this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Asklemmy
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Nearly every niche community I've joined has essentially died due to not having the critical mass of users to support that community. Hell, even look at the large states like California or Texas: they're communities with only a few hundred active users and maybe a couple thousand joined. Feels like the lemmy is mostly us politics, star trek, Germans, and memes.
Which niches were they?
Some like [email protected] and [email protected] are quite active
[email protected] has several threads with different active communities on different topics
You know a platform is big when like nearly all states of a country have their own subreddit and their own userbase. It's like, that's impact there.
It's the same here, I check the front page and what do I see? Politics, politics, politics, a couple memes and maybe a news report that isn't politics.
If you don't like politics, block those communities
Otherwise
The forum I used to spend a lot of time on in my youth was incredibly active - comments all night every couple minutes. The regional areas where practically dead. What we need are thriving core communities not critical mass. I like not being bombarded by thoughtless and judgmental comments
I'd guess that 50-100 active users could make any community feel vibrant. I've noticed when I post in a smaller community it can get solid responses (fast replies from a dozen or so users), but they die out after a day or two and people need to be posting all the time to keep it up.