.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    216
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    They got excited, they expected other people to generate the content, and they got bored and left.

    Starting a community takes real work, you got to do the legwork to get people aware, you’ve got a generate content to start the conversation, you’ve got to keep the ball rolling to keep people invested, it’s a non-trivial work.

    Founding a community then posting a request for moderators and walking away isn’t going to cut it. It’s a big time investment. So I salute the people who are doing it!

    • Deca@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      38
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I hate the amount of people telling me to just start my own sub when I mention that I miss Reddit’s variety. As if it was piss easy to get a whole community rolling by yourself

      • jet@hackertalks.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        27
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        They’re not being flippant. They want you to grow the community. They want to see it too. We’re all here because we want to see Lemmy grow.

        We’re willing to help as much as we can. I’m posting way more than I would normally. In fact I usually only lurk. But I want to get content here. So if you make a community I’ll post to it. As much as I can.

      • SomeoneElseMod@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        It really depends on the type of community. I created a few a missed from Reddit and honestly the screenshot/photo based communities are piss easy to start. !badrealestate for example is 3 weeks old with 48 posts and 3.6k subscribers. I just posted every day for a few weeks, now other people are posting and I contribute a couple of times a week.

        On the other hand !tennis_fans and !downtherabbithole are much harder to get going because they require very regular or in depth text posts. Those two have less than 200 subscribers between them.

        What I find really annoying is when people criticise posts on the communities I’ve created, when they haven’t contributed at all. People want more communities, people want more content. Don’t be a dick and then criticise the content that someone has put their time and effort into sharing with you for your enjoyment! Anyway, rant over.

        If anyone’s browsing this thread and looking for more (active) communities to join, there’s also !DontYouKnowWhoIAm !clevercombacks !murderedbywords and !confidently_incorrect

        • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          What I find really annoying is when people criticise posts on the communities I’ve created, when they haven’t contributed at all. People want more communities, people want more content. Don’t be a dick and then criticise the content that someone has put their time and effort into sharing with you for your enjoyment! Anyway, rant over.

          I encounter that too from time to time, it can definitely be frustrating.

          Keep on with the good work, !badrealestate is really nice, the horrible house designs get me really laughing sometimes

    • Zalack@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      30
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, actually moderating an online space with even modest activity is fucking hard and takes a shitton of time.

      I think a lot of people underestimate the effort involved and quickly lose interest once it becomes apparent.

      • NightOwl@lemmy.one
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, bothered me during the protests to see people downplaying the importance of mods from those who were upset about their favorite sub being shut down. It’s a thankless job that takes lot of building to get started and exposure to bunch of crap to keep the place nice for its users.

        • Levsgetso@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          And harassing the mods for closing the subreddit without bothering to learn why it’s even closed. I don’t understand why people think that these unpaid volunteers owe them something.

        • HardlightCereal@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          Moderating a large queer sub was easy on Reddit, and getting my own small sub up to an average of 50 upvotes per post wasn’t hard. But on Lemmy I don’t know where to advertise and my trans memes get downvotes from transphobes

    • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Quite a few comments here about this, but thought I’d give a perspective as someone who started a couple of communities which have mostly proved pretty quiet.

      They got excited, they expected other people to generate the content, and they got bored and left.

      This is sort of me - although I haven’t walked away, there’s just nothing much to moderate.

      I joined Lemmy as the momentum was building for the blackout protest in Reddit and, as I suspect many did, went looking for equivalent subs to those I was used to.

      Two that I frequented regularly were for Arrested Development and MST3K, and not finding them on any instance, I decided to start them up here.

      This was primarily to help people coming across from Reddit, perhaps just to have a tentative look at Lemmy, to feel like the places they were used to would be here too. I also made a few initial posts to try and provoke discussion, with minor, but non-zero success.

      I was upfront about not having any mod experience, and from the start, I invited those who ran the subs on Reddit to get in touch if they wanted to do it here too.

      One MST3K mod did just that, so now we are both mods, and the community does have a regular, if slow, trickle of submissions.

      The AD community is quieter, but we have had a few posts, including one a few days ago, which was nice!

      I guess, what I’m wondering is how much responsibility people feel mods have (or should have) to be generating content for the community on a regular basis? Genuinely, I’m not sure - I was a little concerned about it just being me shouting into the wind, partly because it can feel pointless, and partly because I didn’t want to seem like I was dominating things.

      Anyway, I just wanted to give an alternate viewpoint to those which are suggesting that people became mods as a power trip or whatever. That’s certainly not the case for me - ideally, I don’t even particularly want to be a mod, but I did want the communities to have a foothold for people arriving to Lemmy with no idea what to expect.

      • kopper [they/them]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        Anyway, I just wanted to give an alternate viewpoint to those which are suggesting that people became mods as a power trip or whatever. That’s certainly not the case for me - ideally, I don’t even particularly want to be a mod, but I did want the communities to have a foothold for people arriving to Lemmy with no idea what to expect.

        There’s a big difference between creating 2 communities and creating 20.

    • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      1 year ago

      Basically this. I remember seeing a comment of someone being like “I created 50 communities, this is so fun!”

      Well, it’s so fun until you need to actually grow them