Imma preface this by saying that I'm not an admin or mod here, these are just my thoughts & advice on the matter.
You've noticed that a community doesn't exist on Lemmy. I'm going to assume you've checked the community browser, and seen that that specific community doesn't exist. So, you've gone to communities, typed in the name, and are about to hit create.
Well, hold up a second. There's an INSANE amount of community spam going on in lemmy.ml, and it looks like it's starting here to a much lesser degree.
Some questions you should ask:
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Are you creating this community just to create it? By that I mean, are you willing to put in the work as the moderator if it does take off?
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Is it a niche community of a larger subset that has a thriving community or a completely new category?
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Are you willing to regularly post stuff to start seeding comments & advertise it in the relevant places?
If the answer to any of these is no, get your cursor off that create button and go join the bigger communities. It just makes it harder to find communities that aren't 100% dead when half of them are dead-ends created just because 'they exist on Reddit'. Once there are enough people are visiting [email protected], they spill over into [email protected] if they want more focused TTRPG stuff. Once there are enough people on [email protected], they'll spill over to my Shadowrun group. Lots of communities are fractal in nature, and people are skipping a few steps. The userbase needs time to grow and mature.
Please think before you make a community.
My experience with beehaw has been overall positive. They have a core vision of what they want out of their community. "Gatekeeping" is maybe a strong word, but they don't accept people unless they fit the general vibe of what they want to build. What they want to build is a little too specific and narrow for my tastes, but more power to them for trying. The users themselves tend to be positive and great conversationalists (not surprising considering the essay they have to write to get in :P )
lemmy.ml is really suffering though. They are massively overloaded with people who see developer-run and think "Main instance, this is where I should join". There's no unifying identity, or even much moderation. The devs are far too busy building software to do more than very basic moderation. Consequently, it's the inmates running the asylum.
This place feels like a nice balance between the extremes so far: it's a relatively techy place which suits me fine, but isn't overly strict. I don't know how it will develop in the future, but the little community-building done so far has felt more like suggestions and helping eachother out than the madness of lemmy.ml or the strict rules of beehaw.org
Wow, great insight. I'm really happy to have joined sh.itjust.works... Seems like a well resourced and neutral place with a great balance so far. There's a bit of community creep, but the good ones will 'bubble up.' Thank you!