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

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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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[-] TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 19 points 1 day ago

This is the attitude. Some people make a community as if it was an enterprise, trying to grow big fast. The best communities, here or everywhere, are labors of love that may or may not grow much. A community getting huge is even a liability that can kill it as effectively as low traffic.

People, don’t make communities expecting them to become big, make them expecting them to stay authentic.

this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025

115 points (100.0% liked)

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