from dystop@lemmy.world to newcommunities@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 2023 03:10
https://lemmy.world/post/285637
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.
threaded - newest
What might be a good idea is to spend a bit of time each week gathering content and then using 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.
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.
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.)
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.
I’ve created a new community /c/housing_bubble_2. How do I get it featured on newcommunities?
Just create a post about it
If you mean about getting it featured on LW, you should ask that to Lemmy.world admins
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.
Yes, when you the sole poster on thé community, it is almost like writing a blog. You’re doing something for you and showing the word the results. Maybe one day, people will like it enough to participate.
Crossposting is also a good way to start. For example there is community like !lorraine@jlai.lu or !lyon@jlai.lu that focus on specific part of France. They have almost no original content but someone interested on Lyon’s local story may not be subscribe to all the community about tourist, politic, urbanism, activism, fun stories and so on that publish stories about this place.
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.
Good advice indeed
made several for my own interests. a few are just me. a few have thousands of subs. who knew?
You used the “cats” cheat code 😄
had a few cat pics I wanted to post. 2 days later thousands of ex-reddit subs. up,up,down,down,left,right,left… recruited more mods. never was a redditor
It will all be effective ONLY IF your content is being pulled in by other instances. Otherwise people in other instances dont know your community exists. It will still be screaming into the void
lemmy-federate.com
It's for instance admins, so I can't unless I make my own instance
Even then you have to create the same comminity you made from another instance, and you have to tell them where you moved the community to
I think a “suggest a community” community could help prevent some dead communities before they happen. I made a separate post to discuss it: lemmy.world/post/27963154
There are already a couple of communities (almost) along those lines. Would be great if the mods here could add them to the sidebar here.
!fedigrow@lemm.ee
and once you get a few regular posters, ask if they’d mind helping with modding. I’m guilty of skipping the asking part now and then. going on a road trip etc.