My theory is that making this place into a community where that sort of discussion happens is a numbers game. We have 123 subscribers today and that number is growing by about 1% per day. It seems that we’re getting about 1 ‘active’ subscriber (familiar names who post content or contribute to the threads with some regularity) for every 25 or so overall subscribers. At those growth and engagement rates, we would have about 400 members and 16 of us active by the end of the year - this place will feel pretty active. It already feels a lot more active than 6-8 weeks ago when I was effectively the only one posting most weeks and most posts were getting no comments.
I think all we need to do to facilitate that growth is to keep posting and commenting regularly here ourselves - be the change, etc - make m/Neoliberal look like an interesting and active place where other people want to subscribe, post and comment themselves.
(N.B. If those growth and engagement rates carry on through next year, that would take us to around 1,000 subscribers / 40 active by end-March and 2,500 / 100 by end-June - a pretty booming community as we go through the US election season. On the one hand, I expect our growth should slow eventually, but 2,500 subscribers is still such a small fraction of the current Threadiverse that I see no reason that’s unachievable! I also think that the US, UK and European Parliament all having elections next year will be a big boon to political communities generally, so there’s reasons to think we could grow faster not slower. And that’s without Reddit doing something else to drive the next wave of exodus…)
Agreed. There is no reason it needs to be exclusively on reddit and having the community on more than one platform is a good idea. Being dependent on one platform is not smart lol.
A big part of the challenge we are facing now is that reddit has developed a monopoly of sorts on forums over the last 10+ years.
Yeah, it really is a numbers game. I also think the elections next year will help as well. Though, as time goes on I think we should expect the 90%, 9%, 1% rule to be the norm.
I also think one of the bigger hurdles to clear will be having viable, third-party apps. I think not having these in June stymied the reddit diaspora and if these had been up-and-running then we would probably have even more engagment now. I am hoping that Artemis exiting beta and Kbin finalizing its API soon will also help fuel growth. The simple reality is that most people use their phones moreso than their computers nowadays, so we need a good mobile portal. The webapp is good, but it’s not really a replacement for a mobile app. I know lemmy has a few options with memmy and mlem, amongst some others, but even they were not ready in June.
Right now, it looks like a lot of our engagment comes from kbin.social, lemmy.world, mastodo.neoliber.al, sh.itjust.works, and some people from beehaw. I think I occasionally see some people from lemm.ee.
For whatever reason, the subreddit existed as five people for years and then took off in early 2017. I think that had to do with r/badeconomics and much of reddit taking a hard left (even moreso than it was before). I don’t remember exactly. Regardless, I think we just need to keep posting and commenting until we hit a critical mass.
Starting to miss ArrNL. The type of election discussion there doesn’t really exist anywhere else
My theory is that making this place into a community where that sort of discussion happens is a numbers game. We have 123 subscribers today and that number is growing by about 1% per day. It seems that we’re getting about 1 ‘active’ subscriber (familiar names who post content or contribute to the threads with some regularity) for every 25 or so overall subscribers. At those growth and engagement rates, we would have about 400 members and 16 of us active by the end of the year - this place will feel pretty active. It already feels a lot more active than 6-8 weeks ago when I was effectively the only one posting most weeks and most posts were getting no comments.
I think all we need to do to facilitate that growth is to keep posting and commenting regularly here ourselves - be the change, etc - make m/Neoliberal look like an interesting and active place where other people want to subscribe, post and comment themselves.
(N.B. If those growth and engagement rates carry on through next year, that would take us to around 1,000 subscribers / 40 active by end-March and 2,500 / 100 by end-June - a pretty booming community as we go through the US election season. On the one hand, I expect our growth should slow eventually, but 2,500 subscribers is still such a small fraction of the current Threadiverse that I see no reason that’s unachievable! I also think that the US, UK and European Parliament all having elections next year will be a big boon to political communities generally, so there’s reasons to think we could grow faster not slower. And that’s without Reddit doing something else to drive the next wave of exodus…)
I mean I agree. I don’t see any reason NL needs to be on Reddit. But until that happens I’m def missing out on election info
Agreed. There is no reason it needs to be exclusively on reddit and having the community on more than one platform is a good idea. Being dependent on one platform is not smart lol.
A big part of the challenge we are facing now is that reddit has developed a monopoly of sorts on forums over the last 10+ years.
Yeah, it really is a numbers game. I also think the elections next year will help as well. Though, as time goes on I think we should expect the 90%, 9%, 1% rule to be the norm.
I also think one of the bigger hurdles to clear will be having viable, third-party apps. I think not having these in June stymied the reddit diaspora and if these had been up-and-running then we would probably have even more engagment now. I am hoping that Artemis exiting beta and Kbin finalizing its API soon will also help fuel growth. The simple reality is that most people use their phones moreso than their computers nowadays, so we need a good mobile portal. The webapp is good, but it’s not really a replacement for a mobile app. I know lemmy has a few options with memmy and mlem, amongst some others, but even they were not ready in June.
Right now, it looks like a lot of our engagment comes from kbin.social, lemmy.world, mastodo.neoliber.al, sh.itjust.works, and some people from beehaw. I think I occasionally see some people from lemm.ee.
For those curious, here is the link to the subreddit stats for r/neoliberal: https://subredditstats.com/r/neoliberal
For whatever reason, the subreddit existed as five people for years and then took off in early 2017. I think that had to do with r/badeconomics and much of reddit taking a hard left (even moreso than it was before). I don’t remember exactly. Regardless, I think we just need to keep posting and commenting until we hit a critical mass.