Could something like "consented white hat brigading" help communities grow? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by Crul@lemm.ee to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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In my experience, once a community reaches certain size, it grows organically. But reaching that cricial mass is hard.

So I thought that a coordinated "consented white hat brigading" might help. What I mean is for a group of users to focus on one or a few communities for a while trying to get them to that point posting and commenting (quality content).

It should be done asking the moderators for permission first. There may be communities that don't want to grow this way.

Disclaimer (because I got a comment in a similar post saying "Give it time"): I'm not trying to rush the growth, IMHO people should post as much as they want and not take it as a chore. I'm thiking of focusing the (natural) activity of those users interested in helping small communities (that want to grow).

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[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The way I'm encouraging growth on my subs is to first sub to them using a couple secondary accounts on other instances.

This way posts get visibility across more than just local.

Then I post once or twice a day, so there's a fresh post that people can come across in "all". This is how people do discovery on the fediverse, they see good posts, and find and sub to communities that way.

There's only so much I can do alone, and some of my subs I'm not posting to as diligently as others, not to mention other communities I want to help get discovered, not started by me.

So yeah, more people helping keep up that daily post would help, but going past that, like what c/digitalart was doing at the start, gets real obnoxious with how it saturates "all".

[-] Crul@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

but going past that (...) gets real obnoxious with how it saturates "all".

I agree. My current strategy is to have list of 10-to-20-ish small communities I think can succeed and try to post to them every day or two.

I took a look and one of your communities is (since a couple of days ago) on that list: !gameart@sopuli.xyz

See you there!

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago

Happy to see you here, thanks for your posts!

[-] Crul@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hoping from community to community is fun and easier than commiting to being a mod in one (or more), so thank you for that :).

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago

You are welcome!

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago

I have the same approach, happy to see mine makes sense somehow.

[-] orangeNgreen@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think a good place to start is Casual Conversation. There’s no real pressure to force a topic there, and people can, quite literally, have a casual conversation to perhaps lead to organic growth.

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago

Definitely! I have been trying to get some traction there, it seems an open topic enough to bring people to comment here.

FYI, your link doesn't seem to work, here is another one !casualconversation@lemmy.world

[-] orangeNgreen@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Hmm weird, works on my end. But thanks for the extra one just in case!

[-] Crul@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I don't have a strong opinion on which communities people could focus. If there is enough people that wants it (and their mods agree), I will be happy to help.

[-] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Sounds a lot like twitch raids (except asking permission).

Rather than explicitly asking permission, a community should be able to indicate that they're open to raids or not.

[-] Crul@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

twitch raids

INDEED, THANKS! I was sure this couldn't really be something new but I couldn't figure out any references.

Twitch raids are (almost, as you said) the perfect example.

a community should be able to indicate that they're open to raids or not.

And another option would be to allow Raid Requests in sub...

Good food for thought, thanks.

[-] CloverSi@lemmy.comfysnug.space 5 points 1 year ago

I like this idea a lot! If/when you make a community for coordinating I'd love to be a part of it.

[-] BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Any growth that isn’t organic isn’t gonna last because it isn’t real. You can artificially inflate your participation statistics with artificial participation, but as soon as that ends, you’re going to return back to your base numbers. It’s extremely unlikely, in my opinion, that what you’re proposing would actually trigger organic growth on its own that would be of any meaningful or lasting quality.

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 year ago

That's not really what OP is suggesting we do. They're not suggesting that posts should be upvoted for visibility, but that communities should be posted to for discoverability. The former would only be a transient bump in the stats, but the growth that comes from the latter, that being subscribers and new contributors, is not. Every sub, every new poster, will engage because they want to. The point isn't to "fake" activity with a lot of posts, the point is to be found by real, but simply more casual, users.

A community can live by one avid poster, or ten less active ones. But to get the latter, you need a jumpstart by the former.

[-] Crul@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Of course I could be wrong, but I don't agree.

When people go to a community in which its last post was 2 weeks ago, it's much less likely that they interact with that community (posting or commenting) than if the community has multiple posts per day. And that also affects the possibility that they come back in the next days. If you set the proper environment for enough users to interact and come back then, when the "campaign" ends, the level can be much greater than when it started.

I'm not saying that just posting a lot in a community for a few days guarantees it will grow after that, that's not how communities work. What I'm saying is that it can work with different degrees of success. And, if done properly, it can be fun to try.

[-] BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I’m not saying you shouldn’t try, and maybe I’m wrong. I’ve seen people try this on reddit and have it not work, but maybe lemmy is different. also, perhaps it depends on the community/subject matter itself?

best of luck!

[-] Crul@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

maybe lemmy is different

My (100% speculative) theory is that lemmy/fediverse is too disperse for its size, a lot of very small communities with the exception of a very small number of successful ones.

If that's the case, this could help with the "nucleation" of mid size communities in the short term.

I also find the experiment interesting and fun by itself. As said in the post, I don't think anyone should post more that they like just for the sake of growth.

Thanks for the feedback!

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 year ago

That's true to an extend, but at the same time there is an "empty dancefloor situation" in a lot of communities where any quality post you would make would be upvoted instantly by 200-300 people, but people don't want to post themselves because there is no content