thegiddystitcher @ thegiddystitcher @lemm.ee

Proud multicrafter, making cool stuff and all over the Fediverse like a ras

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Joined

2 yr. ago

I've actually been told multiple times that I type exactly how I talk! Once was by a boss and I don't think he meant it as a compliment though...

Picked up the annoying milennial habit of adding 😂 to everything a couple years back when I started hanging out too much with cross stitchers on Instagram though.

Gap in the market right there!

The reason they keep picking on smaller servers is because it works, and it increases their power. I was on one that got targeted by WP recently due to some disagreement with our admin. Literally I have no idea what the disagreement was. But we were added to the blocklist, something about being "harmful to marginalised communities". And when our admin got discouraged enough to shut down the server, guess where probably about half of our users migrated to?

I'm a particular fan of #LichenSubscribe

Think of it more as an intervention

Good effort!

Couple things: The first line of your toot becomes the Lemmy post title so keep it short and don't add any tags (they format weirdly). Also if you tag multiple communities it'll only post to the first.

Hi from Lemmy 👋

Yeah I don't use the home feed but I use the web advanced view with various hashtag searches and often have the same problem there. Luckily what I'm mostly interested in is visual, so language often doesn't matter, but that's obviously niche-specific. If actually following the tags isn't working for you, then seeking out specific interesting people with methods like those couple I suggested becomes even more vital imo.

Fibre crafts is popping off on Mastodon tbh

In case you've not seen it, https://fediverse-explorer.stefanbohacek.dev is really useful for getting around this.

As someone who spends most of her time on Mastodon looking at pics of cool craft projects and cute otters I would have to disagree with your sweeping title! 😉

But onto the less sarcastic and more actually helpful stuff:

If you're on a smaller instance like I am, searching by hashtag will often miss stuff especially if it's not the sort of thing others on your instance are likely to be following. You can use tools like Fediverse Explorer to search more widely and find likeminded folks, for example here's a search for just #gaming but you can obviously look for whatever specific tag you're after.

I've also had great success with just tooting about what sort of people I'd like to meet, and asking for boosts.

It takes a bit of effort to curate your feed(s) into what you need, but it tends to get easier as you go because discovering likeminded people means you also start discovering the people they talk to, the people they boost, etc etc.

Wave, Plus, Reader, Music...I've been burned too many times!

Happy to help! I know it sounds kind of weird, posting from another platform. But if you look at it less as "how can I make MY community with MY name on it the BEST so everyone will worship ME" and more "how can I actually bring people together over a shared topic" it makes a lot of sense :)

I do wish the integration was a bit better though. It's got its quirks, to put it mildly!

Counting down the days!

I'm sole mod (not the original creator, but took over when they went awol) for the knitting community at !knitting@lemmy.world, and I do my best to contribute a lot to the cross stitch & embroidery one at !lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works too. This is coming from a history of running various niche online groups. So a few things I would advise:

• First, just accept that some topics are too niche. They were too niche for Reddit as well, at one point. People got overexcited and wanted to mark their territory by setting up a ton of communities when they were new to Lemmy, but reality doesn't work that way and a lot of those spaces just aren't needed. We'd be better served combining posts from these into slightly more general combined communities, and perhaps leaving a sticky post in the tiny niche ones letting everyone know where to head to for that topic.

But if your topic is big enough to in theory get decent traction:

• Be grateful for what users you do have. You said you sometimes get "few" replies, so make sure you're getting to know those people and replying to them and continuing the conversation where appropriate. You don't need a lot of users, you just need a few engaged ones to make for a nice community.
• Recruit your friends. You're a Chiefs fan, you probably know other Chiefs fans. Get them interested.
• Drop your community link wherever its relevant. People don't like having to put effort into finding new communities but if they just happen to come across mention of it, they'll click. Obviously I'm not saying spam, but there are plenty of sports fans here and it's bound to come up in conversation.
• Crosspost. Any posts you make to a Chiefs community are probably also relevant to the wider NFL communities or maybe fantasy football players. And again this just gives more people the chance to stumble across the fact that you exist.

Ok these next couple are more involved, but they do work well!

• Consider Mastodon. I have a craft-focused account there too, and if I have a question about knitting or cross stitch or whatever then the more answers I can get the better, right? So I use the fact that we can post from Mastodon, to a Lemmy community, combining the replies from both audiences in one thread. Example of what I mean here.
• Create value. Could be by posting pillar content that's actually useful (in your case could be some kind of statistical analysis, we all know the football nerds love it, but whatever will be long-term useful / interesting to your audience). Or it could be a regular community event or something ("predict the Chiefs wins/losses for the upcoming season and win something, etc etc).
• Ask your existing users what they'd like to see from the community. Some things you try will hit and some will miss, but getting feedback is going to up your chances!

That's everything off the top of my head and it's already a wall of text so I'll stop there. It is absolutely difficult to be a mod, it can be a lot of work to get to the point of just having an active community that doesn't need your input to keep rolling. But if your community see you trying, I think that goes a long way. Hope some of this was helpful!

This completely depends who you're communicating with and what their level of tech literacy is, but also their level of interest in hearing the techy details. Most of the time I'm explaining it to middle-aged women who still have Facebook accounts, so that should give you an idea where I'm personally coming from.

If they're asking specifically about the term "Fediverse", usually because they heard me talking about it, I tell people that it's just the name for a group of different social media type sites that all communicate with each other instead of being completely separate like the ones they're probably familiar with. It's like having an account on Facebook, and using it to keep up and chat with your friends on TikTok too without ever having to make an account there.

Since one of the main hurdles during big switchovers is the "oh not another account to sign up for" feeling, this on its own is a pretty big eye-opener for a lot of people in terms of why it's better.

Then I'll talk about what the community is like here around our shared interests (mostly fibre crafts), because that's what people actually care about.

If they show no further interest, they still now understand more than at least 95% of people.

Some will be interested in giving it a go themselves, in which case I tell them to start with Mastodon, which is a bit like Twitter except not awful. I get them to join the default server unless they are quite techy, but let them know they don't need to understand what that means because they'll naturally pick it up and can easily move to another server later if they want, so it's not a big deal decision. I'll guide them through the basic gist, get them to make an introduction post, and use my modest reach on there to get them a few initial followers so they don't feel like they're shouting into the void.

The problem with most explanations is that enthusiastic nerds try to fit absolutely everything in at once. Federation, instances etc. And it's just too much especially for a non-techy crowd. Give them the info they actually need to get started and drip-feed the rest over time.

And you could shuffle play your whole library. RIP Google Music 😢

You're not wrong there! Yeah I didn't mean to draw attention away from your thing, it sounds like a very different project so they're not really competitors, just wanted to put it out there to support Fediverse artists :)

This is a cool idea and I'll be submitting some songs as soon as I'm back on my laptop.

But in the meantime, since this thread is full of people who apparently appreciate both internet radio and the Fediverse, you should check out https://radiofreefedi.net as well! Music from actual fellow Fedizens, it's kind of great.

You should read some Discworld!

I'm legally obliged to shill the various crafting communities, my two most used are !knitting@lemmy.world and !lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works but you can find lots more in the sticky thread in either of those.

Then there's also !imadethis@lemm.ee which has been a bit quiet lately so if you've made something, go show it off!

• !ukcasual@lemmy.world
• !simpleliving@lemmy.ml and !simpleliving@lemm.ee
• !discworld@lemmy.ml
• !map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz
• !anarchychess@sopuli.xyz
• !artshare@lemmy.world
• !pixelart@lemmy.ml
• !zillowgonewild@midwest.social
• !solarpunk@slrpnk.net and !technology@slrpnk.net (actually pretty much anything on slrpnk.net)
• !rpgmemes@ttrpg.network
• !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works and !patientgamers@lemmy.ml
• !mathmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone

Also a shoutout for !potatoism@lemmy.world because why the hell not.

Gotta get back to work but I'll edit with more later if I think on!