Usually the user numbers will start off really strong when a community is initially founded (especially if its a transplantation) and then drop off significantly in the following months. There’s typically a surge of posts which attracts users from /all and /new, but those users eventually filter out as the content slows down.
Yeah I mean that’s more or less what I assumed, not really major enough for me.
the people posting are free to go to another community whenever they want, and when they leave, the old community usually dies.
You’re not wrong and this has happened many times, also with c/anime leaving from lemmy.ml. But that doesn’t mean things will always go that way. The posters have a lot of power sure, but the casual users also have a lot more influence than you might think. Most people aren’t going to follow power posters to the ends of the earth, they’ll simply engage with the content that is most readily available to them, and they really don’t want to bother with splinter communities and moderation drama.
There’s typically a surge of posts which attracts users from /all and /new, but those users eventually filter out as the content slows down.
We’ll see!
Most people aren’t going to follow power posters to the ends of the earth, they’ll simply engage with the content that is most readily available to them, and they really don’t want to bother with splinter communities and moderation drama.
There’s definitely several factors at hand. If only a few power posters move away, then the old community will probably stay prevalent. If there’s no more content, it will die. You mention All and New, and those are definitely where people see the new communities. It’s not the end of the world, some users might not even notice the community change and just vote/comment on the top posts of the day, wherever they are.
Usually the user numbers will start off really strong when a community is initially founded (especially if its a transplantation) and then drop off significantly in the following months. There’s typically a surge of posts which attracts users from /all and /new, but those users eventually filter out as the content slows down.
Yeah I mean that’s more or less what I assumed, not really major enough for me.
You’re not wrong and this has happened many times, also with c/anime leaving from lemmy.ml. But that doesn’t mean things will always go that way. The posters have a lot of power sure, but the casual users also have a lot more influence than you might think. Most people aren’t going to follow power posters to the ends of the earth, they’ll simply engage with the content that is most readily available to them, and they really don’t want to bother with splinter communities and moderation drama.
We’ll see!
There’s definitely several factors at hand. If only a few power posters move away, then the old community will probably stay prevalent. If there’s no more content, it will die. You mention All and New, and those are definitely where people see the new communities. It’s not the end of the world, some users might not even notice the community change and just vote/comment on the top posts of the day, wherever they are.
But there is indeed the network effect. !linux@lemmy.ml is still the main Linux community, even though !linux@programming.dev and !linux@lemmy.world exist.