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Site direction: What happens next?
(self.meta)
This post is for bouncing around thinking and ideas around future plans for monyet.cc!
Where we are now
As of 25 June, we have achieved a minimum bar for success vs. our goals on this post.
- We have proven that our community can defintely set up shop here. Hundreds of people have switched over very smoothly: posters, readers, regulars, everyone.
- What this means: We have built the boats. If reddit dies, either suddenly or gradually over years, we won’t lose the community we’ve created together.
- Before reddit there were lots of cosy forums across the internet. In the worst case, we can be one of them.
- A huge thank-you to everyone who has created an account and taken part in this experiment. Especially those of you who have been helping to make this place lively and fun ❤️
The next challenge
r/Malaysia comes back online tomorrow. Can we keep this place alive and healthy, and build it into something that can thrive independently of Reddit Inc.?
- This seems much smarter than just declaring success and putting the site in hibernation.
- monyet.cc could be a sister community like our Discord and r/malaysians, except not be 100% dependent on Reddit for new users!
- We know it can be done, because lowyat.net does it: they have literally millions of users.
What helps our chances: This week we've confirmed that this platform can serve the community in many ways that reddit can't. Because we now have "subreddits":
- Local language communities, like 中文嘛嘛档 and Berita
- Local interest communities, like AMG, Pets, Meme Everyday. Food hunting, meetup groups, relationship advice, students, bargain hunting, etc.
- Local classifieds! Job boards, buying and selling, dating / personal ads, promoting local artists, newtubers, businesses, etc.
Big questions
1. Direction: What do people think about this direction? This is still very young thinking.
2. Growth: Having all of this good stuff depends on us convincing lots of users to regularly use monyet.cc. Any thoughts on how to do this?
- Our current best idea is that instead of competing with the types of content on r/my, we could try to be a complement: focus on stuff we can't offer there.
- For example, we remove a lot of classifieds, newtubers, etc. We could start redirecting all this here.
- What kinds of content might people enjoy coming here regularly for?
Thanks again everyone!!
The creation of monyet.cc and its structure reminds me of the early days BBS sites (you can see the comparison with the Taiwan's PTT BBS) in which the local interests thrive while complement each other at the same time. In contrast to BBS system, Lemmy is a decentralised system in which we can federate with other instances outside besides monyet.cc's own communities, and separate our online presence in different Lemmy instances. As an example, besides this account, I have another account opened at other instances dedicated for tech-related interests.
My opinion is that we should still treat ourself as a better alternative to r/malaysia for those who want to discus specific topics in a specialised community. It is a limitation of Reddit as it is dominated by English countries' users which might not resonate well with our local circumstances. But we don't seek for isolation, instead we accepts such openness in the condition where there is a place for us to express the issues in local context such as those in sciencetech. Example from the OP, Malaysian Vtubers are easily get ignored by the vastness of Vtuber industry. We may have a dedicated place for them in monyet.cc, either in the form of independent community or combine with other community such as Anime community.
The problem that we'll soon to be facing if the growth of Lemmy is continuing, is the lack of moderator. Who is responsible for the moderation? The creator of the community? But what if things get complicated and the creator is willing to let go the power? This question has to be considered when we are discussing the future of monyet.cc. Despotism could spike a lot of issues which is not ideal, we might need to have a democratisation of the moderation in order to place a heathy community.
Hmm the Vtuber community... I think they probably have a fb/discord group somewhere? I can't quite recall though. I think our Lemmy community isn't widespread enough for any of them to take notice yet.
As for mods, I think we are good for now, but we'll probably expand the team as we go.
Great ideas, thanks!! You raise a very interesting question in your last paragraph. My personal hope is that if we can make this place into a healthy and self-sustaining thing, we can move towards self-governance as time passes. You're absolutely right that this shouldn't be constrained by the limits of the founding team!