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 that we would be outpaced by many more broad appeal communities but I didn’t predict the reverse in engagement growth that has come. Stagnation sure, I didn’t think Lemmy was going to surpass reddit for a long while yet, but not the barren communities of today. Meme communities and the “small gripe” adjacent communities are doing fine, but it seems all others have shrunk. I tried to keep the Kerbal Space Program community active for a bit but had to return to the official forums and even subreddit for discussion. The post I made in the Go community here remains the only post in the community.
A platform led by a CEO who edits comments of users, lies about other professionals and then double downs on the lie when proven to be a liar can’t be trusted. And in general I prefer the decentralized open source backbone of Lemmy to the ad ridden, rage bait and bug filled Reddit. I’d love for this to be my full time home for discussing my niche interests but that’s not possible without others engaging with the content.
I posted a lot in the beginning, tried to comment a lot too but now it feels like talking to myself when I make a new post in the community I started and get few or no responses. What can be done? Community specific advice is nice, but I’m looking more for Lemmy World level solutions as I’m sure there’s many many other niche communities I’m not apart of experiencing the same thing.
There is already a word for “reverse degrowth.” That word is “growth.” (Or “grow,” possibly “regrow” in your context.)
I have not much else to add other than I am continuing to post on Lemmy regardless of whether or not it becomes popular. I’m pretty much the only voice in the two communities I’m most active in, and if that winds up with me just shouting into the void about topics I like, well… I’ll still do it, because t that’s what I enjoy doing. Maybe some day, maybe not. Fuck it.
😆 Love it, ya made me audibly laugh, because you are correct, and OP was so stuck in his head frustrated about this that he was thinking in double negatives 😆
The context I was trying to show that growing a community with continuous progress is different than taking a community that is shrinking, stopping the shrinking, and then causing positive growth.