Not sure if that counts but I decided to spend some time posting and encouraging people to participate in the very inactive Lemmy Journaling community.
I have not posted much so far (started yesterday, with two posts) and, if you’re wondering, I am not the creator of the community, not even an admin.
It’s just that I have been journaling for many decades myself and I know people could gain a lot by journaling themselves. So, it makes me feel somewhat sad to see no activity going on in our community, with not that many subscribers either, while at the same time there are almost 2 millions subscribers to our reddit cousin r/journaling and, quite obviously, a lot more things going on there ;)
Frankly, I have no idea where this will go or if it will go anywhere at all. I just want to try to do something and so, for the time being, I will do my best to regularly post new content, hopefully encouraging other members to participate as well, and then encouraging new members to join and share whatever questions/doubts/ideas they may have too.
I am not a marketing pro, but feel free to come visit the Journaling community, and, by all means, to post stuff on your own if you’re also a journaler (digital or analog, it should not matter). The more of us, the more various content we start sharing, the more likely we are to welcome new members.
Also, if you know of any other like-minded community feel free to share a link.
Not sure if that counts but I decided to spend some time posting and encouraging people to participate in the very inactive Lemmy Journaling community.
Hey there!
I felt compelled to chime in and add that you may want to consider creating a new community that you’re able to moderate rather than trying to revive an existing one that never made it out of infancy.
@downtide@sh.itjust.works is the sole mod of the community you linked and (from my account/instance anyway) doesn’t appear to have been active for around a year. Maybe that isn’t a problem now but if the community takes off I’m sure you’ll wish you were able to deal with spam posts and trolls.
Have you considered creating a new community? Lemmy also has some weird stuff about how reports are sent that makes it more reliable to moderate communities from the same instance the community is hosted on, so there’s a benefit to keeping it hosted where your Lemmy account is based. You may want to check if you can create communities on your home instance.
No matter what you decide to do you may also find it beneficial to announce you’ve started/revived a community at !newcommunities@lemmy.world since a lot of people seem to watch it. Good luck!
Thx a lot for the insight! I had not thought about any of those points. My only idea was, a bit naively I am afraid, to not create a new community since there was one existing already. But everything you said is very true.
As a downside, creating a new community would imply even less members participating, a lot less, at least to begin with but it may still be preferable if it means being able to shunt any troll.
Here is what I will do: I will ask the question on the existing community, ask members what they think would be best. If I get no answer, well, I’ll fell less… wasteful by creating a new community from scratch. I will also ask the admins on my instance if that would be OK to host it as we’re mostly speaking French, but I think they should be OK to host an English speaking community, at least I can ask.
If it makes you feel better about the original community being orphaned you can always leave a post there with a link to wherever the new home is if you make one. That way someone who used to subscribe will eventually find the new home, and new people who stumble in won’t be disappointed the community they were excited for is dead.
Maybe you could even cross post your OC from the new community back to the old one for a bit so people have a chance to find the new one.
There are lots of ways to go about things, the hard part is finding and keeping the motivation!
I don’t know how cross posting works (really not an expert in any way, here), I will have to do some reading :p
There are lots of ways to go about things, the hard part is finding and keeping the motivation!
Indeed, and I must say that it never was my intention to create/moderate a community. I just wanted to revive it by regularly posting stuff in it. But I would also not want to help it get some activities going on without anyone able to keep trolls at large.
I don’t know how cross posting works (really not an expert in any way, here), I will have to do some reading :p
AFAIK the webui doesn’t have a convenient way of doing this but apps have a way of doing it within a couple clicks. I use Boost, I’m sure others offer similar functionality.
Indeed, and I must say that it never was my intention to create/moderate a community. I just wanted to revive it by regularly posting stuff in it. But I would also not want to help it get some activities going on without anyone able to keep trolls at large.
I understand. On reddit I was a lurker, on Lemmy I’ve become far more active in ways I never imagined. If we want the communities we enjoy to pop up and flourish somebody has to get things going. We don’t have the luxury of a massive userbase or a corporate botnet like some other places, but we can make our space something special with a little effort and some communication.
AFAIK the webui doesn’t have a convenient way of doing this but apps have a way of doing it within a couple clicks. I use Boost, I’m sure others offer similar functionality.
I will check those. I am using both Linux and macOS, I never use my phone to write anything. Hopefully there will be such an app with Crossposting on one or the other.
I understand. On reddit I was a lurker, on Lemmy I’ve become far more active in ways I never imagined. If we want the communities we enjoy to pop up and flourish somebody has to get things going.
Something I am slowly realizing too. I commented quite a lot on reddit, like I have started doing on Lemmy, but starting a conversation? Well, I rarely think any of my questions/ideas are worth discussing and I normally don’t bother. But I’m learning ;)
I will check those. I am using both Linux and macOS, I never use my phone to write anything. Hopefully there will be such an app with Crossposting on one or the other.
There actually is a way, I updated my last reply as you were replying.
Something I am slowly realizing too. I commented quite a lot on reddit, like I have started doing on Lemmy, but starting a conversation? Well, I rarely think any of my questions/ideas are worth discussing and I normally don’t bother. But I’m learning ;)
I think people have to get used to the idea of it being ok to make a space for themselves in the fediverse. I think a lot of people probably feel like they are using someone else’s resources and don’t want to cause trouble, ask a silly thing, be a burden, or maybe don’t even understand that they’re allowed to make communities. They only engage with what’s already there but compared to reddit where so much was already going by the time a lot of people made it there, the fediverse can feel rather empty.
The sad truth is that many of these communities will take months of effort by a single or small group of individuals before more people will join in. It means you really need to be into the topic or the community will end up like the one you are trying to revive. Some people find that discouraging but it’s time that can be used to fine tune the community and its content. With a little luck and a lot of effort you’ll find more people interested in the same thing to keep things going when you’re lacking in motivation or content.
It can be frustrating and arduous but when you start seeing the votes, posts, and comments come in it’s all worth it.
There actually is a way, I updated my last reply as you were replying.
Thx so much! I will keep a note for that :)
I think people have to get used to the idea of it being ok to make a space for themselves in the fediverse.
That is indeed hard to realize.
As an average user (50+ year-old and not obsessed with computer stuff), I can tell you that one of the most intimidating things to me was/is the fragmented nature of said ‘fediverse’. Between mastodon, lemmy, the video whose name I constantly forget and the other stuff going on… it’s hard to keep track of what is what. It’s even harder with the supposed portability/compatibility between various services (I have yet to understand how I am supposed to follow a discussion on lemmy using my mastodon account and vice-versa. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine admitting that’s a me issue but still… it doesn’t help me being more active and, to tell you the whole truth, I quit using my mastodon at all because I could not figure out out to use it hand in hand with the Lemmy one or even if it was possibility or I simply understood it wrong :p)
And that’s not even mentioning people like myself who also blog: can it be done inbside lemmy? Is it considered good practice or not to link back to one’s blog? Since I can’t tell, I refrain to share any link to my personal blog ;)
The sad truth is that many of these communities will take months of effort by a single or small group of individuals before more people will join in.
That I’m fine with as I’m in no hurry. I would just not split our already small user base into smaller ones by creating one more community where it’s not needed. Let’s hope the admin of the Journaling community chimes in… but maybe I’m a bit too optimistic?
Not sure if that counts but I decided to spend some time posting and encouraging people to participate in the very inactive Lemmy Journaling community.
I have not posted much so far (started yesterday, with two posts) and, if you’re wondering, I am not the creator of the community, not even an admin.
It’s just that I have been journaling for many decades myself and I know people could gain a lot by journaling themselves. So, it makes me feel somewhat sad to see no activity going on in our community, with not that many subscribers either, while at the same time there are almost 2 millions subscribers to our reddit cousin r/journaling and, quite obviously, a lot more things going on there ;)
Frankly, I have no idea where this will go or if it will go anywhere at all. I just want to try to do something and so, for the time being, I will do my best to regularly post new content, hopefully encouraging other members to participate as well, and then encouraging new members to join and share whatever questions/doubts/ideas they may have too.
I am not a marketing pro, but feel free to come visit the Journaling community, and, by all means, to post stuff on your own if you’re also a journaler (digital or analog, it should not matter). The more of us, the more various content we start sharing, the more likely we are to welcome new members.
Also, if you know of any other like-minded community feel free to share a link.
Hey there!
I felt compelled to chime in and add that you may want to consider creating a new community that you’re able to moderate rather than trying to revive an existing one that never made it out of infancy.
@downtide@sh.itjust.works is the sole mod of the community you linked and (from my account/instance anyway) doesn’t appear to have been active for around a year. Maybe that isn’t a problem now but if the community takes off I’m sure you’ll wish you were able to deal with spam posts and trolls.
Have you considered creating a new community? Lemmy also has some weird stuff about how reports are sent that makes it more reliable to moderate communities from the same instance the community is hosted on, so there’s a benefit to keeping it hosted where your Lemmy account is based. You may want to check if you can create communities on your home instance.
No matter what you decide to do you may also find it beneficial to announce you’ve started/revived a community at !newcommunities@lemmy.world since a lot of people seem to watch it. Good luck!
Thx a lot for the insight! I had not thought about any of those points. My only idea was, a bit naively I am afraid, to not create a new community since there was one existing already. But everything you said is very true.
As a downside, creating a new community would imply even less members participating, a lot less, at least to begin with but it may still be preferable if it means being able to shunt any troll.
Here is what I will do: I will ask the question on the existing community, ask members what they think would be best. If I get no answer, well, I’ll fell less… wasteful by creating a new community from scratch. I will also ask the admins on my instance if that would be OK to host it as we’re mostly speaking French, but I think they should be OK to host an English speaking community, at least I can ask.
Whatever I decide to do, I will also ping !newcommunities@lemmy.world.
Thx a lot, again :)
If it makes you feel better about the original community being orphaned you can always leave a post there with a link to wherever the new home is if you make one. That way someone who used to subscribe will eventually find the new home, and new people who stumble in won’t be disappointed the community they were excited for is dead.
Maybe you could even cross post your OC from the new community back to the old one for a bit so people have a chance to find the new one.
There are lots of ways to go about things, the hard part is finding and keeping the motivation!
Those are good ideas, thx.
I don’t know how cross posting works (really not an expert in any way, here), I will have to do some reading :p
Indeed, and I must say that it never was my intention to create/moderate a community. I just wanted to revive it by regularly posting stuff in it. But I would also not want to help it get some activities going on without anyone able to keep trolls at large.
I have just posted the question in the Journaling community, will see how it goes… if it goes anywhere ;)
AFAIK the webui doesn’t have a convenient way of doing this but apps have a way of doing it within a couple clicks. I use Boost, I’m sure others offer similar functionality.
I understand. On reddit I was a lurker, on Lemmy I’ve become far more active in ways I never imagined. If we want the communities we enjoy to pop up and flourish somebody has to get things going. We don’t have the luxury of a massive userbase or a corporate botnet like some other places, but we can make our space something special with a little effort and some communication.
I will check those. I am using both Linux and macOS, I never use my phone to write anything. Hopefully there will be such an app with Crossposting on one or the other.
Something I am slowly realizing too. I commented quite a lot on reddit, like I have started doing on Lemmy, but starting a conversation? Well, I rarely think any of my questions/ideas are worth discussing and I normally don’t bother. But I’m learning ;)
There actually is a way, I updated my last reply as you were replying.
I think people have to get used to the idea of it being ok to make a space for themselves in the fediverse. I think a lot of people probably feel like they are using someone else’s resources and don’t want to cause trouble, ask a silly thing, be a burden, or maybe don’t even understand that they’re allowed to make communities. They only engage with what’s already there but compared to reddit where so much was already going by the time a lot of people made it there, the fediverse can feel rather empty.
The sad truth is that many of these communities will take months of effort by a single or small group of individuals before more people will join in. It means you really need to be into the topic or the community will end up like the one you are trying to revive. Some people find that discouraging but it’s time that can be used to fine tune the community and its content. With a little luck and a lot of effort you’ll find more people interested in the same thing to keep things going when you’re lacking in motivation or content.
It can be frustrating and arduous but when you start seeing the votes, posts, and comments come in it’s all worth it.
Thx so much! I will keep a note for that :)
That is indeed hard to realize.
As an average user (50+ year-old and not obsessed with computer stuff), I can tell you that one of the most intimidating things to me was/is the fragmented nature of said ‘fediverse’. Between mastodon, lemmy, the video whose name I constantly forget and the other stuff going on… it’s hard to keep track of what is what. It’s even harder with the supposed portability/compatibility between various services (I have yet to understand how I am supposed to follow a discussion on lemmy using my mastodon account and vice-versa. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine admitting that’s a me issue but still… it doesn’t help me being more active and, to tell you the whole truth, I quit using my mastodon at all because I could not figure out out to use it hand in hand with the Lemmy one or even if it was possibility or I simply understood it wrong :p)
And that’s not even mentioning people like myself who also blog: can it be done inbside lemmy? Is it considered good practice or not to link back to one’s blog? Since I can’t tell, I refrain to share any link to my personal blog ;)
That I’m fine with as I’m in no hurry. I would just not split our already small user base into smaller ones by creating one more community where it’s not needed. Let’s hope the admin of the Journaling community chimes in… but maybe I’m a bit too optimistic?