I’ve noticed this in many places in the Lemmyverse in my first few days here. When first signing up almost all the instances were listed as having 2 or less active users. The biggest was Lemmy.ml at something around 1000. Then I’ve seen those numbers listed in other places including a post yesterday that is supposed to help bring redditors to Lemmy.

These numbers will just get most people to turn around and not even consider Lemmy as an alternative.

I saw a GIF today showing the growth of user accounts on Lemmy instances and Lemmy.ml (for example) was over 30000 and many of the other servers were in the 100s, approaching 1000. That’s a HUGE difference and indicates a community that is 10 times (or more) more active than the initial numbers presented indicate.

Any thoughts? Am I out to lunch?

  • KNova@links.dartboard.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    One of the devs also pointed out on GitHub that by showing total user count, it favors older instances, which is exactly the case with Lemmy.ml you are describing

    • Sibbo@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      True, we should do everything to make users spread over different instances, and not end up with a “main” instance like mastodon.social.

  • BurningnnTree@lemmy.oneEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I agree. Here’s a mockup I made of an alternative design that I think would be much more effective at attracting new users. Instead of presenting user count as a raw number, we should instead present it as a level of network traffic, which is a more helpful way of thinking about it that won’t push prospective users away.

    • Johnnypneumoniac@lemmy.oneOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thinking more about this as I respond to other people… Another good thing might be to present some of the most active communities on different instances. It would give people something more concrete to entice them into the ecosystem then the abstract “join this server that’s aspiring to be a safe space.” What does that even mean?

      I also feel like new users (me) will get intimidated by having to choose a server, without knowing what it means. Are you stepping into a walled garden? Does the server you’re on matter? If it does, why? How do I choose where I should join? I think there is too much choice and not enough pertinent info for a new user.