At least on the communities i follow. Every so often I come across a thread where i recognize most of the users there even in the big communities with over 30k members and I haven’t even been on lemmy that long.

  • @fart_pickle
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    37 hours ago

    The reason for that is Lemmy Social Score, aka karma. Most of the people on the internet are looking for a validation from online randos and this prevents them from posting unpopular points of view. Hide score from the users and you will see way more posts and comments.

    • Dettweiler
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      95 hours ago

      Personally I think it’s because Lemmy users tend to lean towards an older/more mature audience; and that crowd tends to comment less often in general.

      • @[email protected]
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        255 minutes ago

        I’m young and sometimes I refrain from commenting because either A) I don’t have any experience on the subject or B) There’s too many adults and the discussions are book chapters long.

    • @thedirtyknapkin
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      66 hours ago

      but then there’s no sorting to it all and it functions on bumps like 4chan. not necessarily a better system.

      the real reason is that 90% of users on any social media site only lurk. the users that post tend to post a lot. these are just natural things that work out that way due to human nature. confidence and extroversion are some of the last things to make it to niche social media.

      • @[email protected]
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        English
        25 hours ago

        You can still do the voting and the sorting without actually showing it publicly. This would make discussions a lot more genuine

      • @fart_pickle
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        36 hours ago

        Call me old fashion but the best system was and is good old forum. Posts and comments are order by posting date. No points, no bumps, just a regular timeline.

        As for the lurkers, I still believe that removing Lemmy Social Score would cause more people to engage.

        • @Breezy
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          43 hours ago

          Whats this social score? I didnt think lemmy had a karma system, honestly i bet mine is terrible.

          I use sync if that makes a different.

        • @thedirtyknapkin
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          14 hours ago

          most forums had bump rules. any new comment jumped a post back to the top, like 4chan.

          • @fart_pickle
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            33 hours ago

            Not the good old 90s forums. You could stick the post but all posts and comments were displayed in chronological order.