I have been modding the Boston Community for about 4 months now and I was hoping to get some feedback on how I could improve the participation. I post daily to try to keep people engaged, and it seems to be working somewhat. The only metrics I have are from that sidebar which shows that more people are subscribed and viewing. I also see upvotes on most of the things I post so, I know the audience doesn’t hate it.
My big concerns are two things: Lack of posts from others, and lack of comments. Lemmy is not just a link aggregator, but also a discussion forum, and as an ex-redditor I was hoping to take advantage of the discussions to get better perspectives on the linked content. There are some posts that have generated serious discussions, some of which have challenged my position, and I think that is great. I am also very impressed by the lack of trolling and sniping. But for the most part, people just upvote and say nothing.
I think part of this may be because I personally don’t like to post negative or overly controversial articles. I also avoid topics that are heavily covered in popular media, like big court cases. I have noticed that the most engagement has been on posts that are controversial. But I think it is important to talk about the things we agree with, as well as filter out the best parts of articles for those who don’t have the time to read them. Maybe I’m too much of an idealist.
Well, anyway, if you read this and have ideas on how to improve things, or just think that I am wrong about what would be good for this community, please comment down below. You can even say that I am doing a terrible job if you want.
Possible rule change: posts without some sort of commentary, question, or opinion to kick off a discussion should be discouraged. I agree that a lot of lemmy communities seem to just be reposts of an analogous subreddit - which I don’t necessarily object to in principle, but it shouldn’t be JUST that. Post the article, sure, but also post why you posted it, and what you’re take on the thing is.
This is broadly applicable to lots of communities here, of course.
I understand the desire behind this suggestion, but I think it would actually result in fewer people contributing, because it adds another hurdle to posting content.
Good suggestions. I originally added a quick reason why I was posting. Maybe I should go back to doing that. If we had lots of people posting, then maybe I would try to discourage low effort posts, but currently that is not a problem.