Imma preface this by saying that I’m not an admin or mod here, these are just my thoughts & advice on the matter.

You’ve noticed that a community doesn’t exist on Lemmy. I’m going to assume you’ve checked the community browser, and seen that that specific community doesn’t exist. So, you’ve gone to communities, typed in the name, and are about to hit create.

Well, hold up a second. There’s an INSANE amount of community spam going on in lemmy.ml, and it looks like it’s starting here to a much lesser degree.

Some questions you should ask:

  1. Are you creating this community just to create it? By that I mean, are you willing to put in the work as the moderator if it does take off?

  2. Is it a niche community of a larger subset that has a thriving community or a completely new category?

  3. Are you willing to regularly post stuff to start seeding comments & advertise it in the relevant places?

If the answer to any of these is no, get your cursor off that create button and go join the bigger communities. It just makes it harder to find communities that aren’t 100% dead when half of them are dead-ends created just because ‘they exist on Reddit’. Once there are enough people are visiting !gaming@beehaw.org, they spill over into !rpg@lemmy.ml if they want more focused TTRPG stuff. Once there are enough people on !rpg@lemmy.ml, they’ll spill over to my Shadowrun group. Lots of communities are fractal in nature, and people are skipping a few steps. The userbase needs time to grow and mature.

Please think before you make a community.

  • Ai of the Storm@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    I created the https://sh.itjust.works/c/vtubers community just now.

    1. Are you creating this community just to create it? By that I mean, are you willing to put in the work as the moderator if it does take off?
    • I’ve already started the welcome post and created some basic, common-sense rules. I’ve never moderated a HUGE community before, but I imagine my skill will grow with the community. If nothing else, I know where to look for help if I need it!
    1. Is it a niche community of a larger subset that has a thriving community or a completely new category?
    • I couldn’t find any communities related to streaming that already existed. While vtubing is a niche of the greater livestreaming phenomenon, it’s growing in popularity on its own, and my expertise is within vtubing rather than general livestreaming.
    1. Are you willing to regularly post stuff to start seeding comments & advertise it in the relevant places?
    • Whether or not it takes off, I’m planning to post regularly. I’m hoping that it will grow organically rather than by brute force advertisement.

    No matter what happens, I think it’ll be fun. I’m not in this for power or for building THE BIGGEST community, I’m looking for a new place to spend my free time now that reddit is imploding. If things go sideways, the delete button exists.

    • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Awesome man, sounds great. I hope you get some subscribers and contributors :) And yeah, by “are you willing to post stuff” I didn’t mean become a spammer. People (understandably) aren’t going to be interested in posting the first post on someone else’s community. There doesn’t need to be pages of stuff, but at least SOMETHING.