Just curious to know how many mods here are
- A. still “here” and active
- B. here but given up due to lack of momentum, interest
- C. abandoned platform completely
- D. just waiting for the 1 year mark and praying new users and posters will continue to come
- E. other? (like only relying at alternative matrix chat)
I’ll be happy to see more than 10 responses from this dead community 😉
[Update 11/18]: glad to see comments, feedback, much more than I expected. Also see the modlog for actions taken. Just wanted to point out a couple of threads:
- https://lemmynsfw.com/post/2601241, by @OptimusPrime@lemmynsfw.com
- https://lemmynsfw.com/post/418317 - this topic has been hashed over and over, and I’m not about to let this thread/community get derailed.
[Update Nov 20] : WRT downvoting - see https://lemmynsfw.com/post/4581685
I’m somewhere between A and B at this point. The community I mod is fairly niche, so I was not really expecting a massive flood of interaction. It did grow pretty quickly at the start, but that growth has slowed down a fair bit since then.
The main challenge for me is that, aside from 1-2 posts by others, I am the only one who has been finding and posting new content, making me the only one keeping it ‘alive’ so to say. I’ve been managing alright, but I wonder what will happen if I get busy and am unable to make new posts…
I think the major problem with Lemmy (not just NSFW Lemmy, but I’ll focus on that side) is one of user count and volume of content. On Reddit, there is a massive collection of populated, active subs, spanning all manner of desires and kinks, from common to rare. This simply does not exist on NSFWLemmy at the moment. For example, let’s say a user is looking for content focused on female abs.
On Lemmy, there is:
Over on Reddit, there is:
as well as subs focused exactly on what the user is looking for, all with a very large member count, when compared to LemmyNSFW’s most populated communities
The problem with this, is a prospective user is being asked to choose between a platform that has a steady stream of fresh, high quality content of exactly what they want, and one that is offering less, more infrequent, and more general content. From a pure consumption standpoint, there are really very few reasons to pick Lemmy over Reddit. I think, until there exists a compelling reason to use Lemmy, powerful enough to start self sustaining growth, this platform will continue to struggle with the problems that come with a low user count on a site focused around content consumption.
You have many good observations! Reddit has had many years of a headstart so LemmyNSFW will always lose in raw numbers comparisons.
The only point I would say to consider is that subreddit membership numbers on Reddit are way over inflated with dead and inactive accounts (as well as tons of spam accounts) accumulated over the entire history of Reddit. And now probably 50-80% estimate of old content (especially over 6 months) are dead imgur or pornhub links 😕 again falsely inflating the numbers. Afaik, Reddit never subtracts from their metrics numbers - their constant straight growth lines always going up are due to tons of spam and spamrings that mods have been fighting against for years.
Case in point - my active personal subreddit currently shows over 45K members, but I know there aren’t that many active accounts/members since the recent Reddit purges of accounts and defections. And I don’t have the time or will to delete all the old dead content posts.
I’m curious about your niche community and current posts - they are all illustrations. Is that intentional?
You may be right about the inactive accounts, and you are definitely correct about the dead imgur content (although I’d put the number more towards 50-60 percent), but I’m afraid those factors aren’t quite enough to make Lemmy attractive. Imgur struck a blow towards the NSFW side of Reddit, but it has recovered.
Another draw Reddit has that I forgot to mention is the prevalence of OC content. That can have it’s own problems, with spam and excessive advertising, but the big upside is if a user finds something they like, with a single click they can go directly to the source to find more of it.
RE: My community Yes, and no. With the type of content it is focused on, I have a slight bias towards illustration, and I’m basically the sole poster so that affects things. But, more than that, I haven’t found any non-illustration content that would fit. With that said, it certainly isn’t meant to be an illustration only community. I’m not attempting to actively remove or suppress non-illustration content.
Just a suggestion - try browsing r/SensualFemdom. I helped setup that subreddit a couple of years ago when it was at 1.5K members, but its a bit too “tame” for me personally 😉. There are lots of relevant content/illustrations there (especially from friend mod u/SurfFly) that I think fits your community well.
Again, you are totally right. I started r/DangleAndJingle from scratch to over 200K in a few years (and now Im setting up equivalent !dangleandjingle@lemmynsfw.com here), and it is now > 95% OC (not to mention all the tons of posts from unverified posters that we filter out via automod that are never seen). The main reason I mentioned this example is that I remember celebrating the first 500, then 1000, then 2K members, and then it gained momentum (a lot of it was due to the special OC posters/friends at the start of that sub, who have all but disappeared/retired…)
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll check it out. Funnily enough, I get a lot of the content I post from Reddit.
Yep. If the communities here could attract some high quality OC posters (especially ones who don’t also post on Reddit) that would lead to some major growth, but that goes back to the same problem of OC producers not coming here because of low view counts…. I think at the end of the day, Lemmy is going to struggle to compete unless Reddit does something crazy and completely bans NSFW content or something.