this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2023
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

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I like that this is a general instance. (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by SkepticElliptic@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
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see a lot of discussion about adding more specific communities on this instance and I feel as if it will dilute the community too much.

I personally see Lemmy instances as somewhat similar to old forums, many of those did so well because the community came together under a shared experience.

Lemmy is decentralized after all and instances based around interests will get created and discussion will get focused on certain instances for certain topics. Those instances will be moderated by the people who have passion and understanding for those topics.

Of course the great thing about Lemmy is that we're (mostly) free to visit other instances and if there are redundant communities it is not difficult to participate in them.

I do think it's nice to have a place to call home, a "hive" if you will. Where users can discuss their shared experience on the fediverse.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly my thinking too - which is why I built my instance. I saw this and immediately thought that the entire point is decentralization, but so many people are just creating communities willy nilly on the main instances. And there should not be main instances.

So yeah, I created my own. I thought about what I did most of the time on Reddit, and what communities are probably already in the Fediverse and decided on mine. I'm sure some people eyeroll at pop music, but on Reddit there are literally hundreds of subs around pop music and their artists. Those don't need to be added to a main instance, those could all be hosted by another instance. So I thought why not.

(Btw if you like pop music come check us out - poptalk.scrubbles.tech)

[–] bird@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just wanted to say THANK YOU for making a PopHeads equivalent. It's a direly needed space adjacent to a general Music community, as we've all experienced from Reddit.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks :) I love(d) the /r/TaylorSwift and /r/PopHeads community on Reddit and got probably well over half my total karma from those two places. People were always so nice, if a little unhinged lol. I hope we can build this community up.

Working on adding a pop memes community next? Just need a name... popmemes? memetos and pop? I can run a server but I am not a creative person.

[–] bird@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mostly frequented PH and PHCJ.

I know there's lots of love for TS, I've never really been a diehard fan. But I'd be lying if I wasn't living for all her relationship/PR drama lately. 💀

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 points 1 year ago

That's fair, and I'm a die-hard swiftie lol. That's why I made the instance generic to start with, figure we can fracture out later

[–] setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree. I did mention that a tabletop gaming community would be nice, but I didn’t feel the need to push for one right at this moment.

I think more communities on this instance make some sense, but people are asking for hyper specific ones. I saw a post today asking for like 5 different niche technology/computer communities that are direct Reddit ports. It makes more sense to keep everything under a single community and only split once the userbase of that community has developed enough.

[–] realChem@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

and only split once the userbase of that community has developed enough.

I think that's the key thing. I do quite like the idea of more specific communities (which I've expressed a couple times), but only once there are enough people participating that they won't just sit dormant. Like I agree, tabletop gaming is something I'd very much like to have a dedicated community for, but not right now.

My perspective is that the main value in more niche communities is that they help people find posts related to a specific internet amongst a sea of unrelated posts. E.g. if I want to chat about specifically Citizen Sleeper, but the main gaming is flooded by posts about Elden Ring, other people interested in chatting about Citizen Sleeper might not see my posts.

(On that note... Anyone want to chat about Citizen Sleeper?)

At this point, that's just not an issue Lemmy has. Keeping things more general for now is definitely the right strategy.

And like several people have mentioned, Lemmy is federated! So if someone wants to go ahead and spin out some more niche communities, they are free to do that on their own instance and we'll all still be able to join in!

[–] V4uban@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I share the same feeling. I was a bit surprised by a lot of new joiners asking for the opening of very niches communities. Those needs will probably be filled later by specific instances, but it's nice indeed to have a place to just discuss general things.

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The community browser is starting to look really silly. There's almost as many communities as users. People really need to take a chill pill on the community spam.

[–] aphoric@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

I think there's a fear that if a niche subreddit goes private permanently that community will be lost unless there's an analogue set up here.

There's going to be a learning curve, and I'd imagine that specific instances will eventually pop up as the user base grows in size and grows more comfortable with the platform.

[–] V4uban@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Definitely agree. I just had a quick look, and there seem to be very obscure topics being created with only one person contributing. I guess that generalist instances will prevent communities creation in the near future, and niche instances should come up with their own set (e.g. major video games genres for a video game instance)

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I did basically that, but at least I have a plan. I started my shadowrun community so that I can save a bunch of important stuff from Reddit, I'm also planning to put some AARs there, and I'll cross-post stuff from there to beehaw's gaming community and lemmy.ml's RPG community as appropriate.

[–] dingus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It's tricky because a lot of Reddit thrives on niche communities. The general subs get too chaotic and well...general. What if I want to talk in depth about some random obscure media from 20 years ago? It's trickier to do that in such a general discussion forum because the vast majority of people won't be interested. Reddit even has a sub for my specific profession that you cannot find anywhere on the web because my career is so niche. It's nice to be able to talk to others in that community...but elsewhere no one will even have any idea what I'm talking about.

What I'll miss most about Reddit is all of the niche communities I subbed to. Usually I would discard the general ones in favor of curating my own content for things that I like.

We'll see how it all plays out though. I do understand why many Beehaw users don't like this aspect...but many people out there need it to be satisfied.

[–] jgrim@discuss.online 3 points 1 year ago

I agree. The communities should create those niche groups, and each instance should be general. I understand the attraction to only keeping what you want in a small instance, but it seems like folks would enjoy variety and discovery.

[–] tmobilemod@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Yep. For example, i am on a monero focused instance with people who understand monero and mods from /r/monero~~___~~