all" experience for me, but all my hobby / interests subs are completely dead.
That's ok though, because that's how Reddit started too. They didn't add subreddits from the start. So as long as it is providing an /all experience then I don't see why it shouldn't grow from there.
Please give the names of the communities. I'm not a home owner, but I love cars, DIY and tinkering :)
Yeeaah, where are these car communities? I'd post in them!
https://lemmyverse.net/communities?query=cars
Are you me?
I think the biggest problem with bootstrapping niche communities is that people interested in those topics have to search for and find the communities. There are a few resources for finding new communities such as https://lemmyverse.net/communities and the Reddit migration community, but it takes some effort.
I found this community finder a few days ago, and its really helped me find what I'm looking for
Yes and it doesn't help that communities change servers or something and apparently if you don't change the settings you lose them from your subscribed list.
Seems like a rather shortsighted way of doing things if you ask me.
Also someone posted that the same name can be used on multiple instances, so like do you have to subscribe to all of them? Why have so many? Why would that be allowed? Makes little sense.
That's just a consequence of decentralization. That's why all names are qualified by the instance name as well. It's not perfect, but we'll, on Reddit if someone picked the sub name you wanted then you're sol and have to choose a different name, so there's pros and cons to each. Simply subscribe to the most active version of the community you're interested in and network effects will pick the winner.
Link to these communities.
What are some of those communities you're in for cars and tinkering? I was subscribed to both of those topics on reddit and am looking to join. I think there are probably lots like me who are here but not quite up and running.
I used the Communities link and searched for cars and DIY and engineering and subed to any of the ones which seem to have even a little bit of traffic (in the hopes that maybe things would increase eventually). For car ones, literally just "Cars" and "electric vehicles" are the only real one I bothered to sub to. Tried looking for Subaru or WRX stuff and that came up basically empty. For tinkering there is "3d Printing" and "woodworking" but I think the woodworking one is moving servers so it might disappear. Also "Machinist" but there's no traffic in that one. Which is the case for far too many of the ones that come up.
I think part of it is a discovery problem. Which, I know, I don't want some algorithm telling me what content to look at, but it's tough to find all the stuff I'm interested in just by searching.
Those niche communities will remain dead for years (assuming Lemmy grows and doesn't die). It takes a long time to build these up.
Seems like every major transition from social media platform reduces that length of time for niche communities. It also took Reddit a while to get there as well. But people are already looking for identical communities on lemmy, like the tree ents
We're near critical mass and the more we share the apps and website, it'll pull more people in. There's some resistance to leaving Reddit for many, but not much.
I think the main subs are at a sustainable level, but not the niche subs. But Lemmy needs more than just politics and general news and complaining about Reddit to sustain itself.
I agree completely and I think those niche subs will fill out as we grow.
is it just me or is a lot of what a see are Linux/tech users mostly on lemmy, perhaps that could be why some niche communities haven't blossomed here yet. I'm really big into metalcore music, but so far, there really isn't the same type of community that rivals the Reddit metalcore version.
There are sooooo many Linux folks here, it's crazy. Which is fine if that's what they want to use, but yeah this site has certain groups that overwhelm others.
Agreed. Having a nice front page with a whole bunch of things is great, but not having those niche communities is rough even doing the transition
I'm right here, where are you guys? Still looking for a good homeowner and DIY community on lemmy.
Homeassistant, HomeImprovement and woodworking are the only ones that I found that are mildly related and even then the traffic there is sparse.
Suggestion: create a post in a niche community, and then cross post into a large one.