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I don't pay super close attention to the numbers, but I glance at the daily users and subs now and then in the comm where I'm pretty much the only poster. I feel I'm down about 25% in daily users and new subs have felt slower.
I've tried posting a second or third post a day to try to catch anyone in a drastically different time zone, but the second post gets less likes than the first. Comments feel down, and more importantly, I don't see near as much growth of "regulars" who comment. I got used to seeing a few names every day or 2 in the comments, but many of them I don't hear from anymore. I do have a few new regulars, but most seem to comment less frequently, and if I'm not holding onto them long term, activity is never going to snowball.
It seems consistent with what I see when I browse All, Top 6 Hours. I'm always worried it's something I'm doing wrong, but I seem to trend pretty consistent with what I see of Lemmy as a whole. I do block essentially all meme communities, so I don't know how their popularity is holding up. I keep Science Memes unblocked for now, because some are actually funny or educational, but somedays they hog up too much of the top posts.
I try to keep posting more in depth and original things, but it demotivates me as a poster to keep working hard and putting in hours when the audience seems like it's shrinking. I try to post more than just cute pics, I try to share news, research, and facts, and I'll do reports on research papers or books so everyone else doesn't have to dig through all the dry stuff. That stuff takes up a good bit of time. I'm trying to keep a popular niche comm alive, and I think it's fun as it's typically positive stories and non-political 99% of the time, so it's what eeeeeeveryone says they want here, but how long are posters supposed to post to what looks like an empty room?
I still try to comment back to anyone who leaves a comment, so they know I'm seeing it and that I really appreciate it. But I can only do so much. I'm really holding out, but I start to wonder what Lemmy will be like at the end of this year.
With a project like this, I think it's important to take a long-term view, and not burn yourself out too early by putting too much early-term effort in.
I think the expectation some people may have had that the Fediverse was going to take off like a rocket and become the "next big thing" was a little bit of wishful thinking. The real process will take years imo, and we're just keeping the lights on in the meantime.
Development continues. That's the important part to remember.
I agree. It seems to go through spells were people just want this to be Reddit with a different page banner and they expect it to be or try to make it more like Reddit, but I thought we were here to move on?
I'd be cool with less comments overall if they are solid anyway. I don't care about "first" posts, the "i also choose this guy's wife," or people fighting with each other or spouting nonsense (looking at you, current state of news/politics subs).
I go back down to a single daily post when it starts to get to me. I've thought about taking breaks, but I still like learning the things I post for myself and for the joy it brings to the people that do check in every day. I'll still take what we have now over Reddit any day. I wouldn't be posting at all if I was there.
This
Sorry!!! Couldn't help it. But I agree. There is s something to be said about not reducing to the median
Smarty-pants 😜
I loved the quality of posts and comments we had around Sep-Dec as the fellow Reddit migrants got the swing of how it worked here and could make awesome contributions. It was a really good signal to noise ratio and everyone was getting along and posts and comments were helpful and supportive.
Starting this year, I feel the part of Reddit we enjoyed being away from crept in along with enough angry far-left that they could regularly get in the top of All. When we started to see all the "why is no one swearing in here" threads and when the anti-work and anti-Trump groups made it over here.
I think these things should be talked about, but these groups just feel like rage bait to me, designed to get people worked up. They're all going to either end up either echo chambers or full of gatekeeping and downvoting. It isn't the bonding experience that was being built before that.
I'm an adult, and don't want to be lectured to by any militant conservative, leftist, evangelist, vegan, Linux fanboy, or whatever. I want cordial discussion, and if I'd walk in to what All is now, I probably wouldn't have hung around as long as I have.
But there's still a good number of people trying to make this place inviting and fun. If this just turns into liberal Parler, I'll probably just quit social media altogether. I don't know what's really left to go to after this that hasn't been absorbed by a big company or a political movement.
I think the advantage of larger user bases (not always) is that the more nuanced discussions often bubble to the top. That is impossible here because the user base is so small. That's why it's a flatline of ACAB, extreme leftie eat the rich, etc. There is a big void in the middle left by that in-depth conversation: Nothing seems to get past that surface layer analysis. If we want to talk about Oct 7 well be prepared to hear about the Peele commission and apartheid state. On and on. Unless of course maybe I'm getting old and all social media is converging into vacuous and hollow content. Were da 30+ at??
Lol, Lemmy Silver, for the old lemmings. I suppose it's part of getting older. We've all had these high level conversations for decades and anything we're still interested in, we've had decades to get really granular on them. But the young ones are learning this guy Reagan did some shit once upon a time or there was a guy named Lenin that said regular people are important, etc for the first time, and I'm glad for them, but the access to data we have I'd hope you'd do a little more reading before shouting the same crap over and over. "Doing your own research" once and then never exploring any further or checking out other sides makes you just as annoying as that anti-vaxer.
Now I sound too damn old! 😧
Welcome friend! Your AARP subscription is being processed and bingo is at 7:30. 🥲
I hear you though.
I am really sympathetic to this. I have only posted OC for months now, with some posts taking a week or more worth of free time only to get virtually no eyes on it. I admit that timing posts poorly probably has a lot to do with it, but man does it suck to see something you've put quite a bit of time into (whether that seems obvious or not) get 10 upvotes and 3 down with no comments etc.
I try not to think about the cumulative time I've spent posting! 😆
It does truly suck though when you think you've done your best work and it falls flat. Then when I'm sulking afterwards, I'll post something real low effort and it will be the top post of the month, never fails.