Fediverse

I completely agree!

Posting/commenting on Reddit largely feels like a waste of time to me if it’s not something big and attention grabbing. I would get zero people to interact for days, while on Lemmy I usually get a reply within a few hours if I have a question about a post.

Of course this isn’t evidence of anything, but I feel that it’s because Lemmy hasn’t been flooded with bots (yet? Hopefully never).

Welcome! It feels fresh to not be on a big tech platform.

Me too, but I still prefer this place to reddit. I have the same exact gripe: those that must be the most right. I've just found a lot more of them on reddit than lemmy. I have lost count of the amount of times I start to write something on reddit, then imagine how someone somewhere, from some angle, can decide to be offended if they want to, then just delete the comment. It definitely happens on lemmy too, it's just in my experience it has happened less here, so I have been more willing to type out comments here. It really sucks that this has not been your experience.

this is a problem with fediverse in general imho.

the tools admins and users have are blunt (defederate or block). with all sorts of content moderation policies and opinions you will inevitably end up either alienated from everyone or surrounded by people that think and talk just like you.

fediverse does offer many advantages... creating a better online "town square" is just not going to be one of them.

a community of people competing to be the most right in every comment section

I think this depends highly on the type of community. (Although clearly I'm doing it to you right now. Sorry.)

Highly political topics and such are the worst, probably. But others where people come because of a shared interest, like a sport or food or animal or something, a hobby, I think tend to be more chill and mellow.

Just keep posting and being the type of person you want to see as a community member here. The other site was exactly like you described above for a very long time!

Be the change you want to see. Host a instance. Show us how it's done.

I think we need default instances that new users are put in to stream line the sign up process. Instances with little to no defederation so people can window shop for a instance that reflects their values. Or even just browse.

Looking through a intimidating list of instances all with their own special rules is not for everyone.

This!!

Help the communities you like to see grow.

Just making one or two posts in communities that seem dead gets the ball rolling in making them alive.

It also motivates others to post.

For real we need more uplifting subs, my feed is just Musk and Trump diarrhea.

Help retain users by discussing more than just politics

One of the things I feel like Lemmy is still missing or is under developed is the niche hobbyist and tech help communities. I'm referring to places users can go to ask questions and start to build up a knowledge base of sorts that people will find and reference. Kind of like how if you want to actually find useful information for something, you used to add "Reddit" to every search to get meaningful results. Hopefully, that can become Lemmy. Assuming of course search engines even index Lemmy well enough

One way to start could be just having people post small tutorials or solutions for popular problems or topics in respective communities. I know the internet has changed a lot but "back in the old days" that was a great way to get engagement going at least on tech forums.