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Should we be creating new comms? (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The recent Mod Drive/Comm Creation brought to my attention how many comms barely get used. Some don’t have any users at all. It’s a problem I remember speaking out about way back in the day and it’s still here. There are a few reasons I think can of.

Firstly, we just don’t have enough users to fill in every niche comm. It’s been a problem for a while and the only solution is the grow, especially focusing on the kinds of users that would populate those comms.

Secondly, and more importantly, when a potential post can be created in two or more comms, users tend to choose the one with more activity. So, if a post can be put under c/Islam or c/History, people tend to choose c/History. This is a basic flaw in the Reddit/Lemmy style of posting.

And with these two problems combined together, the small comms face a near-insurmountable obstacle. Creating new comms won’t change that. I’m not against new comms. New comms are good. But, in addition, there needs to be other measures taken, to ensure this doesn’t just result in more dead comms.

One solution is to look at combining some of these smaller comms into ones that can represent a bigger percentage of the user base. For example, the four religious comms - c/paganism, c/islam, c/judaism, and c/christianity - can be combined into a c/religion instead. This would have two benefits.

Firstly, it would have a bigger user base. Right now only c/christianity has more than 1 user per month. Most users just don’t join these comms, because they feel they are not a part of that religion. Again, if we had a big enough user base, with enough people of those religions there to fill them, this wouldn’t be a problem. As it stands, though, this results in dead comms. A c/religion would solve this by providing a central location for all religious discussion, making it appealing to people of certain religions and to people who are interested in religious content.

Secondly, this also solves the issue of there not being a c/shinto or c/buddhism or c/hinduism. There is no logical reason why these, and countless others, don’t exist when the four we have do. This means posts about religions other than the four get posted on comms like c/history or c/news or wherever. A central c/religion would provide a location for all religious content, saving us from creating even more dead comms for every major religion out there.

Another example. Right now we have a c/europe, c/oceania and c/latam, with c/mena being proposed. As far as continents go, this is a pretty awful spread. With a bigger userbase, it would make sense for us to have not just these, but also c/asia and c/africa. The purpose of these separate comms was for that to be the case. But the result is dead comms (except for c/latam) and once again no place for other posts about asia or africa except on c/news or c/politics etc.

One solution is the combining of these comms into something like a c/tricon representing the three continents - Asia, Africa and America. It is also a reference to the Tricontinental Conference held in Cuba in the 1960s, which was a major gathering of ex/colonised countries to overthrow colonialism, imperialism and capitalism.

The goal of the Tricontinental Conference was to merge Afro-Asian solidarity with Latin American solidarity and to develop a communist organization with the goal of international revolution. It was one of the largest gatherings of anti-imperialists in the world.

Pretty cool.

What happens to Europe and Oceania? Well, imo these are both just parts of Asia anyway. But if we want, we could create a separate c/colonisers for them and other settler-colonial states. This would also remove c/canada.

Just a thought.

The suggestion of a c/theory is a good one, but it can also be used to consolidate c/marxism and c/anarchism, in addition to providing a place for other leftist theories.

There are many other possibilities, that we can think of if this is an idea worth pursuing. Anyway, these are my thoughts.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

we have /c/cars but not /c/bicycles and until that one is resolved you're all libs

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The idea of creating a new comm to generate discussion on a subject should be abandoned, our numbers are too low for comms to function like subreddits. As comms are right now, they are likely silencing discussion on some subjects. Instead, the line of reasoning behind creating a new sub (or continuing the existence of an old one) should be one of the following:

Some users would likely want to not see posts about the topic (doomer, anime, games, veganism, electoralism...)
To create a space where marginalized voices are not drowned out by the majority (anti_cishet_aktion, neurodiverse...)
Special cases where one might want to look at older posts (mutual_aid, feedback, announcements...)

All other posts should be put in a main comm, which should be named better than chapotraphouse so new users aren't discouraged from posting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is not a bad idea either, though it’s far more radical than what I am suggesting. We essentially operate in a similar manner anyways, but instead of one “main” we have a handful (cth, dunk tank, news etc). Most of the posts in one can easily fit in another already.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's perfectly fine for comms to fail.

Without creating them you do not know if they will fail or if there will be interest in keeping them going. If they fail, it's not a big deal. If they do not then they become a useful space.

A simple culture to create is that comm creators should be active posters in their comm. A daily post isn't difficult, it takes 5 minutes. This by itself will keep comms active and if the creators can't do it then that's ok, it can either be handed off to someone who does want to keep that comm going or it can be closed for a time when more activity warrants someone else attempting it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

While it’s fine for comms to fail, I don’t think we should be doing things that actively encourage it. This is the unintended consequence of the way we create comms.

For example, with religion comms - we created a c/christianity because some users wanted it. It got some activity. Now, though the question arose of what to do about other religions? So we created c/islam and c/judaism. But why stop there? Why not also create c/buddhism, c/hinduism, and many, many others? Clearly, if followed through, we would need at least a dozen (inc. c/paganism, c/animism etc.) And almost all of them would be dead on arrival, or near enough.

But what if we had a different approach to comm creation? What if, when the idea arose of a c/christianity, we instead said, “Let’s think a bit more broadly,” and create a c/religion?

I don’t think it would be a major comm, but it would definitely be way more active than c/christianity or any of the other comms individually, and also more active than them combined, because c/religion could cover so many more religions and it could cover the topic of religion itself.

I agree, it’s fine for comms to fail. But if there is a way to ensure they do not, then I think we should try it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There will only be main a d we'll all be happy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This would genuinely be a good idea if we had a “tag” system instead of comms. Tags are, imo, just better in general. The same post can have multiple tags, rather than needing to choose one comm or, even worse, cross-post. You get to consolidate all comments in one post, and you don’t need to worry about “dead tags” nearly as much as “dead comms”. Combined with a way of “democratically” generating tags, when a select number of users agree on a creation, would also get rid of the AO3 problem.