So, I love this site. I’ve been here more-or-less since the beginning, across various accounts. I also have accounts on other Lemmy instances.

One common pattern I see is that instances branch out their communities too soon, and overly dilute the conversation. It makes an instance that is ultimately not that active (compared to any of the big sites that don’t need naming, really) appear to be even less lively, due to so many instances with either nothing at all, a few month old posts, or a generic post linking to a projects blog.

Note that I am not criticizing the instance by pointing out the low activity levels - I really do love this place. It’s just a fact at the moment. You can switch viewing posts by new and scroll down a little to see we get around 5 - 6 posts per hour, occasionally a bit more and occasionally a bit less.

I think that having lots of inactive, dead looking communities is off-putting. I know that I certainly don’t feel encouraged to post in them. I worry this might have a similar effect on other users too.

I do understand that c/programming is deemed as something of a catch-all community, and so anyone could post there rather than the niche communities, but I’m not sure that this is totally obvious to everyone.

Personally, I feel we should purge all the tiny communities that have no posts (or just a single blog post, for example) and encourage people to post in c/programming. Then, new communities can be made when a particular topic becomes large enough to warrant divergence, either because it’s clearly a subject of interest to many users or because it ends up dominating c/programming. c/rust is an example of such a community, as is c/programmerhumor.

I am nobody here, and I was not asked for my opinion, but I just wonder if this topic has been thought about much? I really want this place to thrive. Do any other users here have an opinion? What do the instance admins think?

    • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
      21·
      4 months ago

      None of the communities you have mentioned are dead. In fact according to the January stats, all the communities you mentioned have above average usage.

      I’m sorry, you’re trying to blatantly lie with statistics.

      “Above average” means nothing if the majority of communities is already dead. You’re just arguing that some communities are more dead, which is pointless.

      You’re also lying regarding what traffic is being posted to !dotnetmaui@programming.dev. All posts ranging back to the last two weeks come from a single user account: https://programming.dev/u/SmartmanApps .

      To make this even more pathetic, the bulk of the posts going into !dotnetmaui@programming.dev were posted by your account after I pointed out the community was dead and already dead on arrival.

      You’re not refuting the point: you’re proving the point that the community is dead.

      • 💡𝚂𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗆𝖺𝗇 𝙰𝗉𝗉𝗌📱@programming.devEnglish
        11·
        4 months ago

        I’m sorry, you’re trying to blatantly lie with statistics.

        No, you’re lying by using a different definition of “dead”. See screenshot I already posted. It comes from this very Community. It’s based on how many monthly users there are, not how many posts there are. BTW the number of users has gone up since you made your previous comment - the MAUI community now on 35 users a month (only 1 of them is me), which is well on the way to being classified as “moderate” rather than just “quiet”. Sorry to break it to you, but you’re still wrong. As I said, take your gaslighting elsewhere.

        • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
          21·
          4 months ago

          No, you’re lying by using a different definition of “dead”.

          Now you’re being silly and acting defensively. I don’t need to do anything for the !dotnetmaui@programming.dev group to be dead or remain dead, as it was expected to be. Anyone can take a look at it and see that if they filter out your personal inorganic traffic, which is already of dubious relevance, nothing remains.

          You can stay up all night arguing otherwise, but it is what it is.

          It’s ok if you feel that it’s your personal mission to generate traffic for a particular channel on a lemmy instance. Just don’t try to pretend it’s something that’s relevant for anyone beyond yourself.

          • 💡𝚂𝗆𝖺𝗋𝗍𝗆𝖺𝗇 𝙰𝗉𝗉𝗌📱@programming.devEnglish
            12·
            4 months ago

            if they filter out your personal

            …it’ll still be 35 users/month, which is still not dead.

            it’s your personal mission to generate traffic

            I’m not generating the other 34 people who used it this month, which includes, as I mentioned before, someone who actually provided me with a solution to a problem I had. Welcome to why Communities are useful. Not sure what purpose you think they’re for?

            It’s ok if you feel that it’s your personal mission

            As opposed to your apparent personal mission of trying to declare groups dead which actually aren’t?

            Bye now Mr. Gaslighter.

            • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
              1·
              4 months ago

              …it’ll still be 35 users/month

              I’m not sure you are aware how irrelevant this is. This could mean as little as a single user opening the community page daily, or 30 different users accidentally navigating into the community page from the main page just because an article showed up in their feed.

              To frame the absurdity of this argument, I moderate !nodejs@programming.dev , which in the past month registered also 30 users/month, and that community is also dead.