I only found out about Lemmy when looking for reddit alternatives over the API drama.
It was probably a long time coming for me as over the years reddit has been less and less of a community and more business-like. I very much enjoy the decentralized nature of Lemmy and I really hope the Fediverse catches on at a wide scale.
Welcome to the Fediverse Haligonians!
I’ll refrain from commenting too much on how to make the community great, as a) I don’t live there, so probably won’t be here often, b) it’s really going to depend on who shows up, and c) I’ve been using Lemmy for less than a week. What I’d personally recommend is a mod (if not you) stickying this post for a while, but otherwise just post the kind of stuff YOU want to see as often as you can - pictures, questions for locals, links to local events or news articles, locally relevant TILs, rants, memes*, whatever
The first big hurdle is driving and encouraging engagement. If there’s nothing to see here, people won’t stick around. People don’t stick around, they won’t post anything. At the beginning, first adopters will need to feed a little extra energy into the system to get things spinning. And it might feel like it’s taking longer than it should for a bit.
It’s probably not going to be r/halifax, but with some time and participation can still be something good.
*[Knew I forgot something]
It’s definitely feeling barren, it took me about a week to understand Lemmy, and how it works. Not that I understand it, I see it potential, we just gotta get over the hump.
Reddit has made it hard to link to Lemmy, I’ve tried posting to different subreddits linking to their Lemmy alternatives, and Reddit now automatically deletes those posts. Hence another reason to move away from Reddit.
My biggest concern is casual Reddit users keeping Reddit alive, I anticipate Reddit will take over the private subreddits and make them public again. As long as Reddit comes up in peoples google searches, it will be a more active community than Lemmy.
There are enough people to keep Lemmy thriving however, it just won’t be as publically known as Reddit.
They’ve started removing posts about Lemmy? That’s terrible!
Very good points, thank you for your time and input!