I am always a bit surprised by the lack of activity in this community, are we doing something wrong?

Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de to [Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation@lemmy.world – 28 points –

57k active users on Lemmy, Casual Conversation seems a pretty common topic, and still there aren't that many people around here.

I posted on !newcommunities@lemmy.world , we are probably the most populous community with this name.

Maybe it's because LemmyWorld communities do not appear on Lemmyverse.net any more?

What do you think could be the issue?

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Meh. Let it grow organically. Mods have to seed new threads with interesting topics. Over time, people will come.

In my limited experience on Lemmy, communities let to themselves then to organically die rather than grow.

About interesting threads, casual conversation is usually driven by user submitted content rather than mod driven.

!chat@beehaw.org is an example of a successful one, and almost completely based on user submitted content

Without wanting to get into spicy flame-war territory ... having a successful casual chat community sounds like the sort of thing beehaw would do better at than the rest of lemmy, in part, because community creation is closed, so arbitrary content naturally goes into the chat/lounge community, rather than into the very specific niche community it's most aligned with despite no one being in there and no one ever seeing the post (exaggerated but you get my point).

It completely makes sense, I agree with you.

Hence my questioning about just redirecting there as there community is quite active already

I mean, I just got here and this place is already talking about moving.

I'm confused by your comment... threads left to users tend to die, but successful ones are successful because they're left to users?

That's how I'm reading it...

Are you just saying it's random?

I'd highly prefer a community that's successful and active because it just happened to sprout up on its own than have an active community that was nurtured and encouraged by modsto become that way. Which is to say I think I agree with you :)

threads left to users tend to die, but successful ones are successful because they’re left to users?

I said communities, not threads :)

Communities that no ones take care of (active posting, promotion, etc.) tend to die.

Threads created by users are a sign of growth.

I hope it's more clear :)

it just happened to sprout up on its own

That's very uncommon on Lemmy due to the hard discovery of content. If people don't know a community exists, it's hard for them to randomly stumble upon it

As I remember, casual conversation on reddit was also a bit low on traffic compared to other communities. Maybe we need to be more proactive by plugging relative communities in other threads.

Ah, that may be, I still remember it being pretty popular though.

What may be is that local instances have their own casual communities such as !casualuk@feddit.uk, and people might want to prefer discussing there

Instead of posting a thread with this topic, why don't you post a thread that actually fits this community. I bet people would engage with it.

I did, every day for the last two weeks...

And looking at your post history, it appears each time you got a little discussion going. So what's the problem?

The issue is that I'm questioning if it even makes sense to try to keep this community active or if I should just redirect everyone to !chat@beehaw.org and call it a day.

I wanted to have a casual conversation community accessible to instances defederated by beehaw, but it still feels like mostly like shouting into the abyss. Also I'm the single mod here, sometimes it feels like working alone, then you start questioning why you even put much effort in the first place.

Let's see how it evolves in the coming days.

Keep in mind Beehaw is defederated from many major nodes in the fediverse. I don't see any harm in continuing to post wherever you want. If it feels like "work" just don't post. It's not your job to post on a forum.

I often enjoy reading through the threads here, even if I don't comment much. I also can't see beehaw communities because they defederated us. I would really appreciate if you keep this place going for a while longer and see how it develops. I can help with moderating if it's getting to be a lot.

I'll try to participate more also 😇

That's great, you are now a mod!

I was indeed thinking about finding another place where everyone could meet (such as lemm.ee, which is still federated with most of the people, or reddthat.com), but we can probably still wait a few this before moving

Thanks!

I saw you were looking at discuss.online as well, which also makes sense to me.

Just be aware that you will lose a chunk of subscribers by moving to another server, no matter how many announcements you make. That being said, better to make the move sooner than later, if you're going to do it.

Also, although I do think hexbear users are often funny and positive contributors, they're not particularly well suited for casual conversation. Despite wanting to be federated with that server, it's also nice to have the option of spaces where I don't have to worry about being called a reactionary lib when I'm just trying to make polite conversation. Just something to think about. Lemmy.world's aggressive defederation policies are actually a benefit when it comes to a community such as this, imho.

That's a good point. I guess we should probably ask the community what they prefer. I'll open a thread about this later today

It's just a numbers thing. The subreddit was fairly low comment, compared to subscribers. It succeeded very well at being casual. This C/ is doing fine compared to most of the niche communities overall, imo.

I only just found the community, I think a lot of people are slowly building up their subs so hopefully you'll see interaction increase

Good to hear, welcome!

Same! I just found it two days ago and then forgot about it until I saw your post just now.

Welcome too!

Thanks! There have been a few times where I just want to talk about something that isn't specific enough to have its own community, so I'm looking forward to participating here. I used to post those conversations in CenturyClub on Reddit, but I stopped visiting Reddit after the API fiasco.