Chat

Well the first step is to be proactive and work on building the new community. Use the tools you have at your disposal and your knowledge in the topics you love to add content! Not a great content finder/poster (no shame, I've never been either), then at least engage with what's there. Discuss with the people (they aren't bots here) that are also interested. Foster an environment you want to spend more time in and you'll inevitably do that!

Second, and I'm honestly surprised more people aren't talking about this aspect but for now - POACH. Reddit is not dying or going away the way the confirmation-biased rexxitors would have you believe based on all the death of Reddit style posts (hopefully one day but it's not today, and it's not in the short-to-near term). That means those content communities and circles are still alive, if slightly smaller (hopefully) and people (and definitely Reddits bot army) are likely still keeping them populated. Steal it! Bring that shit over here! Reddit is a link sharing sites primarily, and so is this! Take that link, ctrl-c, ctrl-v baby!

Finally, spread the word! Those that haven't rexxited haven't done so because either they haven't heard about Lemmy/kbin/fediverse, it's too confusing, or they haven't seen an enticing enough reason to. None of those things will change without engaging with them.

Cheers!

For now I’m enjoying the early-stages, slow pace here. It feels like Beehaw has a lot of good potential. In the meantime, I’m just commenting and trying to be active in discussions. Eventually the culture will emerge and mature and then we’ll be longing for the good ol’ days when it was new.

I've noticed a sharp increase in content, both quality and quantity. When I first arrived this felt like a ghost town and in just two weeks it now feels like it's starting to be a thing.

Hell no. This is the honeymoon phase. This is great!

Sure, discoverability isn't the best. There are lots of bugs. Things are confusing. Federation issues are an inconvenience.

But you know what else is missing?

The spammers aren't here. The trolls aren't here. The propagandists from the East aren't here trying to spread misinformation or sway elections. The bots aren't here manipulating the front page or comments. The corporations and marketers aren't here trying to sell products or steer discourse. There isn't CSAM or targeted harassment or doxxing. Most governments are probably not here. And it doesn't matter if He Gets Us because He's Not Here.

Everything is too new and too novel and too ephemeral to have been picked up by the people that are going to cause the "big boy" social network problems. And that's great, because the moderation tools at present would not be up to the task, and the legal teams are non-existent.

When the threadiverse crosses a certain threshold, Bad Things are going to happen. And those growing pains are going to be much worse than the ones we're experiencing right now.

Bee the change you wish to see in the world ;) You are the content!

It is new, and it is fresh. I think I like it.

On the one hand I'm curious and excited to see what happens at the end of the month. On the other hand be careful what you wish for. Going back on reddit now I've realised how toxic it is. I don't really want this place to become like that.

I totally get what you mean! I’ve been trying to comment and vote, but my usage is pretty strictly mobile based so I’m relying on the capabilities of a specific app, which is still in its infancy.

I will say, I’ve been hanging out on /all /new and seeing more and more instances popping up that are obvious subreddit replacements.

Not particularly, since the newness has brought all this warmth, optimism, and friendliness. Kind of like welcome weeks at universities - not necessarily the content one is here for, but it's a nice in-between to make friends.

Yeah, I thought you were going to say a different point so I’ll say it - I can’t wait for a future time where (hopefully) discussion here isn’t dominated by Reddit-related posts. That might be a while!

I actually really like being this early on the platform, last time that happened was Google+ and that went nowhere. But this time it feels like you can actually contribute to the platform. This can be done by posting interesting things, just chatting in the communities you like, and can even help with the development of Lemmy if you have the skills.

I hope this will be the first Open Source project that I can help, I always wanted to contribute to open source, but that never went further than publishing my own projects (that were way too specific to be useful to anyone else) under an open source licence.

We are all time travelers moving very slowly into the future while spending precious life energy to do so.