Do we need more users ? (tarte.media.nuage-libre.fr)

submitted 2 weeks ago by rako@tarte.nuage-libre.fr to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

79 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I'm not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.

The data

I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:

query {  
  monthlystats {  
    date_checked  
    softwarename  
    total_posts  
    total_users  
    total_comments  
  }  
}

Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:

jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'

(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I'll put the graph for that in comments)

Then did a good old' chart

What to think of it

I don't know. Users' activity is on the rise and I find it nice

top 50 comments

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[-] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.

Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:

If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net

The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

I agree with everything that you've said. I would also add:

Find your nearest non-political non-tech hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see

Because if we're going to cast the same net reddit does, people with a more varied set of interests need to come here. Can't be all linux, politics, and news. We're going to need people who like baking. We're going to need sports fans. We're going to need music.

I could type new communities we need to be active all day. Humans are surprisingly a diverse set of creatures. You have one set of interests, I have another. Different set of interests. And both are totally valid.

The thing people here don't seem to grasp is that OTHER interests and OTHER people using the fediverse isn't a bad thing. If a bunch of boomers come here, and make their own communities to talk about Taylor Swift, and whatever else they talk about on facebook. That's good that it would be here! Not bad!

They could talk about gardening, and model trains, and whatever else. It wouldn't appeal to you, and thats ok.

[-] zerozaku@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

We're going to need sports fans.

This. We are in huge lack of sports discussion here on lemmy. I'm looking at other places for sports content because it's just not here. I miss live threads.

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[-] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 3 points 2 weeks ago

We had the same thought. Right before I saw your reply, I added some hobby communities to my comment as examples.

This place is so flooded with politics and raging over the news that I'm about to choose a random hobby community that's active and pick up said hobby just to be able to have something besides Star Trek and Linux to talk about here lol.

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Orrrrr.......pick a non-active community. Or both. And start posting in your local community. By that, I mean I live in Cleveland. There are 3 Cleveland communities. All dead. I'm the only one posting in one. I still get replies and upvotes. So people are there. They just all lurk until I post.

Do that. And post in a dead community. And post in an active community. We need activity basically everywhere besides tech/politics/news.

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[-] sol@feddit.uk 3 points 2 weeks ago

My experience is that Lemmy is decent for tech-related stuff but outside of that, it can be difficult to find active communities depending on the hobby. I just went looking for a good Spanish learning or general language learning community and the few that I found have been inactive for months. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place (I searched in Communities > All).

I don't think maximum growth should be a goal for Lemmy, I just think it needs a critical mass of activity to keep it interesting. Currently I think we just about have that for many tech/FOSS related topics but not so much outside it. The problem, I think, is that a lot of people who aren't into tech/FOSS issues don't know about Lemmy and don't see why they wouldn't just use Reddit or Discord.

[-] maxy@piefed.social 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yes. I'm here for the long tail, the niche communities. And what do I see? Not enough photos of houseplants! Come on, you must have some too. And to add to the list, !books@lemmy.world looks nice.

[-] Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago

Hearing this from someone that from what I can see has one post and four comments in 3 months is more than a little ironic.

[-] matsdis@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I may have created two accounts when I got here, and I will be baited into replying to snarky comments only from this one! I also like the low-key split-personality feeling, and experimenting with a different set of subscriptions. Anyway, so I'm no content-generation machine. But I'm doing my part to keep up the signal-to-noise ratio!

[-] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It would be a huge improvement if politics were corralled into the political communities.

There are accounts that double post in both politics and news as well as other communities, I assume because people who have politics filtered actually secretly want to see politics... (/S)

[-] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 2 points 2 weeks ago

I don't disagree that we need more positive and high quality hobby content. Sure.

But personally I'm so sick of dudes complaining about "political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling", whatever half of that banal nonsense is even supposed to mean...

In fact, I'd go as far to say that people who whine about everything being "political" is a bright fucking red flag to me. My immediate assumption upon reading that is "this person is a Trump supporter who voted for this exact shit to happen because they want it to happen, and they don't want to be confronted by the fact that other people don't." I know exactly what kind of people don't want to hear about "politics" anymore now that Trump is elected, trampling our institutions, and fucking everything up. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, right?

[-] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

We have a lot of non-voters that love to complain about the results they helped achieve.

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[-] artyom@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).

Unfortunately the "political shit" and "ragebait" is important.

The Fediverse is what you make of it. If you subscribe to a bunch of communities posting political shit and ragebait, that's what you'll get. That's not a problem with the threadiverse, that's a problem with your curation. One that it sounds like you remedied, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to call it out as a problem.

[-] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Look at it from a new user's perspective; someone who has not curated their feed or otherwise "made the fediverse what they want" yet. e.g. They land on Lemmy World or another big instance and their default sort is "active". Doing that now in an incognito window, and half the front page is rage, same on the second, and the stuff that's not are some random shitposts and Linux filling in.

Truth be told, looking at that, I probably wouldn't want to sign up. Especially if I didn't know that different instances have different cultures, etc.

Assuming they're a normie (which we desperately fucking need here), I just don't see that they'd want to stick around. Aside from trolls and spammers, the only people we seem to consistently attract here are the "Wah wah I was banned from Reddit" types and, while there's certainly a sizable pool to draw from, I wouldn't exactly consider them the pick of the litter for growing the fediverse.

The point of OPs post is that usage here is declining, and I am simply pointing out that I feel all the rage and politics is not particularly inviting.

Edit: And you know what? I'm just going to fucking say it. There's too many armchair activists here who won't let you enjoy a single moment without reminding you that something bad is happening somewhere in the world and that you have some kind of moral obligation to be angry all the time about it. And if you're not angry all the time then you're somehow part of the problem.

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[-] mesamunefire@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

I love piefeds default :)

And as much as I dont like parts of bluesky, they did the onboarding the correct way.

[-] FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

What we REALLY need is more posts about Linux.

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[-] Hanrahan@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit a

As a contra point, I'm glad that its like this, a lack of politcal debate is toxic to democracy and that way be dragons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

In a political context, the phrase means to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction, or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace, by offering a palliative: for example food (bread) or entertainment (circuses). Juvenal originally used it to decry the "selfishness" of common people and their neglect of wider concerns. The phrase implies a population's erosion or ignorance of civic duty as a priority.

That doesn't mean there shouldn't be more other stuff as well though.

[-] Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

I’m kinda bummed more people from Reddit didn’t come here after the exodus. But I guess it’s a Catch-22 thing cause that could’ve been all kinds of good or all kinds of bad so who knows so he’s starting off fresh and slow. It’s kind of the best way to go maybe

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[-] Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 weeks ago

Niche hobbies and small communities (that are active) is what is needed

[-] Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social 4 points 2 weeks ago

For that we need a LOT more users. It's kind of a chicken and egg situation.

Hopefully we can capitalise on the next Rexit.

In the past lots of people moved over but left because of the terrible UX. I think PieFed has solved most of the UX issues.

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[-] Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 weeks ago

Comes with numbers. Not before.

[-] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

This is it exactly. I made a hard cut with Reddit, but I'll admit to missing the sysadmin subreddit. The place was full of very smart, helpful people and also cranky. The PowerShell subreddit was another great resource. I haven't been willing to go back, but those sorts of communities only exist when you hit a certain mass of people on a platform.

[-] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yes! We need more esp32 users to come up with bonkers ideas.

[-] Skavau@piefed.social 3 points 2 weeks ago

Yes.

Do we want Reddit amounts of users? No.

But there's a lot of growth between here and there.

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[-] zerozaku@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

The post the other day about lemmy needing more users and engagement gave a little nudge to me commenting more. I guess same thing happened with many users and you can see the spike in the graph.

[-] solidheron@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago

I had the idea to revive dead c/ by reposting from reddit. It's controversial to use a bot

[-] TerranFenrir@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 weeks ago

Here's the thing imo. Bots used well can be really useful. The most attractive part about Reddit/Lemmy though is the comments. Seeing what people have to say about stuff is quite nice.

BUT. I can see how bots can be super helpful to subscribe to content where community interaction isn't that important (like art posted by artists on Instagram, Twitter and so on). The main attraction is the art itself. Not the comments.

This way, I can see what my favorite instagram artists are up to without selling my soul to zuck.

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[-] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 weeks ago

i think if you copy posts/images manually it's better because it shows that there's a human actually wanting that community active, so other people can see that and engage as well. if a bot does it, it's just a "flood" for no reason.

[-] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 2 points 1 week ago

Also you can control the pacing better. A bot will nuke the comments/posts ratio into the ground and that turns everyone away when all they see are a ton of 0 comment posts

[-] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

We need active users, not just users that post something once then disappear. The MAU is more important than the user count.

[-] Kekzkrieger@feddit.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

Quality over quantity

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[-] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Need to gain slighty more than we lose every year to stay healthy.

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[-] fujiwood@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

I just went to "All" and sorted by "Top: Today".

90% is memes.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 weeks ago

Ok, what content stream in what medium when viewed in a bulk popularity view like that isn't 90% memes or equivalent?

[-] Stupendous@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Edit: One thing I notice that is annoying are whatever conflicts between moderators and instances and seeing communities close with a message saying to join some new community on another instance. We're too small to be restarting communities because of whatever arguments mods have with instance admins. Most people do not care what instance they are on. I'll see people stereotype others based on what instance their account is based on and I'm at a loss that some people have already tribalized themselves based on fediverse instance they made their account on

The best stuff on social media is random hobbies. That needs to grow a lot. We want the people that are really into random stuff. Like maybe they're just really into fallen tree branches and for some reason there's a community out in the world all about fallen tree branches, we should want that. Over on reddit I enjoy the treelaw community. Get to learn about peculiarities of trees and property

As a start, fediverse would be nerdy. Going to be tech and privacy nerds. Gamers. Great, grow that. Be active. Get the food communities growing. Get the gardening communities growing. Bird watching. Whale watching. Train watching.

I remember earlier reddit. Like 2007-2010 for me. Back then it was nerdy as hell with a growing gaming and professional sports watching communities. A lot more comedy that wasn't global politics centric.

Lots of science, tech papers got big discussion and were the foundation for the community to grow. They had hobbies. They watched sports. Played video games. Gardening. Cooking. They'd talk about that too. Fun/educational communities

We have to be a lot more than just politics and grouches. If I just went by the grouches opinions TikTok would just be propaganda and then I see friend's on it and it's mostly cooking and comedy skits. Lots of anime memes. -- Growing the anime/manga community would be pretty big for the fediverse. Anime/manga fandoms are hyperactive posters

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