There isn't enough people on Lemmy to have niche communities finding someone interested in threads for example here is like finding a grain(Though niche communities like spec evo in for pages I own probably could take take off If I put enough effort into it) in the sand people will follow niche sub lemmings and they will upvote them because they like the idea of niche communities so they subscribe and they like the idea of niche posts so they comment even if they aren't interested in the topic. It is hit and miss with mostly misses due to the random odds that the community will have enough people to join it that are willing to post or comment. That is not surprising for a site of 50,000 people(though some niche Lemmy communities may also be in the wrong instance). It is also not surprising that most discussions will be in larger servers. I think it would improve Lemmy if niche questions like my threads post here(though collapse community sounds more targeted) were redirected to the larger Lemmy communities . Even if 90 percent of the people do not understand the topic that would mean 10 percent and with percentage that could amount to hundreds of people even at 99 percent.
That is not surprising for a site of 50,000 people(though some niche Lemmy communities may also be in the wrong instance
I feel like this isn't as relevant as people think. A community on a small instance may take some additional legwork initially but once one person from a large instance joins a lot of people who sort by all will see it in that other instance.
I imagine people who sort aren't sorting by subscribed are likely sorting by all rather than local because of how spread out popular Lemmy communities are.
I feel like a better solution is to link to other communities when posting in an already niche community. For example if I want to share a video about the lore of the Fallout games mentioning !fallout@sopuli.xyz and !fallout@lemmy.world at the bottom so more people are aware of them and they can both benefit.