Advice on Creating a Community
Advice on Creating a Community
Imma preface this by saying that I'm not an admin or mod here, these are just my thoughts & advice on the matter.
You've noticed that a community doesn't exist on Lemmy. I'm going to assume you've checked the community browser, and seen that that specific community doesn't exist. So, you've gone to communities, typed in the name, and are about to hit create.
Well, hold up a second. There's an INSANE amount of community spam going on in lemmy.ml, and it looks like it's starting here to a much lesser degree.
Some questions you should ask:
-
Are you creating this community just to create it? By that I mean, are you willing to put in the work as the moderator if it does take off?
-
Is it a niche community of a larger subset that has a thriving community or a completely new category?
-
Are you willing to regularly post stuff to start seeding comments & advertise it in the relevant places?
If the answer to any of these is no, get your cursor off that create button and go join the bigger communities. It just makes it harder to find communities that aren't 100% dead when half of them are dead-ends created just because 'they exist on Reddit'. Once there are enough people are visiting [email protected], they spill over into [email protected] if they want more focused TTRPG stuff. Once there are enough people on [email protected], they'll spill over to my Shadowrun group. Lots of communities are fractal in nature, and people are skipping a few steps. The userbase needs time to grow and mature.
Please think before you make a community.
Very insightful post
I agree. I limited myself to creating one community. I'll stick to it and see if it grows.
Your one definitely ticks all the boxes :)
- You're actively moderating
- Techy stuff is really big on Lemmy already, I guess mainly because first movers to an open source platform under heavy development is a techy thing to do. Networking is absolutely a great niche within that category
- You're actively posting there and trying to build it
Awww, thanks. I ran r/Trackballs and r/PDXKBC... The keyboard club happened away from keyboard prior to creating it... I inherited Trackballs from the one and only Ripster55. I believe he has since passed away. I've already passed PDXKBC on and will do so with Trackballs today.
Absolutely, we should only be making communities that we actually want to browse and post in.
I created the https://sh.itjust.works/c/vtubers community just now.
- Are you creating this community just to create it? By that I mean, are you willing to put in the work as the moderator if it does take off?
- I've already started the welcome post and created some basic, common-sense rules. I've never moderated a HUGE community before, but I imagine my skill will grow with the community. If nothing else, I know where to look for help if I need it!
- Is it a niche community of a larger subset that has a thriving community or a completely new category?
- I couldn't find any communities related to streaming that already existed. While vtubing is a niche of the greater livestreaming phenomenon, it's growing in popularity on its own, and my expertise is within vtubing rather than general livestreaming.
- Are you willing to regularly post stuff to start seeding comments & advertise it in the relevant places?
- Whether or not it takes off, I'm planning to post regularly. I'm hoping that it will grow organically rather than by brute force advertisement.
No matter what happens, I think it'll be fun. I'm not in this for power or for building THE BIGGEST community, I'm looking for a new place to spend my free time now that reddit is imploding. If things go sideways, the delete button exists.
Awesome man, sounds great. I hope you get some subscribers and contributors :) And yeah, by "are you willing to post stuff" I didn't mean become a spammer. People (understandably) aren't going to be interested in posting the first post on someone else's community. There doesn't need to be pages of stuff, but at least SOMETHING.
I created a magazine, I think it was yesterday or the day before (you can see it in my profile, I think). So, here are my answers to those questions.
1. Are you creating this community just to create it? By that I mean, are you willing to put in the work as the moderator if it does take off?
I doubt it'll ever take off, because few people benefit from the theme my community is about. Even on Reddit it has fewer users compared to the big one called ADHD, and the posts created are like 5 or 6 everyday.
2. Is it a niche community of a larger subset that has a thriving community, or a completely new category?
It's a niche community of a larger subset that can potentially have a thriving community, as it's ADHD. My community is related to ADHD.
3. Are you willing to regularly post stuff to start seeding comments & advertise it in the relevant places?
My community doesn't rely on links or videos because the few useful links on the Internet are a bit old, usually from research documents and studies. Same thing with videos about their age and scarcity. The only thing my community could rely is text posts to give/ask for support, motivation, advice, vent...
Really smart post. I was just about to create an Always Sunny in Philadelphia community but I'm gonna wait.
I'm assuming that the server admin (AKA theDude) can also delete dead/spam communities if it becomes necessary. Might make sense to nip our nfl community in the bud and direct people to [email protected]
For something like that, I'd heavily recommend posting all your ASiP memes and shenanigans over in [email protected]. Whenever that community gets too noisy (not gonna happen in a while), you can split it off to your own community.
For the NFL stuff, it's actually ok to have a duplicate I think, but the moderator's gotta be actively cross-posting to the other one for visibility
What's your opinion of lemmy.ml and beehaw? I saw some beehaw admins pissing and moaning about costs with the new uptick of users and a bunch of gatekeeping behavior.
Thanks for posting this. I was considering creating a community but all of my ideas are likely too niche and would not do well.
Good points. I created a battlemaps community for TTRPG maps because I like the one on reddit to find stuff, in case anyone is interested: https://sh.itjust.works/c/battlemaps
I just thought people will help out eventually... if they don't, fuck it, I'll just delete the community, no point in keeping it alive.
Replying here so I can find this post again. I was super confused on how to find larger communities. I think this breaks it down pretty well. Thank you.
I was just thinking someone could pitch in helping maintain the community... if not, hell with it, I'll just delete it, no point in keeping it alive.
There is only two active gaming communities one of them is lemmy.ml and I don't care for it and beehaw's has no downvotes and too much discussion. Midwest social also isn't what I would want from a games community. I just want mostly gaming news, with some very general discussions that don't specifically talk about a single game.
Interesting. Probably a gap that someone can fill in the near future
Hah I didn't specify but I was trying to fill it, but we will see how it progresses. Maybe one of the big ones will turn more news oriented over time.
How do I make someone else a moderator of a community I made? I created https://sh.itjust.works/c/imageai. I looked up other AI image generation communities, all focused on "art", and some were from instances that I disagree with. I post at least one image that I've generated per day and try to comment on anyone elses posts.
That's fine man, if you can manage the community at current scale and are actively posting there, then this was not aimed at you.
This was aimed at people who make communities, never post in them, and hope that their mere existence will summon contributors from the ether.