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Has community engagement dropped off suddenly?

I don't know if others are experiencing a similar situation. My all feed is very sparse with engagement. If I sort top six hours or by top 12 most posts have between 5-10 comments. I feel like there was more in the past? Is engagement dropping off? I'm on lemmy.world as my instance.

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  • I don't pay super close attention to the numbers, but I glance at the daily users and subs now and then in the comm where I'm pretty much the only poster. I feel I'm down about 25% in daily users and new subs have felt slower.

    I've tried posting a second or third post a day to try to catch anyone in a drastically different time zone, but the second post gets less likes than the first. Comments feel down, and more importantly, I don't see near as much growth of "regulars" who comment. I got used to seeing a few names every day or 2 in the comments, but many of them I don't hear from anymore. I do have a few new regulars, but most seem to comment less frequently, and if I'm not holding onto them long term, activity is never going to snowball.

    It seems consistent with what I see when I browse All, Top 6 Hours. I'm always worried it's something I'm doing wrong, but I seem to trend pretty consistent with what I see of Lemmy as a whole. I do block essentially all meme communities, so I don't know how their popularity is holding up. I keep Science Memes unblocked for now, because some are actually funny or educational, but somedays they hog up too much of the top posts.

    I try to keep posting more in depth and original things, but it demotivates me as a poster to keep working hard and putting in hours when the audience seems like it's shrinking. I try to post more than just cute pics, I try to share news, research, and facts, and I'll do reports on research papers or books so everyone else doesn't have to dig through all the dry stuff. That stuff takes up a good bit of time. I'm trying to keep a popular niche comm alive, and I think it's fun as it's typically positive stories and non-political 99% of the time, so it's what eeeeeeveryone says they want here, but how long are posters supposed to post to what looks like an empty room?

    I still try to comment back to anyone who leaves a comment, so they know I'm seeing it and that I really appreciate it. But I can only do so much. I'm really holding out, but I start to wonder what Lemmy will be like at the end of this year.

    • With a project like this, I think it's important to take a long-term view, and not burn yourself out too early by putting too much early-term effort in.

      I think the expectation some people may have had that the Fediverse was going to take off like a rocket and become the "next big thing" was a little bit of wishful thinking. The real process will take years imo, and we're just keeping the lights on in the meantime.

      Development continues. That's the important part to remember.

      • I agree. It seems to go through spells were people just want this to be Reddit with a different page banner and they expect it to be or try to make it more like Reddit, but I thought we were here to move on?

        I'd be cool with less comments overall if they are solid anyway. I don't care about "first" posts, the "i also choose this guy's wife," or people fighting with each other or spouting nonsense (looking at you, current state of news/politics subs).

        I go back down to a single daily post when it starts to get to me. I've thought about taking breaks, but I still like learning the things I post for myself and for the joy it brings to the people that do check in every day. I'll still take what we have now over Reddit any day. I wouldn't be posting at all if I was there.

    • I try to keep posting more in depth and original things, but it demotivates me as a poster to keep working hard and putting in hours when the audience seems like it's shrinking.

      I am really sympathetic to this. I have only posted OC for months now, with some posts taking a week or more worth of free time only to get virtually no eyes on it. I admit that timing posts poorly probably has a lot to do with it, but man does it suck to see something you've put quite a bit of time into (whether that seems obvious or not) get 10 upvotes and 3 down with no comments etc.

      • I try not to think about the cumulative time I've spent posting! 😆

        It does truly suck though when you think you've done your best work and it falls flat. Then when I'm sulking afterwards, I'll post something real low effort and it will be the top post of the month, never fails.

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