First and foremost, before the usual argument happens, I know that more is not necessarily better.
Having said that, it would be better if lemmy’s userbase were much bigger. There are many, many, interesting communities that are basically dead. We need a bigger userbase to drive some content to those communities.
If person A wants to discuss topic X, but there are barely any people with whom to discuss topic X, person A will go back to the usual for-profit corporations to do just that. This is obviously not good, for obvious reasons: just look around.
And an equally important point: for profit services, such as reddit, need to die. The userbase create the content and a select few get rich from it? Fuck them.
So the question is:
- In your opinion, what can we do to increase the userbase?
I personally dislike the cross posting in lemmy, as it results in seeing the same post 3-4 times in a row, which is kinda annoying as well. I believe piefed does it better (dunno if anyone can confirm that?).
Cross-posting would be cool if the communities were hierarchically subdivided and automatically cross-post the most recent top 3 to a parent community. E.g. /c/art < /c/traditional_art < /c/classical_paintings
It would be much easier to discover and search new stuff you like.
That would be really cool. And kinda fits the “organic growth by subdividing” model
Is this the right place to discuss PieFed? I think PieFed did the cross posting and fragmented communities problem nicely. You can create your own feed too.
It’s part of the same family, so I don’t see why not.
I’ve not experienced piefed first hand, but from what I heard it joins Cross posts somehow? Lemmy you can create your own feed by subbing to communities, is piefed different?
Yes, it collects all the replies in one post, if the OP’s been cross posted to different communities, and it only shows the post title once, so it doesn’t overcrowd your feed. You can submit to communities to create your home feed like Lemmy, or there are Feeds that you can subscribe or create to your own liking, or there are Topics of collected similar communities, for easier browsing too. It has a more complicated structure than Lemmy, but I think it’s worth it.
This is true that crossposting is messy, but I think it is the best current solution. Crossposting means it is more likely to show up on the feed of somebody only subscribed to one of the communities, which might remind them that the community exists. Crossposting also means that when somebody stumbles upon a community it at least has the appearance of a pulse.