I 100% agree with your plea, and only +1 because I cannot + it more than that. But I also want to point out that ‘participation’ can be difficult to quantify rightly.

Take the simplest (and only ?) metric we can access on Lemmy: our user profiles. I just checked, hope you won’t mind: yours is 2 years old with 2K+ comments (let's ignore new posts even though you also have posted a lot), while mine is 7 months old for almost 0.8k comments.

Conclusion? We both are active but, on an absolute basis, I seem to be a lot less active than you are. But if we compare on a daily basis it seems I do comment a little more than you do.

But then, this says nothing about the type of content we both share (images? Texts? and so on), nor does it say much on our ability to participate. I mean, maybe I don't have a job and have all my time available to post silly shit around here, while you could be the CEO of one of those mega corp (well, maybe not that kind of CEO but you get the idea: someone really busy) or maybe you have serious health issues that make it much harder for you to participate. That alone should make a difference in the appreciation of our respective participation, beside sheer volume. At least, I would think so.

Back to your point:

I BEG YOU! PLEASE, please, please… be a bit more willing to post and comment. If everyone was willing to spend a little time looking for new content to post to a few of the niche communities that they’re part of, (especially the least active communities,) and posted once a month or so, we wouldn’t have so many “dead” communities. And this would lead to a more rich experience on the Fediverse.

Once again, 100% agree with you. But I think there is something else going on... I don’t know what exactly. Allow me to use ‘my’ own community as an example.

A little over a year ago or so, I revived the !journaling@sh.itjust.works community.

It has been dead for a year when I joined and since I was myself into journaling (have been all my live, since I was a little boy and I'm now nearing my 60s) I thought maybe I could contribute content and help motivate more people to participate. At first I posted daily, then weekly, then less frequently, and now almost nothing (I published a note informing members that I had to deal with personal matters, it’s supposed to be temporary).

While I was regularly posting, I did get a few participants to post and comment too, that was great content. But it was also very little volume in comparison to the quickly growing number of subscribers. Like, really.

When I ‘reopened’ the community I did not thought about writing down the number of subscribers but I’m pretty confident there were less than 250 of us, today it seems we’re around 1,35k (if I can trust the instance metrics). I’m glad as fuck to see as many people interested in journaling but I don’t get it why there is so little content being shared, even more so knowing a few other subscribers are, very much like me, long term journalers with a lot of experience they can share, while others subscribers are beginners or are just curious about it, with a lot of questions and doubts they should be willing to share with like-minded people, knowing both groups are more than welcome to participate.

There was a new post a few days ago and it got a few comments and likes, and that was it. Why?

It’s a very niche community, meaning all members are at least already interested and/or curious about it. Why is there so few content posted/shared? No idea. When I started posting, I had the idea that peopel posted nothign because they were afaid to look silly (or were afraid of being judged). So I updated the rules and posted my own (willy/goofy) content thinking it will encourage them. It seems I was wrong.

If I had to conclude anything (which I refuse to do, at least not yet) I would say:

• Maybe the type of content I shared to begin with was not the best choice? Maybe that is true but then, without enough negative feedback, it’s hard to correct path. And the little feedback I got was quite supportive.
• I would almost be tempted to say people are just subscribing to communities they’re interested in just so they know they will see new content if there is any posted. And if there is none to be seen, well, they know they will get some elsewhere (looking at you, reddit). So, why would they bother posting anything themselves?
  Like I said, I refuse to conclude that but my gut feeling does go in that direction. And to oppose that trend I have no idea what I can do, nor if I should even try?

I will see how it goes after I’m back at it, hopefully somewhere end march or April.