Its rhe only thing I wish could change about my experience using Lemmy, for more active users in the communities like NFL or NHL and the affiliated team pages of those sports. I haven’t had any social media in decades, my main source for sporting news breaks up until 1-2 years ago was Reddit.
I love the small community that makes up Lemmy. As someone just posted, it feels like a small town community. I like the absence of corporate shills and ads and bots.
Back when I switched from Reddit to Lemmmy, I made an effort to upvote and comment on the NFL and Buffalo Bills communities. I eventually gave up because it was like months of posting, voting and commenting but when I would go back to check the communities, everything would still be sitting at like 2 up votes and 0 comment replies or if it was my own post, 1 upvote and 0 comments. For a majority of cases. Every once in a blue moon I would come accross a post where another user voted or commented but it was never more than me and one other user.
I know there is a certain demographic that uses Lemmy that is mostly driven by the required IT prowess needed to set up, use and even understand the federated concept. I also recognize that this demographic is traditionally disinterested in sports. Im not complaining about this or the users who are on Lemmy. Im also not wishing for any changes be made to aggressively expand Lemmy’s user base. Its just an impractical wish I have so I could get my sports news from the same source I get all my other news.
I will prolly spend more time this coming year settling on a 2ndary source for sports news from sources similar to sleeper app but it would be so nice if the Lemmy sporting communities blew up so I could keep everything aggregated to one source.
You know, Lemmy is powered by the users. The sports community will never grow if no one is here to grow it. Most people that jumped ship to build and grow Lemmy are techies, and likely not interested in sports all that much.
You just planted the seed, will you also be a watering can?
This is so dismissive.
I spent a full year posting to !leagueoflegends@lemmy.world and interaction there is still minimal to dead.
It’s not really the starting of communities that needs help. We need more people to be the second and third person to join and help communities that someone else is trying to start.
It’s all the complaint deserves
Sounds like you need to let your sports-liking associates elsewhere know about the platform to help with your problem, rather than whinge that the already existing userbase doesn’t like what you do
The problem there might be that people hate league of legends
Eh, the community is huge on Reddit so clearly the fans exist (and I’m one but just took a big social media break for awhile so that didn’t help). Lemmy just needs more people with more diverse interests.
I didn’t claim it would be easy or even a guaranteed success
We are in at the ground level of Lemmy. A lot of people like OP are passive consumers, but now is the time to step up, get out of your comfort zone and start building the communities you want to see. You might have to hustle a little bit
If you do start up a community you can link it like this:
!weightroom@sh.itjust.works
Here’s a totally random community about strength and hypertrophy training for example
Passive consumers make up the largest number; the base of the pyramid. But you seem to be implying that there’s nothing between that and the tip of the pyramid, who create their own communities and post their own content into them.
OP seems to be a user in the middle. Happy to contribute to ongoing conversations by commenting, replying, and voting, but not as comfortable starting conversations. Which, to be honest, is also where I’m at with sport threads. I used to love popping in to a live game discussion megathread to comment on a particularly outrageous call, or to see the community’s response to something controversial. But it’s not a subject area I’m invested in enough to start the community myself, or to make enough comments to help start a lively-looking megathread.
For real? Im replying to almost every comment I get a notification, I made this post, I’ve commented on NFL posts among other comments in non-sports comms. How you guna just blindly call me a passive consumer lol? Not hating just couldn’t believe you coulld draw that conclusion while I felt I was borderline spamming the thread with replies hahah 🍻cheers tho, to your commitment to motivating any and all users to be more active.🍻
Gotta give props to active participation, upvotes, comments are helping too, you’re right. I was just focussed on community building, it might not be as fun but it’s important also
Nah, I’m just gonna do what I’m doing. Commenting on stuff I like or am interested in and that’s it. I’m way too anti-social to do something like building a community.
you dont have to be social or even reply to commenters lol
This 100%, it’s even harder when someone puts a posting bot in a sub and expects people to show up. The best communities started by someone creating a sub and posting things they found interesting. Treating it like a personal link archive. Then people would add to the discussion after finding you. If you are posting for a few weeks and then just gives up. It just makes the problem worse. Since now people have to sift through a bunch of dead communities on multiple instances all named the same.
It has to be built organically it’s like people with video channels on YouTube or peer tube. Making your first video and if it doesn’t do well they quit. Most successful creators made tons of videos before they took off. They kept at it because they were making the videos for themselves for just the sake of self expression as their first priority and the views will come.
This is kind of a problem in the NFL Community actually. There’s one user, I don’t know if it’s a bot or not, who just shotguns like 10 to 15 post at a time. It washes out any discussion in the entire community.
Yep people like that that use bots or worse AI to auto post think they are helping but are just bring the dead internet theory to reality.
I’ve noticed a couple of users doing this in the Music community recently, as well.
If it’s a bot, fuck the owner. If it’s a real person, chill the fuck out dude. Don’t bust a nut so quickly, it’ll be more fun that way I swear.
That pattern is 100% bots getting the posts from an RSS feed and it’s set to only refresh every x hours.
When it does and it has 15 new stories, it rapidly posts 15 times.
When those clog up my all feed, instant block. So it’s really having the opposite effect that the bot owner intends.
The shitty thing is that half the time they’re not even marked as bot accounts.
Well yeah I understand why bots are used for posting to communities, but at the same time it does have this effect of making people tip-toe around and hesitant to post themselves
Im not implying there is a lack of content just a lack of active users to fuel discussions. I leave a comment on every NFL post that I have some input or opinion on. Like I said to another comment in this thread there seems to either be a bot or a dedicated mod who is periodically supplying content in batches of posts. So maybe once a week or so (maybe once a month in the off seadon) the same user name will make a bunch of posts for all the news for that week.
Dude make an NHL community and I’m in
Lol there already is one. Just search NFL.
They said NHL lol
Hahahaha I totally meant to say NHL but I might be wrong now that I think about, it might be called hockey. Ill have to double check and will edit my NFL comment to include a link to the hockey sub.