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Does Lemmy have an ghost community problem? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by maplebar@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I don't want to single anyone out, but whenever I browse Lemmy for new communities I feel like it's not uncommon to find ones that only have 0-2 posts in them from months (or even as much as 2 years) ago.

I get why it happens: every time Reddit or some other platform does some crazy anti-user shit there's a big flood of interest in Lemmy and the Fediverse again, and with it a rush of people making communities (often trying to quickly clone popular subreddits).

But it seems that after some time they either get bored or disappointed that they weren't able to grow things as fast as they wanted, and then they just take off, leaving nothing but a ghost community behind--nobody posting anything and effectively unmoderated from what I can tell. That's my experience at least.

Of course, people can always create entirely new servers with an entirely new set of communities. But it feels like a shame that there are so many effectively dead communities on otherwise popular servers due to the fact that the people who created them never put any work in and just up 'n' left.

Have you run into many "ghost communities" during your time on Lemmy?
Do you think it's a problem now?
Will it be a problem in the future?
If so, what can/should we do about it?

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[-] turtle@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes, and I think it would benefit Lemmy in general if all instance admins did a clean up. Start by deleting all communities that have been around for a while but have never had any posts.

Edit: there are plenty of those. Look through /communities on your own instance to get an idea and try all the different sorts. I see many communities with several subscribers but 0 posts.

this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025

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