I actually think Lemmy needs more work before it grows much bigger. The mod tools are really lackluster currently. And that was a big reason people wanted to leave Reddit.

We need a better site to link to than join-lemmy.org. It should concisely pitch lemmy to everyday users and suggest an instance for them to sign up at. Don’t get into the weeds about federation or choosing instances or selecting apps. Just select a sane default and point people to it. Rotate defaults to avoid overloading a given instance or making it too powerful.

1. We need to cut back the bot traffic a touch. All new people coming and see are a million posts with no participation. It’s good to have the content but we’re kind of lacking in curation and a lot of what’s coming over is not stuff we’re interested in commenting on. As long as we just keep carbon copying Reddit and Twitter and the Verge and hundreds of other places, we’re going to have a lot of empty post sitting around.

2. Actual discourse and discussion needs to happen. We’re fairly low on trolls currently, which is a fantastic thing. But we also don’t have a lot of spicy takes either.

3. More moderation, administration tools, better filters, easier ways to shut out bad actors. Right now the best we can do is defederate when somebody can’t manage their clientele. And we’re still way too bot-able.

4. More migration tools something I can to what mastodon does if you need to move instances.

Don’t focus on looking for ways to find new members. Focus on ways to make people who find the fediverse want to stay. Accomplish that by putting something here that they like to see and want to see again.

When they join the Fediverse, or when they come to visit and consider joining, they’re going to search for the stuff they want to see. They might look for memes, but more likely, they’re going to look for their hobbies. If the only hobbies reflected here are gaming and programming and the fediverse itself, most people are not going to want to stay, the userbase is going to develop an even heavier bias towards certain types of people, it will become more alienating to other types of people, and it will stagnate.

Make an effort to post about and comment about other things. Cooking, movies, TV, sports, fashion, hair, plants, decor, architecture, history, religion, travel, a nearby city or town. Join those communities. Remember, when you see a cool article about nutrition, or a cool video guide to Copenhagen that you think people will enjoy, share it here. Post it, even if the community is small and you don’t think people will care, because we need to seed communities with something. This is what I’ve been doing in a few communities, but mostly in !malefashionadvice. It’s been frustrating, I haven’t really been able to build the community up yet, but it’s okay.

While we’re at it, don’t alienate people by posting, commenting about, or upvoting things that… suck. Keep all forms of bigotry at the door. If you’re a hardcore libertarian or tankie or militant atheist… I’m not going to tell you to stop believing what you believe, but try to cool it, like 10%? Please? Nobody wants you breathing down their throats with extremism.

And… I’ve done this too, but let’s make sure that we’re not focusing too much on meta posts. They can be worthwhile, but they also are not what new people want to see.

Make valuable original content here that’s not found elsewhere, post and comment thoughtfully as much as possible(No. Pun. Chains). Don’t try to turn this place into reddit, be better than reddit.

People who are on reddit that wanted to come here right now has already done so, so it’s important to drew in people who has never used reddit before here instead of always waiting for reddit to do something stupid.

Also less celeb gossip please, need a place where I can get away from that on the Internet.

Not-so-secret of Reddit success (vs other link aggregators) was that they allowed NSFW content. Set up a separate opt-in corner of Fediverse to post that stuff and a big chunk of reddit will migrate over.

If we could stop pretending we’re superior to other social media that might be a start. The number of posts talking shit about the “average redditor” or suggesting that we need more “high quality content than reddit”, or that everything needs to have a meaningful discussion is exhausting. We as a group seem to want to dictate who can comment, who can post, what kind of post is acceptable, and are fairly mean to newer people. You won’t keep new people if you’re rude to them or they see post after post trashing them.

Engagement comes at the price of low effort sometimes. So does content. Not every post or comment will be a shining beacon of perfection. Sometimes people just want to talk. Some of them are starved for human interaction.

Stop trash talking the lurkers. They may be sharing what content there is here and driving people to Lemmy instances. They’re an important part of the ecosystem.

Ask what caliber of people you want here. Because it is very apparent to me that the loudest members only want a specific type of community member here. And they are very outspoken about that fact. But are they actively extending a hand to those people when they encounter them on any other platform? Word of mouth (or keyboard) works. It’s slow but it works.

Might’ve missed it but I haven’t seen anyone say “Make it not awful to use”

It’s helpful to say that we need better onboarding infographics to simplify explaining how to use Lemmy, but also, Lemmy needs to be easier to use. Finding and following communities is far too complicated.

I come here everyday out of sheer bloody mindedness because I want it to work, not because I enjoy it. Yet.

Community grouping. It would massively increase the available content, and make lemmy much easier to browse.

I think Reddit is going to make some new even more moronic decision after they IPO and there will be another exodus. This time around it can handle it and it’s mature enough to not have the same issues as before.

• Publish useful content on lemmy. Link to that content on other social media sites
• Anytime you see a negative article about reddit particularly on reddit, remind users this will continue to get worse, link them to lemmy and explain what it is/how to join.
• Donate to lemmy development to improve UX.

More tits.

posting more content. sharing lemmy posts with friends

Just casually mention it on other forums where appropriate. For example, any thread about how sucky Reddit is, explain there are other places to go, like Lemmy.

Give it time. The platform exploded in popularity in a few months, let us [current users] let the last batch of newcomers to settle in before calling more folks in. Plus we don’t even have much control over it, at the end of the day Lemmy grows as Reddit does stupid shit that makes it lose trust with its userbase.