I mean have they seen how good Ice Cubes and Mlem look? How can they choose the default Twitter and Reddit apps over those masterpieces.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
    13·
    16 hours ago

    It’s unfortunate, but there’s a real chicken-and-egg problem here. Those of us who are on here are here because of how strongly we believe in the ideal of it, but for the average person who just cares about talking about their favourite interests, there’s a serious lack.

    I’ll use two examples, one that you clearly care about, and one that I do. /r/stopkillinggames is hardly super active, but in the last 3 weeks it’s had 11 posts with a cumulative 68 comments. !stopkillinggames@lemm.ee, by contrast, has had just 8 posts, all by a mod, with just 6 total comments. /r/AgeofMythology is very active with artistic appreciation posts, balance discussion, and advice just within the last 24 hours. !aom@lemm.ee has failed to attract a single post from anyone other than myself, and it’s been over 3 months since anyone other than myself has left a comment. It’s disheartening, not being able to have conversations about the stuff you love, when you know that just over there it would be so easy.

    Lemmy’s excellent if you want to talk about politics, or open source, but there’s not a huge amount outside of that. The Star Trek communities are pretty good, but they pale in comparison to a great sub like /r/daystrominstitute, and the amount and depth of discussion on ttrpg.network is slim compared to /r/pathfinder2e, /r/dndgreentext, /r/dndnext, etc. And these are some of the best-supported hobbies on Lemmy.

    So as much as I’m staying here and trying to do my part to make it better, and frequently encourage others to join…I also can’t really blame people who don’t.

    (I feel less charitably towards people on Twitter. Because that place is a total shithole, and Mastodon is surprisingly good, if you like microblogging platforms. Plus even Bluesky is better than staying on Twitter, and it has most of the celebrities and micro-celebrities some people might want to follow.)

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      At least we have tankies, so there’s that.

      I jest, yet that’s a real worry that a large number of people have, like on Reddit when people (Blaze) promotes Lemmy that is quite often their first response (“hey, isn’t that the one where tankies who got booted off of Reddit went and made their own Reddit software?”).

      That, and the fact that we are first and foremost, primarily a “Linux forum”. We do have general communities like AskLemmy and I even helped start an AskUSA so I’m not saying that there’s nothing else there, but we definitely lack the breadth and depth present on Reddit.

      Maybe we can find better talking points, like “we have less content but our discussions are more worthwhile, where people tend to be kinder and also real rather than bots btw”.

      Although Lemmy.World’s massive policy change announcement is definitely going to absorb all of our attention for the foreseeable future.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      5 hours ago

      To add to Blaze’s point: as lemmy’s still small, there’s not much point to super specialized communities when the more general ones are “slow” enough that pretty much any post you make can remain “newest” for 2 days straight.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
        3·
        3 hours ago

        I understand this perspective, and I occasionally flirt with it myself, but mostly I disagree.

        My main view is that content should go in a community that will be interested in it. There’s a balance to be struck here to avoid getting hyper specific (for example, I’ve stopped using !brisbanetrains@aussie.zone in favour of just putting train stuff in !brisbane@aussie.zone), but I also think content that is fundamentally not about the topic of one community shouldn’t go in that community. I wouldn’t post Brisbane-specific local council politics in !australia@aussie.zone, for example.

        My view is that subscribing to a community costs nothing. Creating a community costs nothing. Even moderating a community doesn’t have any very much cost for the moderator on a per-community (as opposed to per-post or per-comment) basis. There’s no actual harm caused by having 10 communities with 1 post per day, compared to one community with 10 posts per day. Instead, doing the former simply allows people to more easily filter for the content that they are interested in and avoid that which they are not.

        I’ve given a more detailed reply to Blaze about the specific discussion at hand here, but since you brought up the general principle, I thought I’d reply to you with my general principle.

        • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
          1·
          43 minutes ago

          My view is that subscribing to a community costs nothing.

          It does, to an extend. People don’t want to subscribe to dozens of different communities to get their content. As I said in the other comment, there’s a balance to be found, and usually more generic communities benefit from not having to be promoted in a lot of places to get known, people just see them from All or a post in !newcommunities@lemmy.world and subscribe because they see it as active and generic enough.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
      6·
      8 hours ago

      It’s disheartening, not being able to have conversations about the stuff you love, when you know that just over there it would be so easy.

      Have you tried more generic gaming communities? !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works is quite active, I’m sure a regular thread about AoM there would definitely get some traction (or even just a one-time promotion thread)

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
        2·
        4 hours ago

        The problem with more generic communities is that you might be sharing it with more people, but they’re not people who are engaged with the topic. And that’s what I really miss. The deep conversations on theorising, community drama, etc. that can only come from a large number of people who are really interested in the subject. Posting to a generic community limits the type of discussions you can have to those that are more accessible to a generic audience.

        As another example, just now I’ve been playing Kerbal Space Program for the first real time (I toyed around with it briefly many years ago, but didn’t try career mode and completing contracts). Right now, I’m struggling to understand why something I’m doing isn’t working. I would love to be able to go to !kerbalspaceprogram and ask an audience of people who know what they’re talking about. Sure, I could try my luck in !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works or something even more generic like !games@lemmy.world. But neither of those are really the appropriate venue for something that’s so specifically only of interest to people who know about KSP. Posting “I’ve been playing KSP lately and really enjoying it” makes sense on patientgamers. Posting a detailed scenario of what I’ve been doing and what I’ve done in the past, and asking why it doesn’t work for me right now even though it seemed to work before…probably doesn’t.

        Another example: I’ve been posting every useful or interesting guide or analysis of Age of Mythology I’ve come across to !aom. It wouldn’t really feel right to post that kind of thing to patientgamers. But I probably will post when the upcoming expansion comes out to more generic communities

        Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe posting niche game-specific content to generic communities is a good way to bring attention to them for more people who would be interested in it, while also bringing attention to an audience that didn’t know they might be interested in it. I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this. Maybe I should put a post in !fedigrow@lemm.ee for this discussion?