If I see one more article about knitting where the photos are clearly crochet, or vice versa, I swear to god...

I'm a woman, and make no attempt to hide that fact in my posts. That said, I also don't personally have much interest in talking about being a woman, so don't sub to any of those places you linked.

Over on Reddit I just sort of let people assume I was male a lot of the time, since it wasn't really relevant to what we were talking about. But from the start on Lemmy I've made sure to call out incorrect assumptions, downvote and give a talking to people stereotyping or being misogynistic, etc etc. And the more of us (of all genders) that make that same decision, the better things get.

I also mod !knitting@lemmy.world which as you might expect is largely although by no means entirely women. Any questionable comments over there are dealt with swiftly, I am absolutely not having it.

I don't necessarily see it as a "problem" that Lemmy is seemingly male-dominated (I say Lemmy because my Mastodon is very much female-and-NB-dominated). It's more just a fact of early adopters tending to the techy interests that skew male. But if someone does see it as a problem and wants it to change, there are basically two things to do:

1. Make sure you're helping make Lemmy a welcoming place for non-males
2. Invite your non-male friends

All that said, other women may disagree but I don't particularly feel like a minority on here and never really think about it until coming across something gross (which is a LOT less often than on Reddit, thankfully). There may be few enough women that I recognise their names often when they post, but let's be honest Lemmy is a small world and that goes for most regular posters in general.

(And it helps that I'm middle-aged so if any little boy thinks they can upset me with comments about my gender or appearance or whatever, lol, the self-confidence of age is a wonderful thing 😉)

Edit: Just wanted to add, if you're not a man and you're reading this thinking "wow she's lucky, I've had such a bad experience here" then first, I'm sorry you've had that experience, people suck sometimes. But also, drop me a DM let's see if we've got any interests in common and I can maybe signpost you to some more friendly communities and people. Between my two accounts I spend WAY too much time on Lemmy!

I get that you saw a perceived problem and you're trying to fix it. I get that what you've built is cool on a technical level and it probably feels really terrible to have people be so negative about it. So first of all, none of this is personal at all. But I feel this comment illustrates exactly where the problem lies.

You want to "help people migrate away from Reddit". But I'm not sure what makes you think people need "help" at all, I mean if someone wants to stop using a platform they can just stop using the platform. I was a heavy Reddit user and was in plenty of tiny niche subreddits, but so what? I wanted to leave so I left.

So maybe the real problem is that so many people don't want to leave Reddit, and that disappoints you, and you want to try and convince them that they do? This I could definitely understand, but trying to convince someone you know what they want better than they do themselves is not generally a great tactic.

Most people will just stick with whatever the "best" platform is in terms of showing them content they want to see, and are slow to move to the next thing once the one they're on starts sucking. So if you really want to put your dev skills to use it would make more sense to get stuck in with Lemmy itself and help increase the pace of improvements. A lot of us are happy here, but a lot of people also bounced off due to the jank. And the more we can reduce that bounce rate, the more we can keep people around, the more we're in a position to capitalise whenever the next big wave of newbies hits.

The person who runs this whole thing was in here recently with a new "recommended alternatives to subreddits" tool. Conveniently failing to mention that the recommended communities they'd seeded it with were full of bots. So clearly given they weren't up front at all in that post they're aware it's not an appealing prospect to most people but are attempting to trick us into joining and talking into a bot-void anyway.

As much as I love Lemmy, it's just honestly not ready for another big influx yet. The 0.19 update broke so much, it really brought home how precarious this whole thing still is. Those of us who are here either a) kind of enjoy the jank because it feels like an adventure b) were morally outraged enough to make a stand against Reddit or c) both.

I have a very small amount of influence in the niche community of fibre crafts and especially cross stitch. Would I be able to explain Lemmy to my audience in a way that made sense and that they might even want to try out? Absolutely. Would I actually do that until it's a bit more stable? Absolutely not, apart from a couple of specific individuals that I'm already working on.

Trying to force people to join platform B when platform A is already serving their needs makes no sense. You need to find the people who are dissatisfied, the people that would actually benefit from trying something new, and then make sure they're aware of the option.

Don't get me wrong through, I do encourage people to learn about and dip their toes into the Fediverse in general. Just last week I convinced a wave of fibre crafters (often older ladies who have barely ever ventured outside of Facebook) to try out Mastodon and Pixelfed and some of them have really taken to it! Alt text and content warnings and everything! One or two fellow YouTubers are even setting up PeerTube channels to bring over more crafting content.

Why did I tell them to join Mastodon over Lemmy? I'm literally moderator of !knitting@lemmy.world and !lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works so surely it's in my best interests to bring them over here?

No. I know the demographic, I know what they're annoyed about with big social media, and I thought Mastodon / Pixelfed were the best replacements for them.

As much as we would all love to see Lemmy become huge, you have to meet people where they're at. If Lemmy is genuinely the best choice for everyone who is currently in /r/adelaide or whatever, then brilliant, your strategy makes sense. But if it's not actually in their best interests, if they're just going to be annoyed by things breaking and not see enough value to make it worthwhile, then there's no point doing it just because you wish Lemmy was bigger.

Maybe the moral of this story is that the real strategy you want to be looking at is getting tiny niche influencers on side! 😄

I've done all kinds of random jobs but like to tell anyone who will listen that my time as a cleaner was possibly the best of them all.

I worked in a building that was entirely dedicated to operating and adminning a traffic tunnel, so there were normal office rooms but also cool control rooms full of flashing lights and interesting displays and friendly people who were only too happy to infodump about it all.

The top floor was entirely given over to a conference room featuring a massive scale model of our tunnel but also the surrounding road system, complete with tiny toy cars. That room also had a hot drinks machine that was entirely free to employees so most of my breaks were spent up there with a book drinking hot chocolate.

Yeah, cleaning toilets and buffing floors is not exactly going to keep your mind occupied, but that just means it's free to wander to more interesting places. No stress, nothing to take home at the end of the day.

If you can get by on the generally lower pay and get to clean somewhere interesting there are a lot of unexpected perks, tbh.

I'm sole mod (not the original creator, but took over when they went awol) for the knitting community at !knitting@lemmy.world, and I do my best to contribute a lot to the cross stitch & embroidery one at !lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works too. This is coming from a history of running various niche online groups. So a few things I would advise:

• First, just accept that some topics are too niche. They were too niche for Reddit as well, at one point. People got overexcited and wanted to mark their territory by setting up a ton of communities when they were new to Lemmy, but reality doesn't work that way and a lot of those spaces just aren't needed. We'd be better served combining posts from these into slightly more general combined communities, and perhaps leaving a sticky post in the tiny niche ones letting everyone know where to head to for that topic.

But if your topic is big enough to in theory get decent traction:

• Be grateful for what users you do have. You said you sometimes get "few" replies, so make sure you're getting to know those people and replying to them and continuing the conversation where appropriate. You don't need a lot of users, you just need a few engaged ones to make for a nice community.

• Recruit your friends. You're a Chiefs fan, you probably know other Chiefs fans. Get them interested.

• Drop your community link wherever its relevant. People don't like having to put effort into finding new communities but if they just happen to come across mention of it, they'll click. Obviously I'm not saying spam, but there are plenty of sports fans here and it's bound to come up in conversation.

• Crosspost. Any posts you make to a Chiefs community are probably also relevant to the wider NFL communities or maybe fantasy football players. And again this just gives more people the chance to stumble across the fact that you exist.

Ok these next couple are more involved, but they do work well!

• Consider Mastodon. I have a craft-focused account there too, and if I have a question about knitting or cross stitch or whatever then the more answers I can get the better, right? So I use the fact that we can post from Mastodon, to a Lemmy community, combining the replies from both audiences in one thread. Example of what I mean here.

• Create value. Could be by posting pillar content that's actually useful (in your case could be some kind of statistical analysis, we all know the football nerds love it, but whatever will be long-term useful / interesting to your audience). Or it could be a regular community event or something ("predict the Chiefs wins/losses for the upcoming season and win something, etc etc).

• Ask your existing users what they'd like to see from the community. Some things you try will hit and some will miss, but getting feedback is going to up your chances!

That's everything off the top of my head and it's already a wall of text so I'll stop there. It is absolutely difficult to be a mod, it can be a lot of work to get to the point of just having an active community that doesn't need your input to keep rolling. But if your community see you trying, I think that goes a long way. Hope some of this was helpful!

Andy Serkis and Liv Tyler

Some more niche than others but basically...making stuff. Cross stitch, yarn crafts, sewing, needle felting, dicemaking, 3d printing, very occasional cosplay, I'm about to try my first macrame kit and a friend is planning for us to learn punch needle together.

There's something just so satisfying about making real stuff you can use, or wear, or wash yourself with or whatever (I also briefly got into soapmaking).

If you want to chat about basically any craft (or just lurk and look at pretty projects, that's ok too), I've been keeping a megalist of relevant communities and magazines here https://lemm.ee/post/224890. And if anyone reading this runs a related one that should be on the list please DM me to be added!

What does "saving" a song even mean? I'm old and confused

This took me a couple seconds but I'm happy to report that once it clicked it got an out loud "oh my god" from me irl 🤦‍♀️

There is definitely the concept of monetised (ie ad-viewing) vs unmonetised views, here's a random day example from mine:

Unfortunately I can't see a way to filter to just unmonetised views, to take a look at the traffic sources. I did have a quick look through the traffic sources in general though and can't see any of the popular frontends listed in external, other YT, or anywhere else. So if those views are counted (which it seems like they are from the experiment in top comment) I expect they probably end up in one of the "unknown" buckets. Whether that means it really is unknown or just that YT don't want to be drawing attention to these services by name, who knows.

To scupper something is to ruin it, prevent it, etc.

"We wanted to have a BBQ, but the rain's scuppered that!"

Never thought about it before. Now it looks weird written down 😄

This is a cool idea and I'll be submitting some songs as soon as I'm back on my laptop.

But in the meantime, since this thread is full of people who apparently appreciate both internet radio and the Fediverse, you should check out https://radiofreefedi.net as well! Music from actual fellow Fedizens, it's kind of great.

Honestly so much stuff I don't even know where to start. The world is amazing!

Blankets, bubblebaths, colouring in, making a mess, making stuff out of mess, chocolate, jigsaws, road trips, snowy days, macaroni cheese, exploring new places, playing games, giving and receiving hugs, dancing just because, wearing big whooshy skirts and making them go whoosh, cuddling dogs, cake, rollercoasters, ok you probably get the idea.

Also I got to go on a reeeeally big boat this year, that was awesome.

Oh yeah I don't care. My videos go up on PeerTube as well, don't make any money there, just enjoy sharing my crafts with people really! I won't deny the bit of extra cash is nice and it definitely helps afford stuff for new videos, which I struggled with sometimes before getting monetised. But that doesn't take much, anything else is just a bonus.

You'd probably get a different answer from someone who's into it like a proper business and trying to grow grow grow.

Being welcoming to people in general goes without saying. But we're specifically in a thread about encouraging more women to join and making them feel safe to do so.

*puts on sunglasses*

My time to shine.

Ok so in terms of Lemmy communities, I have a list of a load of them here although admittedly some have since died off and I should probably do a trawl for new ones (adding that to my weekend todo list as we speak).

On Mastodon, there used to be a server called artisan.chat that was great for this, but it shut down and most of us moved to either wandering.shop or sunny.garden so the local timelines there are a nice place to find people (the former is much bigger than the latter, and also has a lot of writers).

I'd also recommend checking Fediverse Explorer on occasion to find people who aren't federated with your server and therefore aren't showing up in your Mastodon search. Example search for #knitting.

My craft account gets a decent bit of reach among fibre crafters so if you're looking for anything specific in that area hit me up and I'd be happy to boost or otherwise get some more eyeballs on your request post. Likewise with my other account for gamedev, and if you are interested in game projects / art then again the local feed on that server is great as well as peoplemaking.games too.

PeerTube has a surprising amount of creative / maker content but it's hard to find because of the weird way they handle federation. fedi.video tries to get round it a bit by curating videos from across PT into playlists, often creative-themed, so you might find something there. There's also makertube.net which is as the name suggests focused on attracting that sort of thing, but it recently got an influx of retro gaming YouTubers flooding everything with their massive backlogs so you might need to dig a bit more than usual.

Hope some of that helps!

Thanks, definitely genuinely esteemed Academy Award nominated (but not this year) character actress Margot Robbie!

For anyone who enjoys seeing how the sausage is made, OP also has some devlogs up on YouTube, I've been following for a little while. https://youtube.com/@PaahtimoGames

Congrats on the release!

Oh nice, what's the food plan? Or is it a surprise?

We'll be having crispy hawaiian tofu tomorrow which is just about my fave food in the whole world, husband is also doing the cooking (he actually does that every day because he's one of those weirdos who enjoy it). Still very much looking forward to it though, not having to cook for myself never gets old!

I've actually been told multiple times that I type exactly how I talk! Once was by a boss and I don't think he meant it as a compliment though...

Picked up the annoying milennial habit of adding 😂 to everything a couple years back when I started hanging out too much with cross stitchers on Instagram though.

Lol. Mostly kidding.

Woohoo! Get them over here, December is going to be SOCK MONTH it's very exciting haha 😄

Since OP is pulling a Gandalf and keeping his secrets, maybe you'd care to share how you found yourself in such a no-shit scenario?

Would it be too dramatic to say it's changed my life?

Good effort!

Couple things: The first line of your toot becomes the Lemmy post title so keep it short and don't add any tags (they format weirdly). Also if you tag multiple communities it'll only post to the first.

Hi from Lemmy 👋

I didn't really know what I wanted to be, but in hindsight it's mostly because I didn't really know any options. In a small town in the 90s it was finish school, then go work in a shop (girls) or a factory (boys). That was the assumption and basically the whole career "advice" setup at my school.

So it kinda makes sense that nobody there seemed to have any ambitions.

Thankfully, I eventually found out that you're allowed to work with computers. Maybe someone would've mentioned that to me earlier if I'd been male but again, 90s. I taught myself web development, made a living off that for a while, eventually had enough and pivoted into being a small-time craft YouTuber!

You definitely dodged some weirdos over there, well done!

I think from conversations I've had, a lot of women had such bad experiences on Reddit they decided to go anonymous on here and I wonder if that's actually why it seems like such a "sausage party" in the first place 🤔

Oh well, mostly irrelevant really, as you say it's not like it constantly comes up! Happy birthday and congrats on that fancy new frame, it sounds awesome!

Making things, mostly.

Lots of crafts like knitting, crochet, cross stitch, sewing, felting, origami, faffing about with clay, etc etc. And gamedev which I basically think of as the same sort of hobby because it's just making a different sort of thing.

Making YouTube videos about all of the above, in defiance of the algorithm gods.

Reading any and all scifi I can get my hands on, plus the Discworld series just over and over again endlessly on a loop.

Also the amount of time I spend on Mastodon and Lemmy probably means it counts as a rather lame hobby at this point...

PeerTube has streaming capability but I believe it's a per-server feature so you'd need to find one that explicitly has that enabled. Don't know much about how that side of PT actually works from a creator viewpoint though, maybe someone else can add more specific info.

This turns my tendency to Lemmy while wrapped in a cosy electric blanket into a deep metaphor.

Glad to hear other folks having positive experiences here too! Idk about you but every single time I've corrected someone for referring to me as "he" on Lemmy, they've actually apologised. Quite the change from Reddit!

Fibre crafts is popping off on Mastodon tbh

It's great for playing slower paced games, not so great for shooters etc, anything that really relies on the fast accuracy of a mouse (at least in handheld which is all I use mine for). A good way to start working through the backlog of cozy indie freebies we've all been pointlessly gathering from Epic.

Big downside for me is the size and weight, I'm a woman with stereotypically slender hands and this thing was definitely designed for someone with a slightly longer reach.

*pops up like Obi-Wan*

Hello there!

I have just the list for you: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/289893

Studies suggest that autistic folks would be much more likely to stick to their morals. So there's that.

As someone who spends most of her time on Mastodon looking at pics of cool craft projects and cute otters I would have to disagree with your sweeping title! 😉

But onto the less sarcastic and more actually helpful stuff:

If you're on a smaller instance like I am, searching by hashtag will often miss stuff especially if it's not the sort of thing others on your instance are likely to be following. You can use tools like Fediverse Explorer to search more widely and find likeminded folks, for example here's a search for just #gaming but you can obviously look for whatever specific tag you're after.

I've also had great success with just tooting about what sort of people I'd like to meet, and asking for boosts.

It takes a bit of effort to curate your feed(s) into what you need, but it tends to get easier as you go because discovering likeminded people means you also start discovering the people they talk to, the people they boost, etc etc.

Such a weird way of framing a cool new feature.

The problem it solves is that typing on a phone is annoying, and that's a problem every other app has too.

The "problem" of people not being able to find you if you give them your handle instead? Based on recent experience of a lot of non-techy friends signing up and finding and following me with literally no problems, I'm pretty sure that isn't a thing.

You can check out this page that keeps an updated list of "recommended" instances based on their performance and various other stats. Take a peek and see if their rules sound like something you want to be part of.