We do a lot of hanging out and gossiping on fedi tbf. Mastodon is really big on crafts, and on Lemmy we have places like !knitting, !crochet, !lemmy_stitch, !sewing etc for specific crafts.
For the crafts a bit too niche to have their own active community, !imadethis loves to see completed projects!
Gonna tag @DharmaCurious and @OftenWrong too because I feel like a lot of folks don’t realise how much craft stuff we have on here!
So, with news of Reddit making deals to sell user data for AI training, I think we should really start organizing ourselves for an effective migration campaign....
As much as I love Lemmy, it’s just honestly not ready for another big influx yet. The 0.19 update broke so much, it really brought home how precarious this whole thing still is. Those of us who are here either a) kind of enjoy the jank because it feels like an adventure b) were morally outraged enough to make a stand against Reddit or c) both.
I have a very small amount of influence in the niche community of fibre crafts and especially cross stitch. Would I be able to explain Lemmy to my audience in a way that made sense and that they might even want to try out? Absolutely. Would I actually do that until it’s a bit more stable? Absolutely not, apart from a couple of specific individuals that I’m already working on.
Trying to force people to join platform B when platform A is already serving their needs makes no sense. You need to find the people who are dissatisfied, the people that would actually benefit from trying something new, and then make sure they’re aware of the option.
Don’t get me wrong through, I do encourage people to learn about and dip their toes into the Fediverse in general. Just last week I convinced a wave of fibre crafters (often older ladies who have barely ever ventured outside of Facebook) to try out Mastodon and Pixelfed and some of them have really taken to it! Alt text and content warnings and everything! One or two fellow YouTubers are even setting up PeerTube channels to bring over more crafting content.
Why did I tell them to join Mastodon over Lemmy? I’m literally moderator of !knitting and !lemmy_stitch so surely it’s in my best interests to bring them over here?
No. I know the demographic, I know what they’re annoyed about with big social media, and I thought Mastodon / Pixelfed were the best replacements for them.
As much as we would all love to see Lemmy become huge, you have to meet people where they’re at. If Lemmy is genuinely the best choice for everyone who is currently in /r/adelaide or whatever, then brilliant, your strategy makes sense. But if it’s not actually in their best interests, if they’re just going to be annoyed by things breaking and not see enough value to make it worthwhile, then there’s no point doing it just because you wish Lemmy was bigger.
Maybe the moral of this story is that the real strategy you want to be looking at is getting tiny niche influencers on side! 😄
It seems like any platform that features link aggregation is soon overrun by bots and self-promoters trying to drive traffic, and pages and pages of link posts versus pages and pages of people talking....
The thing is that people tend to post links as you can’t really force people to post if they don’t want to (or if they critical mass isn’t there). I’m guilty of that in the !parenting for instance, as I don’t have kids yet, I can only but post articles.
Might not be the kind of arts and crafts you’re talking about but I mod both !knitting and !lemmy_stitch, plus there’s !crochet , !sewing and plenty more that would be happy to have you!
I noticed that a lot of the posts on Lemmy are news, memes, and interesting discussions. I like the regular flow of content we have, and I find a lot of it engaging....
I have just deployed a script and a mastodon bot which attempt to hashtag lemmy posts so that they are better discoverable in microblogging services....
More for other mods to be aware that it’s not going to work quite as smoothly as they might hope. But yeah adding that to the bot replies makes a lot of sense, good thinking!
I’m wondering, is it all or nothing in terms of which posts get tagged? For example I mod !knitting and most of our posts are someone showing off a project, which is easy to comment on from Mastodon (I’ve been boosting and replying to stuff manually to draw attention there as you described in your OP). But then we also have things like Work-In-Progress Wednesday, where multiple people are posting images of their WIPs to one thread. This doesn’t work so well with Mastodon because images don’t federate (in either direction) with the exception of the first image attached to the main post, so there’s no point sharing it there.
Not to give you more work but maybe it’s an idea to have an opt-out keyword that can be included in a post, and the bot will know to ignore that one?
Again, really is great work, you’re always contributing useful stuff to the Fediverse and I for one really appreciate it so please take these rambling thoughts in the constructive manner they’re intended, they are definitely not complaints 😄
I’m legally obliged to shill the various crafting communities, my two most used are !knitting and !lemmy_stitch but you can find lots more in the sticky thread in either of those.
Then there’s also !imadethis which has been a bit quiet lately so if you’ve made something, go show it off!
Creatives of whichever fields, whether writers, artists, musicians, meme-makers, developers, film makers, and the like and/or communities, I’m curious to know about some of the people around the fediverse creating some original stuff....
I saw this post from !twoxchromosomes, and I wanted to share it here to get more discussion because it is important. I’m hoping that this post won’t crowd out any voices, and while I’ve tried to keep this post productive and inclusive, please call out any concerns and use the post if you prefer :)...
I’m a woman, and make no attempt to hide that fact in my posts. That said, I also don’t personally have much interest in talking about being a woman, so don’t sub to any of those places you linked.
Over on Reddit I just sort of let people assume I was male a lot of the time, since it wasn’t really relevant to what we were talking about. But from the start on Lemmy I’ve made sure to call out incorrect assumptions, downvote and give a talking to people stereotyping or being misogynistic, etc etc. And the more of us (of all genders) that make that same decision, the better things get.
I also mod !knitting which as you might expect is largely although by no means entirely women. Any questionable comments over there are dealt with swiftly, I am absolutely not having it.
I don’t necessarily see it as a “problem” that Lemmy is seemingly male-dominated (I say Lemmy because my Mastodon is very much female-and-NB-dominated). It’s more just a fact of early adopters tending to the techy interests that skew male. But if someone does see it as a problem and wants it to change, there are basically two things to do:
Make sure you’re helping make Lemmy a welcoming place for non-males
Invite your non-male friends
All that said, other women may disagree but I don’t particularly feel like a minority on here and never really think about it until coming across something gross (which is a LOT less often than on Reddit, thankfully). There may be few enough women that I recognise their names often when they post, but let’s be honest Lemmy is a small world and that goes for most regular posters in general.
(And it helps that I’m middle-aged so if any little boy thinks they can upset me with comments about my gender or appearance or whatever, lol, the self-confidence of age is a wonderful thing 😉)
Edit:Just wanted to add, if you’re not a man and you’re reading this thinking “wow she’s lucky, I’ve had such a bad experience here” then first, I’m sorry you’ve had that experience, people suck sometimes. But also, drop me a DM let’s see if we’ve got any interests in common and I can maybe signpost you to some more friendly communities and people. Between my two accounts I spend WAY too much time on Lemmy!
I’m noticing an influx of Reddit users today, maybe revolving around their weird bug they had today. I know this question pops up semi regularly, but for those just getting their foot in the door maybe we can help show them what else is out here on the Fediverse to help them get started....
I’m legally obliged to shill the various crafting communities, my two most used are !knitting and !lemmy_stitch but you can find lots more in the sticky thread in either of those.
Then there’s also !imadethis which has been a bit quiet lately so if you’ve made something, go show it off!
I’m legally obliged to shill the various crafting communities, my two most used are !knitting and !lemmy_stitch but you can find lots more in the sticky thread in either of those.
Then there’s also !imadethis which has been a bit quiet lately so if you’ve made something, go show it off!
Like others, I came over when Reddit was banning 3rd party apps. Many communities were being started and I wanted to help. So I chose one community to form here and try and grow. And we did! There was a time a short while in the little KC Chiefs community was in the top 100 communities on Lemmy world. I knew that wouldn’t last...
I’m sole mod (not the original creator, but took over when they went awol) for the knitting community at !knitting, and I do my best to contribute a lot to the cross stitch & embroidery one at !lemmy_stitch too. This is coming from a history of running various niche online groups. So a few things I would advise:
First, just accept that some topics are too niche. They were too niche for Reddit as well, at one point. People got overexcited and wanted to mark their territory by setting up a ton of communities when they were new to Lemmy, but reality doesn’t work that way and a lot of those spaces just aren’t needed. We’d be better served combining posts from these into slightly more general combined communities, and perhaps leaving a sticky post in the tiny niche ones letting everyone know where to head to for that topic.
But if your topic is big enough to in theory get decent traction:
Be grateful for what users you do have. You said you sometimes get “few” replies, so make sure you’re getting to know those people and replying to them and continuing the conversation where appropriate. You don’t need a lot of users, you just need a few engaged ones to make for a nice community.
Recruit your friends. You’re a Chiefs fan, you probably know other Chiefs fans. Get them interested.
Drop your community link wherever its relevant. People don’t like having to put effort into finding new communities but if they just happen to come across mention of it, they’ll click. Obviously I’m not saying spam, but there are plenty of sports fans here and it’s bound to come up in conversation.
Crosspost. Any posts you make to a Chiefs community are probably also relevant to the wider NFL communities or maybe fantasy football players. And again this just gives more people the chance to stumble across the fact that you exist.
Ok these next couple are more involved, but they do work well!
Consider Mastodon. I have a craft-focused account there too, and if I have a question about knitting or cross stitch or whatever then the more answers I can get the better, right? So I use the fact that we can post from Mastodon, to a Lemmy community, combining the replies from both audiences in one thread. Example of what I mean here.
Create value. Could be by posting pillar content that’s actually useful (in your case could be some kind of statistical analysis, we all know the football nerds love it, but whatever will be long-term useful / interesting to your audience). Or it could be a regular community event or something ("predict the Chiefs wins/losses for the upcoming season and win something, etc etc).
Ask your existing users what they’d like to see from the community. Some things you try will hit and some will miss, but getting feedback is going to up your chances!
That’s everything off the top of my head and it’s already a wall of text so I’ll stop there. It is absolutely difficult to be a mod, it can be a lot of work to get to the point of just having an active community that doesn’t need your input to keep rolling. But if your community see you trying, I think that goes a long way. Hope some of this was helpful!
Just making sure I’m in the right place. I cannot see any developed communities here so I’ve started wondering, what’s the real place everyone from Reddit has moved to? I’ve heard something about Discuit, but never tried it.
Yeah trendingcommunities is great! Was very proud of !knitting for getting in there last week lol.
That second link though is the bot spam instance where you can request a subreddit for it to just mindlessly repost. Most people already have it blocked. There are probably places to request real communities too but I don’t know them off the top of my head!
Heya, I was just doing a search for something and your comment popped up so thought I’d let you know we do actually have some quite decently active craft communities. !woodworking and !knitting for example. Join us, the more the merrier! :)
For sewing there seem to be two trying to get off the ground but neither seem super active. I’ll probably just pick one at random and start posting in it if that doesn’t change but they’re !sewing (direct link) and !sewing (direct link)
!leathercraft (direct link) isn’t something I do personally but I do enjoy perving over their projects anyway.
Erm…if I find any more I’ll come back and update this lol. Kind of one a one-woman mission to build a good list, then hopefully convince the various mods to sticky it so people who find one of these places can then find all the others too.
(Also p.s. I don’t know how to format these links for Kbin so sorry if they don’t work. But hopefully I’ve made it a bit easier for any other Lemmings who stumble across this comment.)
What would you bring to an adult show and tell?
I don’t necessarily mean adult as in NSFW....
A different strategy for promoting the Threadiverse
So, with news of Reddit making deals to sell user data for AI training, I think we should really start organizing ourselves for an effective migration campaign....
Instances or networks that focus on forums and conversations instead of link aggregation?
It seems like any platform that features link aggregation is soon overrun by bots and self-promoters trying to drive traffic, and pages and pages of link posts versus pages and pages of people talking....
Lemmy MAUs climbing back up! You love to see it. (lemmy.zip)
Is Lemmy a good place to share personal projects and art?
I noticed that a lot of the posts on Lemmy are news, memes, and interesting discussions. I like the regular flow of content we have, and I find a lot of it engaging....
Introducing the Lemmy Tagginator (github.com)
I have just deployed a script and a mastodon bot which attempt to hashtag lemmy posts so that they are better discoverable in microblogging services....
What are your favorite non-tech communities?
For those active across the fediverse, who are some creatives you follow and which creative communities do you enjoy?
Creatives of whichever fields, whether writers, artists, musicians, meme-makers, developers, film makers, and the like and/or communities, I’m curious to know about some of the people around the fediverse creating some original stuff....
Discussion on 'Missing women on Lemmy and decentralised networks'
I saw this post from !twoxchromosomes, and I wanted to share it here to get more discussion because it is important. I’m hoping that this post won’t crowd out any voices, and while I’ve tried to keep this post productive and inclusive, please call out any concerns and use the post if you prefer :)...
What Lemmy communities would you like to share that we may not know about?
I’m noticing an influx of Reddit users today, maybe revolving around their weird bug they had today. I know this question pops up semi regularly, but for those just getting their foot in the door maybe we can help show them what else is out here on the Fediverse to help them get started....
What are your favorite niche Lemmy communities that you want to see thrive? (sadanduseless.b-cdn.net)
ok fine I’ll allow kbin too...
Is there any way to reverse degrowth of the niche communities on Lemmy?
Like others, I came over when Reddit was banning 3rd party apps. Many communities were being started and I wanted to help. So I chose one community to form here and try and grow. And we did! There was a time a short while in the little KC Chiefs community was in the top 100 communities on Lemmy world. I knew that wouldn’t last...
Where are all of the reddit refugees these days?
Just making sure I’m in the right place. I cannot see any developed communities here so I’ve started wondering, what’s the real place everyone from Reddit has moved to? I’ve heard something about Discuit, but never tried it.
deleted_by_author
What do you do with all the free time you got once you stopped using reddit?
A list of casual communities on Lemmy (that aren't just tech news or politics)
Searching Lemmyverse is good for finding communities. !trendingcommunities is also a nice tool for finding new places....
Saturday thread
The weekend, and the rain, has arrived....