Following https://tarte.nuage-libre.fr/c/fediverse/p/194717/we-need-more-users I decided to explore data a little bit more. I'm not the biggest fan of growth-as-as-target so I wanted to see how much the people were participating in the discussion.
The data
I took the data from the API explorer in https://api.fediverse.observer/ with this query:
query {
monthlystats {
date_checked
softwarename
total_posts
total_users
total_comments
}
}
Then parsed the json with this https://jqlang.org/ filter:
jq '.data.monthlystats | map(select(.total_users > 0 and (.softwarename == "lemmy" or .softwarename == "mbin" or .softwarename == "kbin" or .softwarename == "piefed"))) | group_by(.date_checked) | map( {date_checked: .[0].date_checked, total_users: ([.[] | .total_users] | add), total_posts: ([.[] | .total_posts] | add), total_comments: ([.[] | .total_comments] | add)}) | map({date_checked, posts: .total_posts/.total_users, comments: .total_comments/.total_users}) | sort_by(.date_checked) | map([.date_checked, (.posts | tostring), (.comments | tostring)]) | .[] | @csv'
(As you see I filtered for the threadiverse. I also did the same with all software, I'll put the graph for that in comments)
Then did a good old' chart
What to think of it
I don't know. Users' activity is on the rise and I find it nice
Maybe its a question of organization. Perhaps we shouldn't have generic instances just instances around topics. That way niches can form without being too fractured and if said topic goes away it does not take several other coms with it.
I’d rather see better discovery tools and better community/account migration tools. Id be worried about topic-specific instances potentially backfiring by concentrating too much influence for a given set of subjects on the “preferred” instances
i think communities should have links to "related communities" in their sidebar sothat people can find similar communities more easily.
There could even be a "recommended" posts listing, besides the "subscribed"/"local"/"all" as it is today. it would show you posts from linked communities from communities that you already subscribed to too.
Good discovery tools are essential on a federated platform. An important part of twitter, facebook, and reddit success is/was that that they were the place for their particular style of content. You had a pretty good chance of being able to discover your old high school friends, because they were on the one platform. Then the (early) algorithm started discovering for you all the obscure content similar to your history.
Discovery has to work differently in a federated system. You can search for communities on Lemmy, but if your instance doesn't already have someone subscribed to a community, then you're not going to find it.
This defeats the purpose of the platform being distributed. For example if all political threads are on one instance it would be a ripe target for the authoritarian regimes popping up right now. I know there are dominant instances, but at least if one drops, people can migrate.
One issue is I think Lemmy's UX means there's less friction with local communities than remote communities (not sure why) which is why usually the lemmy.world version of communities typically wins without a lot of effort to steer people
Moderation reports are currently not federated (well they are in PieFed, but not in Lemmy) - at some point that will be added, but for all this time after the Rexodus this has been true. This lack of federation has hindered the growth of the Threadiverse.