The goal of these posts is to identify community gaps that people want filled, but not to arbitrarily create communities to “fill those gaps”. Instead put together teams that can/will work together to sustain their communities (many hands make light work).
To that end, I’m looking for anyone’s input about potential communities (not necessarily to be created anytime soon). Some ideas about potential input (don’t need to answer any or all the questions):
- Is there an inactive community you would like to subscribe and/or post to? (No pressure to try and revive it)
- Do you have an idea for a new community? (It would be helpful if you provide some detail about what the community would be focused on and what sort of posts it would contain)
- Do you have a suggested community name? (Not required, but if you have an idea, feel free to share)
- Do you have a suggested community instance/server? (Some servers have significantly different views on different topics)
- Are you willing to be a community mod? (Not to pressure you, just to provide support, if indicated)
Discussion of a working guide to be added to the sidebar has been suggested. It’s been confirmed that Piefed has the functionality for each community to have its own wiki (and I’ve found the feature, currently playing around with it a bit).
The guide could contain:
- Beginners guide to the fediverse (many exist), perhaps a quick overview (with links to more extensive breakdowns) before jumping into the threadiverse (Thanks ImmortalColeSlaw @lemmy.today)
- On-boarding/quick breakdown of the threadiverse with relevant terms
- Demographics. Know demographic sets: Fedecan 2025, Lemmy.nz 2025, Any others?
- Suggestion of types of posts (ex. opinion requests, question-answer)
- Any other suggestions?
Started Communities:
Suggested Communities - Potential subscribers or active users:
- Mahjong
- missingno @fedia.io
- Deer (images)
- Auster @thebrainbin.org
- Rooftops (pictures of rooftops, rooftop gardens, cozy rooftop spaces)
- Potential subscribers: squirrel @cake.kobel.fyi, vicinus @piefed.zip
- CottageIndustry (users can offer items they make for sale)
- This idea probably needs some additional considerations (spam, payment, fraud, etc.) before actualizing. Some initial commentary here.
- billionsandbillions @piefed.social
Suggested Feeds:
- Hand&Eye (showcase anything made with your hands (only physical, nothing digital))
- Examples: Woodworking, leathercraft, pottery, soap, candles, baskets, clothes, bookbinding, stained glass, glass blowing, bags etc.
- billionsandbillions @piefed.social
Struggling Communities (if you can, throw a post/comment their way):
- !android@lemdro.id
- !ecospheres@mander.xyz (instance currently down)
- !triathlon@lemmy.world
Also, let us know if you have any suggestions about this community or post.
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I’ve given up on mander.xyz coming back.
So now !space_astronomy@piefed.social exists and is going great :)
Any updates about mander.xyz? I had some hope they could get the site back online. I don’t know if we decided on a similar instance to create some communities on.
Looks to still be down. I couldn’t quickly find any new updates from anyone on the threadiverse either :(
I’d recommend sharing this tool amongst the text of your weekly posts:
Instead of needing someone from one’s instance to subscribe to a particular community in order for others on that instance to see it, this tool uses bots to do that work, making communities more discoverable on the whole. There’s no downside whatsoever as I understand it. Every community should use this tool once after it’s created IMO.
For lemmy-federate, who can register new instances there?
Oh, you just put in your particular community, then that sucker gets federated out, far and wide.
End result is that your community is vastly more easy to discover for others.
Didn’t allow me to register a NodeBB category
Appreciate the suggestion and definitely agree every community should use the community federation assistant sites (https://lemmy-federate.com/ and https://federation.quokk.au/).
I’m a bit of two minds about adding it to these weekly posts though. On one hand, I see these posts as being the step before community creation (identify gaps and teams), the post text is already longer than I’d like, and community federation assistant sites are already in the sidebar. On the other hand, people on mobile may never see the sidebar (therefore the federation assistant sites) and it’s not a bad idea to have regular reminders for people to utilize the sites.
I’m thinking adding the sites to the community (as a reminder?) to Blaze’s weekly posts “Weekly thread - how is everyone doing with their communities?” might be a better fit. @Blaze@piefed.zip thoughts?
Wow, I hadn’t noticed that on the sidebar at all. Yeah, that seems completely sufficient, then. IMO it’s every user’s responsibility to read the sidebar no matter app / platform, so I tend to think that’s enough.
Would a meta Lemmy community be redundant? I posted a thread on !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml asking about community thoughts on how servers can stay online via some avenue beyond simple donations.
It wasn’t a support question, likely something more for the devs, but also felt value in getting larger community feedback. I felt posting it to a dev community might be less visible to the general Lemmy population and thought a meta Lemmy community could fill that gap.
Do you want it to be only Lemmy or more Threadiverse (Lemmy, Piefed, Mbin)?
While having a wider cope than you are asking for, the “Fediverse” communities may fit what you are looking for:
By the way, I saw your post about funding instances originally and thought it was quite an important question and had some good discussion. Having reread the post and comments, a thought I have is, perhaps, for admins to only allow new accounts if the server costs are already being covered by donations and have it auto close account creation, if not.
On the downsides, this may cause some MAU growth resistance, as some growth is in huge spurts and an automatic account creation closure could stop the growth mid way. Of course, that would likely make the instance more sustainable.
Additionally, if the server expenses were greatly over the donations, it could cause something of a death spiral. Where the server can’t get new accounts because of the account creation closure and additional donations aren’t enough to overcome the deficit and reopen for new accounts/new blood that may also donate.
This seems to fit the bill quite nicely, the other fediverse community content seems like there’s not much discussion.
admins to only allow new accounts if the server costs are already being covered by donations and have it auto close account creation, if not.
That’s an interesting take, when server costs are met then the gate is open. I’d suggest not an “auto close account creation”, but maybe allow users an option to go around the gate by paying? Still feels like it’d detract from growth. Like if sh.itjust.works was underfunded and gated account creation caused a paywall, users could simply make an account on lemmy.ca for example.
To your point about overages, maybe there would be someway to monitor it as a community in a dashboard? Maybe each instance could pair with a non-profit organization to donate to on the communities behalf? Then if we see an instance’s surpluses are going to EFF (or some other cause a user aligns with), it could give someone an idea on which instance to create an account on. I honestly just picked sh.itjust.works cause the domain and it’s Canadian. But knowing they are supporting something would add an extra level of cool.
the other fediverse community content seems like there’s not much discussion.
Not overly surprising, it has an order(s) of magnitude difference in subscribers (lemmy.world community: 44k subscribers, piefed.social: 2k, lemmy.zip: 879, and quokk.au: 105).
allow users an option to go around the gate by paying
I think this is a good idea. My hesitation is that linking an account with a payment method could be used to identify a user’s real name and information (which they may or may not care about).
monitor it as a community in a dashboard
This seems like a good idea, to me. There could also be some other general info in the instance area (server location, average latency, up-time, etc.) and perhaps requests for additional admins, if they wanted/needed some (prevent admin burnout, ex. lemm.ee).
pair with a non-profit organization to donate
Hmm. I see the benefit, but also worry about not keeping reserves to handle unexpected growth, hardware replacement, or service fee increases.
I specifically joined .zip because of Demigodrick’s monthly server update posts (last month’s). So, I definitely see the benefit of showcasing the server’s status (financial or otherwise).
