I gotta be honest...I am hanging on by a threat. The communities that I was engaged with on Reddit before the Snoopacolypse were pretty niche. I wasn't there for r/funny or r/videos, etc. I found similar communities on Lemmy, but they have soooooo little activity. I have to modify my sort just to see content, as its so old. When there are posts, they typically get very little discussion.

I am on Lem.ee, and I have the hardest time posting anything from mobile. It looks like it fails, and if I sort by new, it isn't there and never shows up - HOWEVER, I start getting replies, so someone is seeing it somehow.

I detest what reddit did and is still doing - but Lemmy is not filling that void for me, and its frustrating.

[–] rip_art_bell@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I feel you. The Network Effect is real, and the niche subreddits need a HUGE overall userbase to work at all.

The total population of Lemmy + Kbin is about the size of a medium size city subreddit.

I'm staying here for now. I sometimes cheat and browse reddit not-logged-in. I don't know what the answer is.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The mirrors from alien.top are perfect for this use case. I had about 40 subreddits which I followed but didn't participated much. I had them all mirrored to different communities and now I don't need to go to reddit anymore.

(Unfortunately, LW has blocked alien.top, so if you want to do something similar you'll need an account on a different server)

[–] rip_art_bell@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Very interesting; thank you

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Promising, have to check this out!

Not sure if I’ll want to start with dummy accounts to test… by connecting my reddit account, am I actually potentially triggering more mirroring?

[–] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 11 months ago

No. The mirroring is configured by the instance admin.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think it’s fair to reply to niche-sub threads with a little PS:

BTW, I've recently shifted my online engagement to Lemmy, as I find it aligns more with my values and the way I like to share content. The community there is very welcoming, and they’d be incredibly receptive to the insights shared in this thread. Hope to seeing you there!

[–] rip_art_bell@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Good idea

[–] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Please take a look at https://fediverser.network and let me know what communities you are missing.

[–] Thanks4Nothing@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I think you may have misunderstood. I have FOUND communities, but there is not much engagement or activity. I have resorted to discord channels for most of them, but it is not the same.

Some of my most active subreddits were different 3d printing and 3d modeling groups, groups for games like Overwatch, and Payday. Different AI focused groups, but specifically groups like the Stable Diffusion sub, Subreddits that discuss my favorite shows, or styles of music. None of that is active here. It isn't that they don't exist on Lemmy, they are just ghost towns. I joined multiple instances and am very active and engaged on multiple accounts, on some of these groups - but there is not response. I was in the top 3% of karma earners on Reddit - and I did that by submitting and commenting a lot. That just doesn't happen here (yet).

[–] rglullis@communick.news -3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Let me put this another way: if I create an overwatch community on https://level-up.zone, would you be willing to contribute there?

Also: If I set up the alien.top bots to mirror content from the overwatch sub, could you use that as a hook to reach out to redditors and tell them how to migrate to Lemmy?

[–] Thanks4Nothing@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have tried to jumpstart a few communities by posting and commenting regularly . I would try a new one, but if people do not find or join, it will get caught in the same cycle as the existing groups. I like participating, but am not interested in being the single driving force, or moderating.

To answer your other question, I cannot stand when I see auto mirrored content from Reddit. I usually ignore those posts, as I have rarely seen comments happening. When the content wasn't created by somebody here, I don't think anybody is invested in maintaining or participating in the discussion.

[–] rglullis@communick.news -4 points 11 months ago

We need to start somewhere. The mirrored content (and by content, I mean posts and comments as well) is meant to be a way to help bootstrap the communities. I can help as well, but only by giving you the tools to make this easier and in avoiding the feeling you'd be talking to yourself.

[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

Try fiddling around with your language settings maybe? Sometimes the language filter can hide posts in a weird way.

Ultimately, if your only interest is in a handful of niche communities, then Lemmy isn't quite there yet, I agree. I am also missing a bunch of niche communities, but I enjoy most of the popular content that's on Lemmy anyhow, so I'm not too bothered by the loss of the niche stuff for now.

[–] Aielman15@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Same for me. I browsed Reddit exclusively for a bunch of small but active communities about books and niche games or shows. Most of those either don't have a place on Lemmy, or the place they have is a ghost town. Too little posts, and even fewer engagement. I frequently see posts with upvotes in the single digits and zero comments.

I don't plan on going back to Reddit, but at the same time I don't think that Lemmy is a valid substitute yet. Maybe it's also a problem of discoverability? Like, I heard of Lemmy during the APIcalypse, but I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else, and I don't know how a normal person looking for a community online is supposed to find Lemmy, or even learn the existence of it.