Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had:

  1. I wouldn’t worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)

  2. Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn’t fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren’t yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.

  3. Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit’s leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.

  • crunchycircuit@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, I think that best thing to do is just pick one or two communities that you really care about and invest a bit of your time. Make a post or two, have some back-and-forth with a friendly person in the comments. You don’t have to be a moderator to help build a community. Even just taking 30 seconds to make one post would be good enough, and might encourage someone else to make a post.

    I was always more of a lurker on Reddit, but I don’t think that’s really gonna be enough if we want this place to at least get to critical mass.

    • Ghostface@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well said, but I will say reddit felt more like being out in public. So you kept your distance and didn’t really interact, but here feels more like being at someone’s house that you know. At the moment. The federation aspect is a different wrinkle but ultimately will lead to a better experience overall. No ads is a huge bonus!

      • crunchycircuit@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I agree - my level of engagement on Reddit dwindled with every unpopular decision Reddit forced on its users, and towards the end I had stopped engaging entirely, because it just felt like I would be interacting mainly with bots and hostile users. You’d constantly see bots steal others’ comments, people calling them out to no avail, and knowing that Reddit didn’t give a removed cuz it was engagement numbers to them either way really discouraged any chance of healthy discourse.

        Rage-baiting might be a good short-term solution for boosting engagement, but allowing or maintaining that level of hostility across the site just tires people out and drives them away.

    • RespectMyAuthoriteh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I still have the community I moderate (!fitandnatural@lemmy.world) set to mod posts only, because I’m the only mod and don’t want to risk someone posting something bad while I’m not on Lemmy. We really need an approved user feature like Reddit so that vetted community members can also make posts in communities where “anyone can post” isn’t a good option.

      • Die4Ever@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Couldn’t you toggle the mod posts only option on and off based on your availability? Maybe make a pinned post explaining it and write in the times it will be available inside that post?

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        That seems like it’d be pretty easy. Basically just like giving someone a moderators role but with extra tier of hierarchy below normal moderator.

        Seems like a nice idea TBH … I’m generally all in favour of leaning into lemmy’s ability to create sorta blogging spaces that naturally federate (and therefore are easy to aggregate).

        Lemmy and ActivityPub seems to have (nearly) everything to recreate a new blogosphere, but with federation beyond its own border over ActivityPub, comments, voting, aggregation, sorting and search built right in.

    • iquanyin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      i joined and am using memmy, both this week. cant see how to post, only can see how to comment.

        • iquanyin@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          how do i get to the community page? and is that its name? do i look for “community page” or is it called something else? (i chose a random place to ask, its fine if you’re busy or don’t like to answer such basic stuff, i will eventually figure it all out.)

          • nieceandtows@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            If you tap on the list button at the top left corner, you’ll see list of your subscribed communities. You can tap on any of them to go to that community page. You can also tap on the community name on a post in the main feed and go to that community. Lastly, you can also go to the search page and search for a community and go to its page. Let me know if you’re facing any difficulties.

    • Blamemeta@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah. Ive picked /conservative. Ive been posting a mixture of fluff and actual posts. Early days, but it seems to be picking up speed. Just post, it works!

        • Blamemeta@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Trying to get engagenent, letting other conservatives know we exist, that sort of thing.

          • new_acct_who_dis@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You admit that you’re posting what are essentially lies in order to attract conservatives? Y’all really are just saying the quiet part out loud.

        • new_acct_who_dis@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’d check his post history before engaging. He’s trying to rebuild a spammy, dishonest right wing space in Lemmy.

          He’s free to do so, but it’s just going to bring in trolls, bots, bad faith arguments, and extreme posting to sell removed.

          I get that it’s inevitable, but let’s be careful what we’re encouraging.