Reddit Migration

I was part of a support group for people like me on Reddit. I still made the move. It’s time. I suggest those groups leave instructions on where to go.

So the reason r/bind has already jumped to an alternative is because they are affected the most and the hardest.

The other kind of communities today that you mentioned are less impacted, so they can continue .. for now.

I do hope though that the right groups of people are looking into creating the better alternatives right now. The day may come when reddit decides these subs are too much of a liability - or even just not enough of a money maker - and yanks them. And there's no reason to believe that reddit would give them even as much warning as r/blind had.

Emphasizing not a suggestion to move right away, but make sure these places can start establishing backups so they don't exist solely at the whim of reddit.

What can we do to help them transition?

I think the best thing we can do is what we’re doing now - creating new spaces and communities over on kbin and Lemmy, while the platforms are making improvements. Right now, kbin isn’t really ready for a huge inrush - I love it, but it’s so very unfinished and not intuitive, and there are no third party apps (yes, you can use the website, yes, you can make an icon on your home screen that acts like an app; it is not the same. The mobile site is a mess). People fed up enough to leave Reddit will put up with a lot that most folks won’t. So let’s keep building up what’s being built here, and when people do get ready to leave, there’ll be an established, more polished place for them to come to.

Sites don’t usually die at once; it’s usually steady attrition. That’s what will happen to Reddit if they don’t get themselves sorted.

I agree: migrating a community is really challenging. I'm a subreddit moderator myself, and when we were initially discussing this stuff, there was a lot of doubt because of how daunting the task is. Mods from other subs see the challenges as reason to not even try. However, I think it's important that people at least make the attempt given the current state of Reddit.

Something that I think people should keep in mind is that this stuff is gradual and doesn't have to happen all at once, especially since the alternatives aren't fully polished yet. Even just establishing a small, active community outside of Reddit (like people have been doing with all these fediverse communities) is a big win.

Some of the best things we can do right now are

• providing feedback and suggestions for alternatives
• making sure alternatives are approachable (/m/quickstart is great)
• simply being active and providing stuff to do here

some of those mods are likely thinking that moving would destroy the community they worked so hard to manage

they aren't wrong. It will massively deflate their community. That's an ineivtability of how lurkers on the internet work. They aren't there for community, they are there for easy passive browsing.

What can we do to help them transition?

"we" as in the common person? It won't be a fast track. There will need to be a steady supply of content for a certain topic, and a stream of discussion. Unfortunately the best way to help as a single person is to basically become that sweaty forever online person. The first step to the Network Effect is to generate enough content to engage with.

If "we" have developers or artists that can be one bigger step to help out. contribute to making apps and extensions to either bridge the gap or overcome current shortcomings of these federated instances. Even amongst techy communities there is a lot of confusion to how instances work. So some app to make it dead simple to browse and comment (while later allowing options for power users) is key. Sync committing to working with Lemmy/KBin is definietly a bit help.

Most of the rest is up to the instance admins. SEO, improving features, getting good moderatiors, etc. None of that is in out control, we can only give feedback

this makes it fast: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

I think there is something to lose though. Aside from being a waste of time, it's a waste of user goodwill. We've already seen how momentum for this stuff wanes over time. If you wait too long before starting the migration process, people just won't be interested. Obviously, it's a gradual thing, but many moderators don't seem to have even started trying.

Which do you think is going to be more effective:

• Spamming your sub with John Oliver shitposts, going private occasionally whenever /r/ModCoord says so, and then making plans to migrate when interest has gone down and people have returned to the status quo
• Starting the migration process ASAP

I'm 42. Last year I was 41 and discovered the name of the song is "Tijuana Taxi". This year I discovered "Regular Gas". It has nothing to do with the discussion, but hopefully future someone will be like "hmm" and (re)discover a gem.

I recreated the sub that I mod here. But it got almost no traffic before, so I'm not holding my breath for much engagement here. But hey, its about a topic I like, so what the hell.

What's safereddit and how will it continue working past the API deadline?