Back with newsgroups the general rule was to go from general to specific. You start with a general discussion group and when discussions about video games get annoying you create a games group. If then there are too many Baldur’s Gate discussions you create BG. If they are dominated by Baldur’s Gate 3 you create a Baldur’s Gate 3 group. If everyone is fawning over Withers you create a Withers group which of course will be flooded with discussion about the Withers’ tits mod, which shall get its own group.

Meaning you should create a group when demand is there and not the other way around.

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago

Absolutely. It's just that redditors are used to the existing order and want to see it replicated in lemmy immediately, jumping over the underlying steps of community growing.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The generalist advice only works for topics that are not controversial. If there is any outrage in the discussion talking in the general area will be very negative and never get into the core issue you want to discuss

As someone who runs multiple niche health and diet communities I can literally feel the burn everytime the topic comes up in a general discussion.

Here is a community promo post for a diet community https://hackertalks.com/post/8398344 50% downvotes and 31 comments all negative

Here is the first introduction post for the community https://hackertalks.com/post/5677435 75% downvotrs, and 40ish all negative comments

I'm just trying to illustrate how anything controversial needs to be protected and sheltered for meaningful growth. All the negativity that can be delivered has a real chilling effect on new user participation

[–] neme@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This what I think at the moment, even if there might not be that much demand for the community yet:

It is better to try start building it now if you are on smaller instance to fight centralization

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

I try and join the smaller communities for that reasons. Its nice to see when they catch on and become active.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree, but at the same time there is something as community building fatigue when you see another community getting most of the activity.

I stopped starting to grow !photography@discuss.online because of that when I saw that !photography@lemmy.world was getting most of the posts.

Also hopefully by this week-end the LW and aussie.zone delay will be solved (more details on !meta@aussie.zone)

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago

There's also the other case where you start a comm on a smaller instance, and then later on someone starts the same comm on l.w. and gets by default more activity >_<