Do we need more users ?
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Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I'm not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.
The data
I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:
query { monthlystats { date_checked softwarename total_posts total_users total_comments } }Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:
jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I'll put the graph for that in comments)
Then did a good old' chart
What to think of it
I don't know. Users' activity is on the rise and I find it nice
Needing more users is fine. Sure, we could always use more friends (or enemies, I guess)
But, ultimately, just having people come here first and then whatever hellhole corpo-media second is at least a step in the right direction. I feel like user activity increasing is a good sign that there's a lot of people out there investing time in the fediverse instead of the corporate hell-loop social media.
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The amount of furry / anime content on the front page might be putting off some new users
I don't see this on mine. Isn't NSFW enabled by default?
This is why I don't generally believe in all being a good "starting" view for new users. Local would probably make more sense until the user has subscriptions, and then defaulting to subscriptions once the user has joined communities. This would mean an always active feed to start, prioritizing the "local" community for users to participate in the instance they belong to, while also not bombarding them with content from the firehose.
My 2 cents, probably easier to say what to do than to do it though, being a programmer myself.
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The amount of furry / anime content on the front page might be putting off some new users
I don't see this on mine. Isn't NSFW enabled by default?
This is why I don't generally believe in all being a good "starting" view for new users. Local would probably make more sense until the user has subscriptions, and then defaulting to subscriptions once the user has joined communities. This would mean an always active feed to start, prioritizing the "local" community for users to participate in the instance they belong to, while also not bombarding them with content from the firehose.
My 2 cents, probably easier to say what to do than to do it though, being a programmer myself.
I'm not saying it's necessarily NSFW content
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Quality over quantity
False dichotomy in this case, IMO.
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Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.
Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:
- !woodworking@lemmy.ca
- !leathercraft@lemmy.ca
- !artshare@lemmy.world
- !gardening@sh.itjust.works !Houseplants@lemmy.ca !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !baking@sh.itjust.works
- !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works or !sewing@lemmy.world
- !television@piefed.social
- !movies@piefed.social !movies@lemmy.ca !movies@lemmy.world
- !jigsaw_puzzles@lemmy.world
If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net
The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).
I’m kinda bummed more people from Reddit didn’t come here after the exodus. But I guess it’s a Catch-22 thing cause that could’ve been all kinds of good or all kinds of bad so who knows so he’s starting off fresh and slow. It’s kind of the best way to go maybe
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yeah there's always gonna be some users who would like more furry/anime content on the front page and those who might be put off by it
IMHO the best way to do it would be to recommend specific instances to potential new users. i.e. if you know they like furry/anime content, recommend lemmy.blahaj.zone, if you know they like programming memes, recommend programming.dev, etc ...
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The amount of furry / anime content on the front page might be putting off some new users
I don't see this on mine. Isn't NSFW enabled by default?
This is why I don't generally believe in all being a good "starting" view for new users. Local would probably make more sense until the user has subscriptions, and then defaulting to subscriptions once the user has joined communities. This would mean an always active feed to start, prioritizing the "local" community for users to participate in the instance they belong to, while also not bombarding them with content from the firehose.
My 2 cents, probably easier to say what to do than to do it though, being a programmer myself.
yeah i think when a new user signs up on an instance, they should be automatically subscribed to a certain list of communities that fit the vibe of the instance. like when you sign up to a memes community, you get automatically subscribed to all meme communities even from other instances.
the instance admin would have to maintain a community list for that.
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lemmy is basically NSFW because of this, yes. the amount of furry anime porn that reaches the front page is crazy.
i don't get why it being pushed, but I suppose it's just the userbase is very active and passionate about that stuff so it rises to the top.
how comes i never see it? did i block it accidentally?
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Look at it from a new user's perspective; someone who has not curated their feed or otherwise "made the fediverse what they want" yet. e.g. They land on Lemmy World or another big instance and their default sort is "active". Doing that now in an incognito window, and half the front page is rage, same on the second, and the stuff that's not are some random shitposts and Linux filling in.
Truth be told, looking at that, I probably wouldn't want to sign up. Especially if I didn't know that different instances have different cultures, etc.
Assuming they're a normie (which we desperately fucking need here), I just don't see that they'd want to stick around. Aside from trolls and spammers, the only people we seem to consistently attract here are the "Wah wah I was banned from Reddit" types and, while there's certainly a sizable pool to draw from, I wouldn't exactly consider them the pick of the litter for growing the fediverse.
The point of OPs post is that usage here is declining, and I am simply pointing out that I feel all the rage and politics is not particularly inviting.
Edit: And you know what? I'm just going to fucking say it. There's too many armchair activists here who won't let you enjoy a single moment without reminding you that something bad is happening somewhere in the world and that you have some kind of moral obligation to be angry all the time about it. And if you're not angry all the time then you're somehow part of the problem.
There’s too many armchair activists here who won’t let you enjoy a single moment without reminding you that something bad is happening somewhere in the world and that you have some kind of moral obligation to be angry all the time about it. And if you’re not angry all the time then you’re somehow part of the problem.
That's exactly what i'm complaining about as well. Being angry doesn't even help. Having a clear head helps, but being angry IMO stands against that.
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Yes.
I've seen so many discussions like this about what needs to be done. So I did those things.
Very few noticed and I quickly got tired of popping up and saying "oh yeah I fixed that" to everything. Besides it makes me look like a smug asshole.
piefed is great!
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Yes! We need more esp32 users to come up with bonkers ideas.
Efi System Partition 32 bit?
i remember writing code for the ESP boot system
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Yes.
Do we want Reddit amounts of users? No.
But there's a lot of growth between here and there.
IMHO the internet isn't for everyone. that might make me sound like an elitarian asshole but i think the internet's only for people who enjoy going through information and are able to think without being swayed by group-think (tribalism) because otherwise it simply ends up in a bubble of rage bait and propaganda.
Essentially i think that maybe the internet of the future will be much smaller overall (think like 3% of its current user count) but it will probably be better that way.
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What we REALLY need is more posts about Linux.
Linux is too mainstream nowadays, I'm moving to FreeBSD
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The instance is called lemmit.online, and the most upvoted post on the whole instance is "This bot is bad for lemmy".
the question is whether the upvotes of that post makes over half of the total upvotes on all posts on that instance, and that i seriously doubt
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I had the idea to revive dead c/ by reposting from reddit. It's controversial to use a bot
i think if you copy posts/images manually it's better because it shows that there's a human actually wanting that community active, so other people can see that and engage as well. if a bot does it, it's just a "flood" for no reason.
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I’d rather see better discovery tools and better community/account migration tools. Id be worried about topic-specific instances potentially backfiring by concentrating too much influence for a given set of subjects on the “preferred” instances
better discovery tools
i think communities should have links to "related communities" in their sidebar sothat people can find similar communities more easily.
There could even be a "recommended" posts listing, besides the "subscribed"/"local"/"all" as it is today. it would show you posts from linked communities from communities that you already subscribed to too.
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because the alternative is to lose more than we gain each year because the option to "stay exactly the same" is statistically unlikely as it has a probability of around 0%.
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That's a very capitalist take. Remember how good things used to be? That's how good the Fediverse is now. We don't want it to grow or die. If it grows, great. If it doesn't, great. Quality over quantity, imo.
I saw it as more philosophical than capitalistic. Like when Nietzsche said "What does not kill you makes you stronger".
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Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.
Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:
- !woodworking@lemmy.ca
- !leathercraft@lemmy.ca
- !artshare@lemmy.world
- !gardening@sh.itjust.works !Houseplants@lemmy.ca !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !baking@sh.itjust.works
- !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works or !sewing@lemmy.world
- !television@piefed.social
- !movies@piefed.social !movies@lemmy.ca !movies@lemmy.world
- !jigsaw_puzzles@lemmy.world
If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net
The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).
Exactly! Well said.
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I agree with everything that you've said. I would also add:
Find your nearest non-political non-tech hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see
Because if we're going to cast the same net reddit does, people with a more varied set of interests need to come here. Can't be all linux, politics, and news. We're going to need people who like baking. We're going to need sports fans. We're going to need music.
I could type new communities we need to be active all day. Humans are surprisingly a diverse set of creatures. You have one set of interests, I have another. Different set of interests. And both are totally valid.
The thing people here don't seem to grasp is that OTHER interests and OTHER people using the fediverse isn't a bad thing. If a bunch of boomers come here, and make their own communities to talk about Taylor Swift, and whatever else they talk about on facebook. That's good that it would be here! Not bad!
They could talk about gardening, and model trains, and whatever else. It wouldn't appeal to you, and thats ok.
Plus the other generations as well!
