So, I love this site. Iโve been here more-or-less since the beginning, across various accounts. I also have accounts on other Lemmy instances.
One common pattern I see is that instances branch out their communities too soon, and overly dilute the conversation. It makes an instance that is ultimately not that active (compared to any of the big sites that donโt need naming, really) appear to be even less lively, due to so many instances with either nothing at all, a few month old posts, or a generic post linking to a projects blog.
Note that I am not criticizing the instance by pointing out the low activity levels - I really do love this place. Itโs just a fact at the moment. You can switch viewing posts by new and scroll down a little to see we get around 5 - 6 posts per hour, occasionally a bit more and occasionally a bit less.
I think that having lots of inactive, dead looking communities is off-putting. I know that I certainly donโt feel encouraged to post in them. I worry this might have a similar effect on other users too.
I do understand that c/programming is deemed as something of a catch-all community, and so anyone could post there rather than the niche communities, but Iโm not sure that this is totally obvious to everyone.
Personally, I feel we should purge all the tiny communities that have no posts (or just a single blog post, for example) and encourage people to post in c/programming. Then, new communities can be made when a particular topic becomes large enough to warrant divergence, either because itโs clearly a subject of interest to many users or because it ends up dominating c/programming. c/rust is an example of such a community, as is c/programmerhumor.
I am nobody here, and I was not asked for my opinion, but I just wonder if this topic has been thought about much? I really want this place to thrive. Do any other users here have an opinion? What do the instance admins think?
Yeah, I just want to echo the growth over time comment. Itโs still (relatively) early days of the Fediverse and Lemmy, and weโre still on the shallow part of the exponential growth graph. I mod the MAUI Community, which was created shortly before Xmas, and I made some announcements then (like on Mastodon, Daily Dew Drop, etc.) and some people joined then. But then Iโve also mentioned it again on a few other occasions since when it seemed appropriate (like the other day when I saw a notable dev still posting on Reddit), and each time I do it gains another subscriber or two. We just need to keep advocating each time thereโs an opportunity. Weโve built it, and now we just need to wait for them to come. :-) And itโs been worthwhile, because when I have an issue I always post both here and on Mastodon, and sometimes I get a solution from Mastodon, but another time I got my solution from someone here (i.e. no-one from Mastodon responded, but someone here did, and the solution worked!). And of course, like Reddit, solutions posted here are easier to find than those posted on Mastodon. I think itโs great and just needs some time to grow (as people learn how the Fediverse works and what all the available services are, such as Lemmy instead of Reddit).
I mod the MAUI Community, which was created shortly before Xmas, and I made some announcements then (like on Mastodon, Daily Dew Drop, etc.) and some people joined then.
Iโm late to the game but I should point out that the MAUI community is a textbook example of how communities should definitely not be created, and it was clear from the start that it was already born a dead community.
The C# barely gets a single post per week. The .NET community is even more of a niche community, and in spite of all the non-organic posts itโs already dead.
Even though you were fully aware of this and you were repeatedly pointed out the obvious fact that a niche of a niche wonโt take off, you ignored te feedback and still went ahead with the creation of the community. Which is of course dead.
Lemmy in general and programming.dev in particular already have groups with traction. I hope that moving forward the group creation process is based on peeling specialized topics from existing communities. Otherwise the MAUI fiasco will repeat itself and weโll end up with an even longer tail of dead communities vulnerable to spam and takeovers by bad actors.
dead communities
None of the communities you have mentioned are dead. In fact according to the January stats, all the communities you mentioned have above average usage.
Noted that you ignored this comment of mineโฆ
itโs been worthwhile
Take your gaslighting somewhere elseโฆ
None of the communities you have mentioned are dead. In fact according to the January stats, all the communities you mentioned have above average usage.
Iโm sorry, youโre trying to blatantly lie with statistics.
โAbove averageโ means nothing if the majority of communities is already dead. Youโre just arguing that some communities are more dead, which is pointless.
Youโre also lying regarding what traffic is being posted to !dotnetmaui@programming.dev. All posts ranging back to the last two weeks come from a single user account: https://programming.dev/u/SmartmanApps .
To make this even more pathetic, the bulk of the posts going into !dotnetmaui@programming.dev were posted by your account after I pointed out the community was dead and already dead on arrival.
Youโre not refuting the point: youโre proving the point that the community is dead.
