Mostly happy about the weekly thread in !newcommunities@lemmy.world. Hopefully it will bring more people to the communities mentioned there

!Musicals@kbin.social (https://kbin.social/m/musicals) was active. Then kbin.social started having issues and it has been inactive for 5 months. Prior to that it was mostly just me and the mod posting.

The issue with musical theatre is that I spend a lot more time actually rehearsing for or working on theatre than I do talking about more discussable topics with strangers not working on the same production as me. Broadway news? Uhhhhh… (that's what the mod was posting). I'd be happy to reestablish it somewhere functional, but I have to figure out what I would post first. Maybe finding the mod's news sources and posting links, and asking how the commenters' productions are going? Audition tips? Posting their own performances is probably way less popular because these take place in a physical space and who worked on what gets documented in a program, also known as easy doxxing… The nature of it being a documented performance art makes it harder to post what you're working on, though I imagine a costume designer could post a costume and just not talk about where their production is or something… it is the performers (actors, pit members, etc.) that would have a harder time posting their work. Unless they post themselves practicing or rehearsing or something, but then it opens you to nasty "you suck" drive-by YouTube comment-style judgments… hence why I don't post my own performances.

Trying to think of stuff to post on !pkms@lemmy.blahaj.zone, !digitalgarden@lemmy.world, and !obsidianmd@lemmy.world. Will probably have to actively seek new stuff out.

The struggle of wanting a Fediverse community and being unable to make it because you don't know nearly enough about the subject, and gaining enough expertise takes time. Or you just don't know what would get posted. In addition to being into musical theatre I play instruments. Oh god what do I post. r/piano is so full of people performing that I just do not care about. I think the trouble with a lot of performing arts communities online is we're a bit busy you know… actually performing. Talking to your bandmate about this hard piece for the concert, about how you think the conductor is doing, etc. is cool and also often specific to your performance and not too good for discussion with strangers in my opinion unless it is a famous conductor or well-known piece. Same issue as the musical theatre stuff.

I feel a little daunted because I am into otome but I also haven't played nearly as many as the average r/otomegames user and am less knowledgeable, though probably one of the most knowledgeable on the Fediverse lmao. But also the other otome spaces are dead, so… making myself a No-Life Internet Mod for the first time in my life, let's see how it goes.

Sadly have been told about federation issues, being unable to see !otomegames@kbin.run
(https://kbin.run/m/otomegames) from Lemmy. I made it in the first place because I was told about the federation issues from !otomegames@kbin.social (https://kbin.social/m/otomegames) where it would post on my instance but not to the source instance, so I hope it's user error (perhaps smacking Community Not Found by searching for this on a Lemmy instance you are not logged into? Since you have to actually be logged in to get a new community fetched) or that it is less of an issue than it was with the kbin.social version.

Also struggling with getting things to look okay cross-platform. A link post I made did indeed make it to Mastodon, but without any of the body text. Just the title, tags, and link. Checking the rules on Mbin, I see all the rules numbered nicely, but on Lemmy nothing is numbered except for rules 3a and 3b. I have a Lemmy account on a different instance than the person reporting federation issues, and I am aware that you need to be a user in order to make a new community pop up when searching for it. So I do know it can appear on Lemmy, at least, even if particular servers aren't taking it. Oddly enough [Lemmy link](/c/otomegames@kbin.run) works, despite this being Mbin so you would think it would take an /m/ and not a /c/, so fun note for any Mbin users trying to spin up a community and adhere to the rules about having a [link name](/c/communityname@instance.com) link on !newcommunities@lemmy.world.

Wondering what the guidelines are for a nice icon. I made a quick PNG logo (not an artist, so it's not very good, but also I do not have to give attribution or worry about taking something I shouldn't have, and something about logos being helpful) that was 30x30 pixel art. The pixels looked nice and sharp on the original image, but it looks so fuzzy on both Mbin and Lemmy. A similar thing happened when I uploaded a PNG logo on another website with similarly small dimensions, and I wonder what makes that happen. I looked this up and apparently upscaling the image will fix it. EDIT: Yes, upscaling the image fixed it! I specifically used https://lospec.com/pixel-art-scaler/. Just resizing the image might not work—I tried that quick and it looked exactly like the failed fuzzy image on Mbin—I think Mbin also took my little 30x30 image and tried to resize it to be bigger as well. I also checked in the art application I use, and resizing with the Nearest algorithm worked perfectly, and all the other options (Linear, Cubic Smooth, Cubic Sharp, Cubic Sharper) all made it look fuzzy.

Not promoting on !newcommunities@lemmy.world until I fix these issues and have more than 4 posts lol.