I used to be sad that I couldn't find the same communities here, but I realized I need to be the change.
If I want to chat about something that doesn't exist Ill create a dead community and post in it from time to time. Come watch me grow algae at /c/spirulina
That's why i started !comm_revival@lemmy.dbzer0.com - feel free to advertise any of those dead comms and find some mods / posters for it :D
Interesting, nice initiative! I learned about places that I didn't know existed through it.
I think starting a community in Lemmy is hard; I don't know if it's harder than Reddit. Most Reddit channels have king been established. I suspect it's an unexpected negative consequence of Federation. On Reddit, there's one Linux community - there can only be one because of the centralized nature is Reddit. If someone wants to rebel dns start their own, they have to get creative with the naming. But users go looking for Linux, they find the one big one, and it has thousands of subscribers and that's the one they join. Maybe they find out it's full of incels and go looking and find !nice_linux and join that.
On Lemmy, there are dozens on Linux communities; nearly as many as there are servers. Which do you join and post to? I think it contributes to ghost communities.
One thing I've noticed is that the successful communities are started by a passionate, prolific, consistent poster who creates content that keeps people coming back. The really successful ones eventually get organic contributors, but some are mostly carried by one person. !superbowl@lemmy.world, for instance, is very popular for a Lemmy community, but it's carried almost exclusively by @anon6789@lemmy.world. He(?) posts multiple times a day, runs owl-of-the-year contests; just a bunch of work. There are lots of engaged commenters, but few posters. I like to think it he wound down others would pick up the slack, and eventually, I think it could run without him. But man, that guy puts a lot of hours into running that community.
Hell, I run a ghost community. I did indeed port it over from reddit, just out of spite. But to be fair, it was pretty ghosty over there, too.
I'm not too worried about it. I just don't have much to post about just now. It's not hurting anything.
Sure, but the fact that you're at least still active on Lemmy and paying attention makes it less of a problem.
The ghost communities I'm really talking about are the ones where you click on the moderator's profile and find that they don't even seem to be active on Lemmy much at all anymore. At that point, those communities have zero chance of growing because they'll quickly be unmoderated, and to my knowledge we have nothing like Reddit's "subreddit request" in place where unmoderated communities can be taken over from absent moderators.
Obviously not every community is going to be super active all the time, that's not a problem. The problem are the communities on popular servers that have "reserved" good names, are inactive and effectively unmoderated. Those types of communities are only serving to pollute the namespace of the most popular servers, imo.
Instance admins can hand out unmoderated communities to new mods themselves, provided it’s on their instance of course. If your instance has a /c/main or something I’m sure you could ask there about getting a community transferred to you if you want it, or at least get pointed in the right direction.
Doesn't even have to be your instance, just whatever instance the community is on.
It really isn’t as big of an issue in the large scheme. As others pointed out the instance Admins can give you control. I myself have taken two that were abandoned. Maybe having this information front and center may help with awareness. I didn’t know it was even an option until someone told me. I was stuck in my reddit ways and assumed I needed to start a new community.
If there is a community that is clearly abandoned and you want to put in the work you can request mod status from an instance admin
A ghost community doesn't really affect anyone.
But if people do want bustling communities they just need to give them broader appeal and only splinter into niches when the demand arises.
For example rather than creating a community for a specific British 1960s sci-fi TV show. An existing retro TV community is probably sufficient, or failing that a general TV community.
Came across this, comm_revival is about reviving dead communities.
Nail on the head, and yes it does.
I like the trend I'm seeing of people stepping up to mod and run ghost communities. Most communities would take off - with a bit of love and care. (That usually means you are the only poster for quite a while though, while lurkers quietly upvote).
I would like to see a more regulated way of taking over ghost communities, like having a vote system for a community taking itself back if mods don't respond in X weeks or something. Lemmy world has a good system with their lemmy world support channel though, or at least it appears that way.
I think the biggest cause of this on Lemmy is having duplicate communities on different servers. Inevitably one of them becomes the most active, and people kind of stop posting on the others.
Is there a way of merging the posts from one into another if the recipient gives permission? Most topics only really need one community.
Is there a way of merging the posts from one into another if the recipient gives permission? Most topics only really need one community.
Lock the old community and point to the new one.
!football@lemmy.world for instance
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
