Site direction: What happens next? (self.meta)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by dcx to c/meta

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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!!

all 40 comments

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[-] Tarlia 5 points 1 year ago

I don't know about everyone else, but I've left Reddit. It's an easy decision for me since I didn't become active until this year and didn't put down a lot of roots. I came over here immediately when I found out that r/Malaysia (and r/Malaysians) got their own place because it's the only subreddit that I missed in the blackout.

However, I agree that it's hard to just drop something that you spend years building. I have this exact problem with an FB Page.

I think the best way forward is to complement r/my by hosting things that don't fit over there. I love it that we can create specific communities here - I might pick up c/Sarawak if we plan to continue, and if unker needs a co-mod over at 'Dating, Relationship Advice, Personals', consider this me volunteering.

[-] dcx 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Great input, thanks for sharing! And would love if you picked up c/Sarawak!!

@unker FYI!

[-] Tarlia 3 points 1 year ago

c/Sarawak claimed!

[-] imaginelizard 1 points 1 year ago

@hyattpotter@monyet.cc

[-] hyattpotter 1 points 1 year ago

help.. how to appoint someone as a mod in a specific community? T.T

[-] imaginelizard 1 points 1 year ago

one easy way is to have them comment in your sub, and there's an option to appoint them as a mod in the comment. That's how I did it for !mental_health@monyet.cc

[-] hyattpotter 1 points 1 year ago

how do I unmod someone? aaaaaaaaaaa

[-] imaginelizard 1 points 1 year ago

Same way. If you meant yourself, there's an option to transfer the community.

[-] hyattpotter 1 points 1 year ago

got it. that was hard to figure out aaaaa. Just made a post, now for her to comment there.. haha

[-] imaginelizard 1 points 1 year ago

Don't forget to tag her. @Tarlia@monyet.cc, here's your cue.

[-] littleclover 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] dcx 1 points 1 year ago

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!

[-] Naomikho 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] ruk_n_rul 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We still have a lot of bed making to do. A lot of hyper-local/hyper-topical communities are yet to be created. Some are trivial (region/state/city subs/communities) and some are not. I'd like to go ahead and create some of these but I'm in all levels of indecisiveness e.g.

Should public and road transport be split or combined? how about cycling?
What content should I seed the communities with? (@stormy001 can be of great help pulling up news articles)
I'm not into many interests and not aware of nuances so what I made might be way off the mark.

And most importantly I don't want to be mod (aka landed gentry) to so many communities at once lol

What I think we can do is mirror lowyat's boards as communities to hopefully cover most of the bases. After we have that then we have the pull factor to attract terminally online monyets away from leddit. Show them "See how much more stuff we have!"

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 5 points 1 year ago

It's all my personal opinion, so...:

1)Hmm, it's kinda up to you to split it however you want, but since this server is in its infancy, if it's me imo i'd just group it together into one community with ambiguous name, so when the growth is exceeding the capability of the community, then you(or anyone willing to) can branch off.

2)up to you, but it's best you help contribute to the existing community instead of make up new one that's empty.

3)it's okay, me neither! That's why i keep it to two communities that i can pump out content with, while helping with news article here and there.

I think for now it's best to nurture a few community first instead of create a huge load of communities and hope it took off. Lyn took decades to be where they are, and we only exists for 7 days.

[-] imaginelizard 3 points 1 year ago

I concur too. Rather than create so many new communities in one go, focus on the currently viable few. We can use the cafe sub to gauge interest in topics that are gathering a lot of interest and build new communities when there are enough people to keep it active.

[-] dcx 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I agree with other commenters – while it'd be good to have some of these groups eventually, we prob shouldn't make a bunch of communities ahead of time, that we can't sustain readership for. Namesquatting and ghost towns will turn users away, vs creating as we go!

I also agree we can seed a few communities to start though! Bit by bit.

[-] weecious 3 points 1 year ago

We currently have Care sub, with the exception of Tuesday Mental Health thread, there isn't much going on.

I would like to link or import the resources that snel has prepared on r/my here (I've asked for his permission, and he's OK with it). Another thing is i would like to encourage the sub visibility by having a Weekly Mental Health Thread, that's refreshed on every Wednesday.

Inputs are welcome.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 2 points 1 year ago

you mean instead of doing mental health tuesday, just make it weekly? personally i'm okay with it and since there's nothing much pinned these day i'd say just ping me when you create it and i'll sticky it. i'm not sure how many post can be stickied tho, probably 3.

as for the sub being empty, i'm not sure, in my personal opinion mental health care is something that's there when one needed it, it doesn't have to be bustling with activity. i was thinking of posting article but then again i don't wanna spam on that sub.

should totally post the resource by snel and sticky it tho

[-] imaginelizard 2 points 1 year ago

Through my experiment so far, there doesn't seemed to be a limit on how many post can be stickied. I guess we can just be prudent about it so that the front page isn't full of stickied post.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hmm, imma try it out with local as well(sorry dcx)

Edit: ya wor, can be as many as we like. Nice. But yeah maybe max 3 would be nice

[-] weecious 1 points 1 year ago

Yup 🙂, so users can always have some place to vent if they feel their issues might be a tad heavy for cafe DT.

Point taken on the activity level for Care sub. I don't plan to make it, say, bustling, but just sort of an awareness about the sub that people can go to.

In case we can't sticky the resources compiled by snel, is there a wiki option available?

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 2 points 1 year ago

Emm, i haven't played with the community option at all, but there doesn't seems to have any wiki option too. What sort of resource thought? I'm pretty sure it can be posted and stickied to the community, and probably a link at the side bar

[-] weecious 1 points 1 year ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/malaysia/wiki/mental_health

This one. I'm also happy to just put the link to the wiki on reddit, this way we can push some traffic to r/my.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 2 points 1 year ago

no no no we don't link to there, we need people to visit here not otherway around 😂

but hmm, it seems there's 14k words in the wiki and the default max word count is 10k. Either the wiki split into a post and comment then lock the post, or ask naomi whether we can increase the word count. but i'd suggest option A cus i don't wanna bug her with more work😆.

[-] Naomikho 3 points 1 year ago

I haven't been checking the coding side of the stuff in a while :< I have been more busy with work lately and I'm focusing more on the ops/infra side for now. I do intend to continue the bot though

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 2 points 1 year ago

Haha, it's okay lah, we all understand that 😁 we'll make do with whatever we have now, still very small community and bots isn't much of a need yet, just focus on what you believe is higher priority (ง •_•)ง

[-] weecious 1 points 1 year ago

Hahahahahaha!

Option A is good enough for now. Yeah, she's carrying the server a lot, don't think need to add this onto her plate.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 2 points 1 year ago

yup yup, just remember to change the wording from r/malaysia to monyet.cc with snel approval, and also don't forgetting the formatting as well! and lock the post afterward.

once you're done, lemme know and i'll put it on the side bar.

[-] weecious 1 points 1 year ago

Sure thing, I'll need some time to do so. And oh, my sibling agreed to look at my keyboard for me, I'll only have a keyboard to use on Friday.

I need 48 hours in a day. Or a 3-weekend. 2-day is simply not enough 💀

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 2 points 1 year ago

Nice! Good to hear that!

Haha, take your time, there isn't a deadline🙈

[-] rom1215_ 2 points 1 year ago

Since I agreed to come onboard, thought I might contribute some ideas too, just some ideas though -

Firstly thanks for putting the wiki in place, really glad to see it over here. I've since tried to play around with editing the information and to be more familiar with Lemmy - which is still very confusing to me, haha - and seemed like things are good.

For the Weekly MH Thread, I've been thinking - so previously we have such a thread was I believe mostly for the mods to manage the sub better, on one hand to encourage/let people talk about MH but at the same time balance the topics appearing on the main sub, so we have a dedicated MH thread. But from what I see here Lemmy works a bit differently, balancing topics seemed to be less of an issue.

In a way, from what I'm seeing, what we have here is more akin to /mhp than the MH thread in /my, the whole space is reserved for people who wants to talk about MH things, anytime. And if this is how it works, we don't actually need to have a special/separate MH thread, probably.

But at the same time I actually agree very much with you on doing something to increase the visibility - I'd like more people to utilise this place really! - so I'm just thinking if we can do something about it.

One of the ideas I had is that - since we have this whole space for MH things, rather than a Weekly MH Thread/Check-in Thread (which if based on how it works in /my, just a dedicated thread for general MH talks essentially ) - we can have something different, something interesting that can also drive people to this space while keeping in line with the purpose of having this space (to promote MH, to find info/help), like rather than having a general MH Thread, we can have "themed threads", e.g. Self-care Thread, Ranting/No-advice-needed Thread, Progress Thread etc. (just throwing out ideas here).

And the main Care space can always be used for general posts/for people to seek help.

Should help with throwing attention our way.

Just to see what do you (and Liz) think.

PS. I'm planning also to migrate my MENTARI post over (might warrant a separate post because it's a major resource which is also quite commonly asked).

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 1 points 1 year ago

Hey snel, welcome on board, if there's anything you need the admin help, let us know, we'd happy to help 👌

[-] SheenTStars 3 points 1 year ago

I just need this instance to be more user friendly. Right now there are issues with the feed refreshing on its own, difficulty to post multiple images, image posts not showing automatically and have to expand to see, etc etc. I no longer interact on reddit so I hope this place grows on its own. It was really hard to post on-topic stuff on r/Malaysia anyway. Usually had to go to r/Malaysians. Here it's like everything goes, and if you're not interested in any certain community, you can just block it so it doesn't appear on your feed. Makes browsing all Malaysian content much easier.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby 2 points 1 year ago

Hmm, yeah, the issue you mentioned is caused by Lemmy UI, currently we're waiting for stable version of 0.18.1 to be released so hopefully these problem can be solved.

Or you can use one of these app and see if its up your alley

[-] dcx 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Bonus if curious: A few initial takes on this question, first raised by @Annoyed_Crabby (much appreciated!)

this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023

11 points (100.0% liked)

Where we are now

The next challenge

Big questions

Meta