I don’t have any fancy graphs to show the community’s growth, but I thought it was worth noting this milestone. The largest individual community on lemmy.ca and the largest national community on lemmy as a whole that I can see. Discuss.

[Edit] A Graph

Credit to our gracious host, @smorks@lemmy.ca

  • grte@lemmy.caOP
    0·
    1 year ago

    When the reddit blackout was at it’s height lemmy got a huge influx of users but I think a lot of people had some misapprehensions about how lemmy would grow as a result of that. A lot of people seemed to think there was going to be some huge exodus where half of reddit said, “fuck you, I’m out!” but the reality was the vast majority of people were participating in a temporary protest and the desire of their heart was simply for reddit to go back to the way that it was. But that doesn’t mean it’s for nothing.

    I conceive of what happened as the sowing of seeds. Some people’s attention was brought to this platform and we have to water those seeds with content, and give people the opportunity to give and receive interaction. Let people comment, and have their comments commented to in turn. And when enough of that is happening we can harvest that thing that we’re all really looking for in all this: Community. And if we can do that, when the next set of bad moves from reddit drives the next wave of people to look for something else (third party apps ending at the end of the month, surely old reddit soon after that), we’ll have created something organic for people to glom onto and really get the ball rolling. Something I think was missing in the first round of reddit refugees.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
      1·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think anything was really missing … I think it will just take time. I never expected a quick switch from one platform to another for anyone … I even had a hard time making the break from reddit to here. I love the mountains of content at reddit but the more I explore this side of the fence, the more I feel like I am starting over and I really don’t mind that. This was the feeling I had when I started reddit ten years ago and I really don’t mind going over it all again.

      However, this time, I am a veteran poster and contributor … I know more how to interact with people and be positive, stern, contribute positively and avoid getting entangled with others on messy topics. I didn’t have that experience the first time around.

      Lemmy and the fediverse has the benefit of gaining a userbase of veteran posters, lurkers and contributors who will be more capable of generating more useful content this time around. We all just want to talk, debate, discuss and share with one another … we all like our cat videos and memes but I think a good portion of people just want to be able to talk about ideas and perspectives to stay informed with the rest of the world. And I think it will be those kinds of people that will slowly move onto platforms like this and slowly grow a new community of content on the internet.

      People and their ideas and thoughts are the like the dandelions of the internet … they’ll grow anywhere they can and once they catch, they’ll blossom into fields of flowers in no time. Corporate controls are like weed killers that try to manicure the landscape into pretty flowers, grasses and crops to be harvested into picture perfect, highly organized and controlled environments that maximize profits but in the end give no useful, healthy product … I don’t mind living on the gravel sideroad of progress with not enough soil, in the hot sun and not enough water … give us time and we’ll grow our roots deep into the soil and cover the land with our bountiful growth!

    • Jay@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m one of the reddit refugees. To be honest I didn’t think the protest would make it very far, although I was hoping it would. It looks like reddit got a black eye out of it but that’s about it… nothing substantial.

      That is fine by me. I was considering killing my two 10yr old+ accounts there anyway, and in the process I found this place, which I quite like to be honest. It’s a little janky and rough around the edges to be sure, but any of you that remember how reddit was back in the day know it was the same thing at one point. Lemmy has serious potential to become great, lots of work needs to be done but it looks like a lot of talent is already here to fullfill that potential. Growth is great, but if things grow too fast problems do too.

      I look forward to seeing the true potential of what Lemmy can become, and I hope I can be useful in some way to help that happen and be part of it.