Fediverse

That's a very capitalist take. Remember how good things used to be? That's how good the Fediverse is now. We don't want it to grow or die. If it grows, great. If it doesn't, great. Quality over quantity, imo.

this place is never going to be good for any discussions where people disagree strongly.

Most users downvote what they dont agree with. Its a circle jerk echo chamber where we all agree or get downvoted.

So true, and so sad. This has been such a disappointment to me, and even a bit of a surprise. I just didn't realize how badly most people respond to seeing viewpoints they don't fully share. Personally I don't get the point of discussion where everyone agrees, but apparently that is quite a rare attitude. So I share your pessimism, but with one glimmer of hope. There is at least one forum which has cracked this problem: Hacker News. The issue being that it's frequented by exactly the kind of techie Spock-like personalities that aren't representative of the general population.

But we are not going to get "niche" users if we don't get large numbers of users. Niche interests will only come up here when the population is so large that even the long tail ends up with critical masses.

Those defending "quality over quantity" miss this exact point.

It would be a huge improvement if politics were corralled into the political communities.

There are accounts that double post in both politics and news as well as other communities, I assume because people who have politics filtered actually secretly want to see politics... (/S)

!Nonpolitical_comics@piefed.social!

I agree with everything that you've said. I would also add:

Find your nearest non-political non-tech hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see

Because if we're going to cast the same net reddit does, people with a more varied set of interests need to come here. Can't be all linux, politics, and news. We're going to need people who like baking. We're going to need sports fans. We're going to need music.

I could type new communities we need to be active all day. Humans are surprisingly a diverse set of creatures. You have one set of interests, I have another. Different set of interests. And both are totally valid.

The thing people here don't seem to grasp is that OTHER interests and OTHER people using the fediverse isn't a bad thing. If a bunch of boomers come here, and make their own communities to talk about Taylor Swift, and whatever else they talk about on facebook. That's good that it would be here! Not bad!

They could talk about gardening, and model trains, and whatever else. It wouldn't appeal to you, and thats ok.

What we REALLY need is more posts about Linux.

Yes. I'm here for the long tail, the niche communities. And what do I see? Not enough photos of houseplants! Come on, you must have some too. And to add to the list, !books@lemmy.world looks nice.

My experience is that Lemmy is decent for tech-related stuff but outside of that, it can be difficult to find active communities depending on the hobby. I just went looking for a good Spanish learning or general language learning community and the few that I found have been inactive for months. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place (I searched in Communities > All).

I don't think maximum growth should be a goal for Lemmy, I just think it needs a critical mass of activity to keep it interesting. Currently I think we just about have that for many tech/FOSS related topics but not so much outside it. The problem, I think, is that a lot of people who aren't into tech/FOSS issues don't know about Lemmy and don't see why they wouldn't just use Reddit or Discord.

Maybe limit the bot to only copy the top post that week.

Here's the thing imo. Bots used well can be really useful. The most attractive part about Reddit/Lemmy though is the comments. Seeing what people have to say about stuff is quite nice.

BUT. I can see how bots can be super helpful to subscribe to content where community interaction isn't that important (like art posted by artists on Instagram, Twitter and so on). The main attraction is the art itself. Not the comments.

This way, I can see what my favorite instagram artists are up to without selling my soul to zuck.

This is the number one thing I would bring up tk the question "do we need more users". We need more users if we want more niche communities, and I want more niche communities without having to post.

Comes with numbers. Not before.

This is it exactly. I made a hard cut with Reddit, but I'll admit to missing the sysadmin subreddit. The place was full of very smart, helpful people and also cranky. The PowerShell subreddit was another great resource. I haven't been willing to go back, but those sorts of communities only exist when you hit a certain mass of people on a platform.

For that we need a LOT more users. It's kind of a chicken and egg situation.

Hopefully we can capitalise on the next Rexit.

In the past lots of people moved over but left because of the terrible UX. I think PieFed has solved most of the UX issues.