Rather than trying to find a specific community to ask a question. Ask it in a general community. Specific subreddits were only born when generic ones became too big. But as the generic ones are much smaller it makes more sense to ask your questions and make posts there.
Thatās helpful thank you. If I had a question for example for a specific video game youād recommend going to the gaming community over the game specific one?
Yes absolutely. Ask in the general game community.
For example I wanted to know about HaikuOS. Itās an open source OS. Thereās no community for it but I know Linux users are the most likely to know about it and the Linux community is huge.
So I asked in c/Linux and found users of the OS.
If I didnāt get a response Iād ask in c/AskLemmy
Iāve done the same with anime and games.
That would work for asking, but it wouldnāt help if you wanted to discuss community specific things. For instance if I wanted to discuss the new Heroic lineup after Stabby imploded the previous core I canāt just post this into gaming. People are going to look at it, think āwhat the fuck did I just read?ā and ignore it. That post requires a CS2 community and that community doesnāt exist yet. There have been attempts but itās never taken off.
I think such communities are important for growth because those are the communities of you stick around for. I probably wouldnāt be on Lemmy if the Formula 1 community wasnāt active here. General communities are great for a general news feed, but the ānicheā communities are the glue that keep people together.
You think the gaming community doesnāt have CS gamers?
See my other comment where I do just what you say you canāt:
For example I wanted to know about HaikuOS. Itās an open source OS. Thereās no community for it but I know Linux users are the most likely to know about it and the Linux community is huge.
So I asked in c/Linux and found users of the OS.
If I didnāt get a response Iād ask in c/AskLemmy
Iāve done the same with anime and games.
This is insightful. Also some of the niche communities that came over have probably found it hard to recreate the experience with less participants - whereas when they were historically established on Reddit only when was enough traffic to justify splitting off from a more general topic.
Perhaps over time the members of smaller niche Lemmy communities will drift into more general topics. For example if thereās not enough participants to maintain a vibrant āwearing feathers in your hairā community, those members would probably be welcome, and valuable participants, in the larger āhead ornamentsā community. Since Iām slightly invested in the success of Lemmy, I certainly hope thatās what happens rather than people going back to ā/r/featherhairwearingā.
