Start telling people now, over on reddit. BEFORE they start cracking down. That way, everyone will know, and the growth will happen even more rapidly.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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I straight up don't understand the appeal of a bigger userbase here. More users isn't inherently better, and will definitely introduce more issues and problem users that will tax our still developing and somewhat fragile platform. Wanting that "instantly" is just asking for the collapse of Lemmy, imo.
It will help more niche communities grow. I left reddit, generally don't miss it. I also give zero shits about tech, programming and Linux. I am a sports fan though, big NBA fan. There's just zero conversation on those instances. I would like to see the user base grow so I can engage some conversations about those interests. I sure as shit ain't going outside and making friends lol
Big this.
I am still interested in the mentioned tech, programming ad linux communities but the biggest issue is definitely smaller communities lacking in numbers. But I see more and more users and conversations on here over time. It has definitely increased since I joined. Hopefully we'll see the smaller communities grow as well.
I am with you. I don't care about what the loonix lunatics and privacy criminals preach (I already use uwunutu btw), I just wanna see interaction in the regular normal people communities without the reddit garbage. We need more people in here for that.
There's really zero guarantee that any number of additional users will improve your communities. What would work better is seeding discussions yourself. Is it going to be as robust and abundant as Reddit? No. But the platform is also much newer. All of those subs grew over time because people put in the effort to participate even when the was "zero conversation". You might be taking to yourself for a while, but setting the stage will be much better for the growth you want to see rather than aiming to fill it with random users you just hope make it better and not worse.
Bro, I've tried. Mods do a good job on the instances putting up content. But I'm hoping to get my news from those instances. Outside of that I get my news from podcasts. Not really sharable content for this platform. I've had like 3 replies from about 20 comments and it's rare for a post to reach double digit up votes. I'll for sure water plants but I'm kind of over planting seeds. I mod a couple nsfw communities so I'm doing my part.
Yeah, it's not an easy thing to do. It can certainly feel like wasted effort, but "over planting" is just the best way to get communities going. Most people that would otherwise engage are too sheepish to make posts of their own, but are more willing to add on to other's posts. Glad your willing to put in the effort.
Lemmy's biggest weakness right now is a slow drip feed of content. After blocking all of the sports communities and instances in languages I don't speak, I'm left with the following:
None of this is bad content per say, but it doesn't capture what I loved about reddit before they ruined it. Reddit was a place where even the most niche of niche topics had a space that you could check in on every day. Obscure anime, unusual collections, diy showcases, you name it. Cultivating a culture that produces produces such specific groups requires enough people to form them. In a group of 100 random people, the number of them who are into Ginga Nagareboshi Gin (look it up) is going to be quite low, but that number increases the more people you include in the sample size and sooner or later you have a subreddit for Ginga fans. That was why Reddit was special to me, and that is what's keeping Lemmy from reaching that high for me.
Sounds like you just want people to provide content for you. Zero-effort entertainment at your convenience, platform be damned.
Considering your have 2 posts to your name, I'd recommend being the change you want to see in the world. If you want a community for your interest, you can't expect it to just appear for you, fully formed. Find the one you're ignoring because it's "too slow" and get involved. The reason it's so "dead" is that most people think like you are.
It's estimated that about 10% of users actually participate in the forums they visit, with 1% of that making the majority of "content". Imagine what it would look like if that changed? We don't need to throw more users into the platform that will tax the system, we just need to stop expecting everyone else to entertain us and start contributing.
Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize that you had to make a certain number of posts before you were allowed to criticize the platform. /s
Seriously though, there's no need to get hostile. Having a hobby isn't supposed to feel like work.
Browsing a website without any effort on your part isn't a "hobby". And if you have zero interest in being part of the solution (ie doing the work), then no, your criticism isn't needed. Communities take work to maintain and build. Bemoaning the state of them without actually being involved is truly counterproductive.
That's just wishful thinking that doesn't address the problem at all. Even though you might want the 90-9-1 ratio to change, it isn't. It's an established pattern for a reason. Even if the person you responded to was gonna post a lot, they might get a few upvotes, maybe a comment or two on their posts. Simply because there aren't enough people here to engage with niche topics. And then it feels like your effort is futile (which honestly it is if your goal is an active community), they get discouraged and stop posting and we're back to square one with no meaningful changes. Sometimes it is about numbers and this is one such case.
Nah, it's simply defeatist to assume that ratio is inescapable. On big enough scales? Sure, it'll probably fall around those percentages. But in small communities like we have on Lemmy, there's absolutely no reason only one person in a community of <100 should be expected to provide 100% of the posts or comments. We can and should do better than that, and the best way to turn those 90% lurkers into posters is too encourage engagement and reward it with our own. Will it work for every community on Lemmy? No. But there's no reason not to encourage it. It could only help.
Most communities on Reddit barely have any content. While Lemmy will never have the user base of Reddit, some more engagement would be great.
Gatekeeping like this will kill lemmy.
I'm not "gatekeeping". Lemmy can and will grow fine on it's own. That will be great. Campaigning to increases the user base by 500x "instantly" will just cause problems. I get people want more content, but wanting this platform to be the new Reddit overnight is simply unrealistic and frankly dangerous for the site. The platform maintained by volunteers, not a corporation, and it is regularly facing problems that it already struggles to deal with effectively. A Reddit sized userbase would just destroy Lemmy.
We're already larger than Reddit was pre Digg/Slashdot migration. I personally believe we won't ever have another major migration like Rexxit, but that's mostly because the MSM will absolutely super babby hate the idea that they can't control the flow of information, again, so they will refuse to even refer to the fediverse as anything other than Reddit, Meta, or X.
More users = more lifetime, for the platform. At the current level, I estimate that this platform will last about two years. Maybe three. Less, if some kind of significant problem occurs.
You're right that the instant part could be dangerous. That could be the significant problem I just mentioned. But otherwise, Lemmy needs more users, desperately. All internet things have to grow or die. You can wish that wasn't a fact, but it will remain a fact.
Based on what? I too can pull a number out of my arse and estimate the platform will last exactly 18,345 years from today, that doesn't actually mean anything.
To me it looks like they think of the Internet like corporations do and needing growth to justify investment. I think that's fair reasoning for sites that are profit driven but Lemmy isn't.
Lemmy was already 3 years old when the API fiasco started. It didn't need the users merely to survive.
But in the context of the meme, more users means more content which Is a good thing.
That's all I meant.
No it depends entirely on your audience if your doing a yt kids channel sure because they grow up but if your targeting loyal users u don't really need to
There IS still a minimum number of them that you need, in order to truly make the community secure against rotting away, naturally.
As I explained to someone else, if you come in here one day, and you realize that it's been three weeks since you've seen a new post, you WILL eventually stop coming back to check. And then the few people who remain will also stop interacting with the platform. And it will die.
I don't know the exact number of people that the particular community (or the Fediverse, in general) needs to be permanently viable, but it's somewhere between 20 and 100 times more people than we currently have. Maybe more.
That's not up for debate. It's simply a cold, hard fact. You don't have to like it, but it's not optional.
I mean look back 8 months at the number of comments and post upvotes, Lemmy has been worthwhile at a larger userbase than now and as long as the influx isn't too much (Eternal September style) the community can continue to grow. People who dont fit in will go back to reddit or find their own place somewhere in the fediverse where the old heads won't have to put up with them. I dont understand the insularism, although I only got here about 2 months ago so maybe I need to lurk more and read the room.
"Grow or die". What a bunch of corporate bs. And throwing out made up "lifetimes" doesn't lend you the legitimacy you think it does.
Lemmy doesn't "desperately need" more users. What it needs is less of this nonsense.
I'm sorry, but I'm simply correct about this. If you come in here in about a year's time, and there haven't been any new posts in three weeks, you WILL leave the platform, too.
You won't intend to. You won't do it out of spite. You'll just keep checking for new posts, less and less frequently, until you eventually give up.
Growth is THE ONLY WAY to prevent that situation. Does that mean Lemmy has to "go corporate" and start monetizing everything? No. Does that mean Lemmy has to become as huge as Reddit? No. I don't want that. I don't want this place to become so big that it inevitably repeats all the mistakes that Reddit made, over the years.
But the Lemmy/Fediverse platform absolutely does have to grow larger than this, in order to become a permanent, secure thing.
Feel free to explain why that "will" happen without infinite growth.
I just did. Allow me to repeat it:
If you come in here in about a year’s time, and there haven’t been any new posts in three weeks, you WILL leave the platform, too.
You won’t intend to. You won’t do it out of spite. You’ll just keep checking for new posts, less and less frequently, until you eventually give up.
Growth is THE ONLY WAY to prevent that situation.
THESE ARE FACTS. THEY ARE NOT OPTIONAL.
EDIT: Also, I specifically said that the growth didn't need to be infinite. But yeah, you go ahead and claim that I said that. Go ahead and just blatantly lie about what I said. Great intellectual honesty, right there.
So your explanation on why it will happen is that it will happen? You understand how nonsensical that is, right? YELLING that it's a "fact" doesn't make it so.
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY THIS???
IF. YOU. COME. TO. THIS. PLATFORM. AND. THERE. HAVEN'T. BEEN. ANY. POSTS. FOR. WEEKS.
YOU. WILL. LEAVE.
That is a fact. if you deny it, you are simply insane. We do not currently have enough people to avoid a situation where there can suddenly be days/weeks of time with no new posts, and certainly no good ones.
If that happens, the community will die. It's like I'm saying "if you let go of a bowling ball in Earth's gravity, it will hit the floor," and you're like "BUT PROVE IT! HOW DO YOU KNOOOOOW THAT'LL HAPPEN????"
It's bloody goddamned obvious. This community is BEYOND TEENY TINY SMALL, right now. This SubLemmy has 1.8 thousand people active per day. That's 75 per hour. You can fit that many people into a mid-sized bus. IT'S NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE TO GUARANTEE CONTINUED EXISTENCE.
Scream all you want, you'll never make me incorrect about this.
Yeah, I'm the one screaming. Ok, bud.
Fyi, repeating the same made up scenario isn't an explanation, nor does it remotely approach "fact". You keep pulling bs figures like "2-3 years" and "20-100 times more users" with zero elaboration, then freak out when the hollowness of your statements is pointed out. News flash: "facts" have corroborating evidence and backing that can be shown to others. What you have done so far has none of that except your repeated insistence that you are right because you said you are.
You think you're winning the argument, because you are denying such basic facts that it's essentially impossible for me to prove them.
If this community had, say, 10,000 people active per day, I would not feel the frustration that I'm feeling. But I just can't believe you're truly being intellectually honest.
Please try to be honest with me, and try to give me an explanation for your own belief: without any growth to replace users who leave, do you REALLY believe that 1.8 thousand people per day will not ebb away to 1,500 in six months, 1,100 in a year, 800 a while after that, etc?
You think people here are made of some kind of different stuff than regular people? We've lucked into a group of hyper-loyal, saintly humans, who will 100 percent commit to a community forever, regardless of whether it provides them with the experience they expected?
Why should we expect that? Why am I being such an asshole, for simply assuming that we've got normal humans, here?
Replacing users who leave isn't growth though, it's sustenance. With the current user count there are posts much more frequently than one every 3 weeks, and I don't see how that would change from lack of growth (not shrinking)
You're just being obstinate, like several other people in this thread. I'm saying that there aren't currently enough users to weather any kind of big problem, like an extended server outage, or anything like that.
It's like if you're supporting a family of four, and you consistently run all the way out of money, every month, with somewhere between twenty bucks and negative three dollars left in your bank account. And your spouse says to you "hey, we're in major trouble, here. We need to start growing some savings, or else we're eventually going to run into medical expenses or repair bills that will completely destroy us." Annnnd you would apparently respond with something like "SHUT UP, DUMBASS. WE HAVE EXACTLY AS MUCH MONEY AS WE NEED, EVERY MONTH."
I don't pretend to know any kind of exact number, in terms of how many average daily users this platform needs, in order to be safe from future erosion. But it's more than a couple thousand. I think that's safe to say. Mid-sized Reddit communities have about 40,000 concurrent users, at any given time.
I just don't think I'm being as unreasonable as you think I'm being, when I say the Fediverse/Lemmy needs to get at least somewhat bigger.
What "basic facts"? I clearly don't know them, but all you've said is that you're right, not why. Who's leaving? Why? How fast? Etc. You have numbers you keep pulling out, but not how you "estimated" them.
And you're the one making claims here. You're the one that gets to do the explaining.
I'm not pulling these numbers out of my ass. LOOK AT THE SIDEBAR ON THIS FUCKING COMMUNITY.
1.8 thousand people per day. That's real. That's the actual number.
Let's round that up to 2,000. The mortality rate in the USA is 9.5 per 1k, per year. We can round that up to ten, then multiply it by two. That means 20 of our 2,000 people will leave because they're dead. Remember: your claim is that we don't need to grow, at all. Well, we better grow by at least 20 people a year, or DEATH ITSELF will be carving the place to pieces, actually pretty quickly.
Technically, yes, that still means decades and decades of time, assuming that everyone who doesn't meet their maker still logs in every day. But if DROPPING DEAD is eroding 20 people per year, can you TRULY believe that I'm insane for assuming some other things might cause people to leave?
Again: please understand that I'm NOT advocating some kind of infinite-growth-or-death mentality. I just literally think that the Fediverse/Lemmy needs to have more than a couple thousand people per community, in order to survive.
Imagine, for a moment, what these communities look like, if you aren't an English speaker. You're gonna be looking at, what...ten people, in a community like this one, but for French speakers? Maybe? Yes, I'm "pulling that number out of my ass," but there are objectively less French speakers than English speakers.
At the end of the day, you're advocating in favor of your personal little club. Right now, you are getting what you want, from this community. So, like, fuck everyone else and fuck the future. All that shit can just take care of itself, according to you.
I'm thinking about the future. I'm hoping that we can strike a balance between growing too fast and too big (and making all the corpo-tastic mistakes that Reddit made), versus an all-too-limited future, where the platform never reaches a great many people who could benefit from it, and then decays into nothing.
You literally said "grow or die". Not really sure how else that can be taken.
Also, I never said "don't grow at all". I was responding about the "instant 50,000%" growth from the post you made, and more generally the overall obsession on the platform if the userbase isn't constantly increasing. Might as well be shareholders with how obsessed people are with a line graph.
Concerning your mortality rate example, that sort of scenario needs regular replenishment, not growth (ie increase). If 20 new users joined for every lost 20, the platform wouldn't grow but would be perfectly stable. In other words, not growing and not dying. Obviously neither of those numbers will be that precise, so there will be fluctuations, but assuming that the userbase will inevitably die off in just a few years without "20-100 times" more users is just nonsense.
And overall, obsessing about the numbers won't help anything. What Lemmy actually needs is meaningful participation. Good posts, good discussion, cooperation and support between mods/admins and users, less bots, etc. That will attract plenty enough people on it's own, not weird campaigns to overwhelm the community we have.
First of all, I'm not campaigning for anything. I'm using the "winter is coming" meme pretty accurately. Reddit IS almost certainly about to finally ban (or highly restrict) NSFW content, after it's done with its IPO.
We don't have control over that. And that WILL cause an influx of people, flocking to the NSFW part of this community. This will result in both good and bad things. Again: I'm not asking for this to happen. I can't make it happen, nor can I keep it from happening. It's simply GOING to happen, some time this year. Mark my words.
I will admit that I assumed you meant "Lemmy/Fediverse doesn't need to grow at all," but you also did kind of assume that I meant "grow forever or die."
I meant what I said. The Fediverse/Lemmy needs to grow or die, and I stand by that. It needs to grow bigger than the current size. I did NOT say it should grow forever. And I absolutely did not MEAN that it should grow forever.
You asked how else that statement could be taken. Well, couldn't you have tried to take it AS I LITERALLY SAID IT? What would have been so hard about that?
But, again, I made the same mistake with your assertion. So we can let that go, if you're fine with that.
All I'm really saying is that the platform IS too tiny to be considered safe, at the moment. And, in all honesty, most people who frequent the communities on this platform would like to see more content per hour than we currently have. Maybe you're getting exactly what you want. But the thing is, you're not everyone. You don't run this shit.
Maybe you don't care about the gonewild communities, at all. Lots of people do. Right now, there are about a dozen frequent posters, on the lemmynsfw Gonewild community. There are many thousands of regular posters, on the equivalent community, back on Reddit. The people who made the Gonewild community on Lemmy absolutely have hopes that it will grow larger than it is, right now.
Yes, that comes with dangers. Yes, that comes with challenges. But just saying "I like my little club EXACTLY the size it is now" is shortsighted and rude, to put it mildly.
So fyi, "Grow or Die" does mean "grow forever or die". That's what's the phrase was coined to mean and what it implies in every other context but yours. Worth keeping in mind.
Regarding everything else, you are very possessive about a platform that's not your's either, aren't you? I talk about how better participation from everyone would improve and grow the platform (quite the opposite of the "I like my little club EXACTLY the size it is now" you're trying to frame it as) and your response is "you don't run this shit"? It's surprising you want more people here when you can't seem to stand just one person disagreeing with you.
And comparing this all to Reddit, a site that's been around over 4x longer than Lemmy has existed, is just asinine. No, Lemmy isn't going to be at the same level as that. It probably won't be next year either. That doesn't mean it's dying.
I recommend patience and, again, focusing on bettering what we have now rather than obsessing over increase for the sake of increase, though considering your responses so far, it seems unlikely you'll take to that suggestion much. Good luck with that I guess.
Are you somehow unaware that this platform is SPECIFICALLY A REPLACEMENT FOR REDDIT?
You're acting as if the comparison is somehow unwarranted. The Fediverse/Lemmy is an alternative to and/or a direct replacement for Reddit. Nothing more, nothing less. It has the same feature set, the same basic format, the same intended use cases. It's an open/free/non-corporate version of Reddit, to belabor the point. Comparing it to Reddit is only sensible.
Or are you like one of those GIMP users who really bristles at the notion that the GIMP is intended to replace Photoshop?
Also, please address my point that we don't have any control over what Reddit does. This isn't about my patience. Reddit IS about to make a lot of corporate-ass decisions that will cause them to shed users BY THE TENS OF MILLIONS, and a whole shitload of them will land here.
Again: neither of us can control that. Neither our patience nor our eagerness will have any effect on it. It's just going to happen. And I made a meme about how perverts can and/or should be harnessed to grow the community.
Content here sucks ass. It's 95% bitching about politics.
The great thing about Lemmy is there's no singular "here". Make a community free from politics if you want one, or, if you're able/willing, make a whole-ass instance. The makeup of Lemmy is pretty much 100% democratic, based on the content of those willing to put in the effort. If someone is unhappy with that makeup, it's up to them to change it.
Also, it's worth noting that Lemmy is certainly not a curated garden of content. If there's stuff you don't want to see any more, it's up to you to remove it from your feed. That is the intended user experience here.
None of that has to do with the front page on every instance and the lack of content. Remove politics and you have nothing. You hit non stop porn after a while and removing politics well just make it a porn feed.
I mean, I can tell you that's simply not true. There's plenty of content that's not porn or politics. Those two make up the bulk, sure, but block all of it that you don't want to see and other content is clearly there.
Did I say all? No I said 95%. Is that exact? Of fucking course not.
Yes, I heard you the first time.
Then you shouldn't have said that I was incorrect 🤷♂️
See that made me think you misunderstood. You see how we got here?
Honestly? No. You are incorrect, as I said. You seem to be the one having a hard time understanding.