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

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] baconmonsta@piefed.social 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

The amount of furry / anime content on the front page might be putting off some new users

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 40 minutes ago* (last edited 39 minutes ago)

lemmy is basically NSFW because of this, yes. the amount of furry anime porn that reaches the front page is crazy.

i don't get why it being pushed, but I suppose it's just the userbase is very active and passionate about that stuff so it rises to the top.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 points 1 hour ago

Let's keep it just under critical mass for Eternal September to not happen.

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

reddit used to be an internet place you looked at in class or uni when you had a break. I dont know how people get introd to it, but appealing to high schoolers is what reddit did. I made my reddit account when I was like 17, and lurked before that

[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 8 points 4 hours ago

We need active users, not just users that post something once then disappear. The MAU is more important than the user count.

[–] frog_brawler@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Grow organically or die

[–] laranis@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

That's a very capitalist take. Remember how good things used to be? That's how good the Fediverse is now. We don't want it to grow or die. If it grows, great. If it doesn't, great. Quality over quantity, imo.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

the fediverse is very low quality unless you're a furry linux-using anarchist/communist

for those of us who live in a broader reality with more 'normie' beliefs and lifestyles, it's weak. it needs less weirdos who go around projecting their persecution complex everywhere

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Where is all this furry shit everyone is complaining about? I see one or two posts break 100 votes maybe every other week.

You're spot on about Linux though. But I think it's a good thing to be introduced to stuff you're uncomfortable with. The constant flood of Linux content convinced me to switch.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 46 minutes ago* (last edited 41 minutes ago)

every other day i have to block 2-3 furry communities, usually porno ones.

they aren't no the front page, but once you go a few clicks deeper, boom goes the furry memes/porn.

i've blocked like 50 communities and 90% of them are furry content.

most of this was in the past few months, i never saw it the first 1.5 years i was here.

being introduce to furry porn isn't expanding my horizon, it's just annoying and weird, and offputting. it's a sexual fetish. looking at pictures of feet would be similar, but I don't get bombarded by foot porn here, just furry porn.

Also the linux fetishism on this site is super weird. I'm an IT professional. I use Linux. I don't idealize it however. It's just another OS among many. And most of the Linux content is more about being ANGRY about microsoft and apple than anything else.

25 years ago people were going on the same about how linux will save the world... and fantazing that one day microsoft would crumble. it didn't. it won't. in fact the opposite happened.

Linux is fine, but it's a niche OS for nerds and admins. It's not for regular home/office users and you aren't a technology Jesus for using it or discovering it. It's been around since the 1991.

[–] frog_brawler@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You’re proving my comment made yesterday about a large chunk of Lemmy users being barely literate.

[–] laranis@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

You've convinced me that we need more users given the high number of current posters who like to criticize others with insults reminiscent of a bratty 5th grader. We need to dilute that voice.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 10 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

I dont think more users is very important. Its not going to make Lemmy change from mostly memes anyway.

The mentality of the largest Lemmy instances is still to moderate away opinions they dont agree with, so this place is never going to be good for any discussions where people disagree strongly.

Most users downvote what they dont agree with. Its a circle jerk echo chamber where we all agree or get downvoted.

But we can all enjoy memes together. :) Its kind of nice. Lemmy is chill and easy. Even kid friendly.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

this place is never going to be good for any discussions where people disagree strongly.

Most users downvote what they dont agree with. Its a circle jerk echo chamber where we all agree or get downvoted.

So true, and so sad. This has been such a disappointment to me, and even a bit of a surprise. I just didn't realize how badly most people respond to seeing viewpoints they don't fully share. Personally I don't get the point of discussion where everyone agrees, but apparently that is quite a rare attitude. So I share your pessimism, but with one glimmer of hope. There is at least one forum which has cracked this problem: Hacker News. The issue being that it's frequented by exactly the kind of techie Spock-like personalities that aren't representative of the general population.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah exactly, they dont have downvotes and any upvote also requires karma, so you cant just create new accounts and bot upvote things.

But yes, its also a much more mature audience at that site. Many are older computer nerds. Lemmy has some of that too though.

They also have a moderator that is full time working on keeping the site clean, so there is that.

But yeah, I really miss discussions where you see unpopular opinions and they are not downvoted, because I can handle seeing that. I may not agree and then I will just ignore or comment, not downvote it.

Without good moderation, it will turn into 4chan though. So yeah, the extremes are not good, have to be in the middle.

[–] TehWorld@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

That’s the old Slashdot model. It does change how echo-y the chambers become when you limit how things get amplified. Those with higher engagement get to push things a lot harder and I’d actually fear the opposite. An Ai model would certainly be able to echo the general feeling of a place and then slowly turn the dial toward a goal, and do it more effectively in that case as it can comment on everything anyway.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 11 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I do feel we need more users, but not just users. It’s “niche” users we need. There’s a lot of techies on the threadiverse (Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin), but not enough people who care about other stuff.

So communities outside that, struggle to thrive.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

But we are not going to get "niche" users if we don't get large numbers of users. Niche interests will only come up here when the population is so large that even the long tail ends up with critical masses.

Those defending "quality over quantity" miss this exact point.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 5 points 5 hours ago

My point about “niche” is that from the current perspective, the niche communities is the more regular ones, because at the moment, the majority of users here is technical. We need more ordinary users, not just more users.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 hours ago

As for the title question:

Do we need more users ?

We don't need more users. It might be nice, there are benefits, but we don't need it. I agree with you on not caring much about growth-as-a-target, "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell". I was here years before the first big reddit exodus with the third-party API changes and I was having a good time back then too.

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago

The post the other day about lemmy needing more users and engagement gave a little nudge to me commenting more. I guess same thing happened with many users and you can see the spike in the graph.

[–] IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 100 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (26 children)

Just my two cents, but there's just no reason for people to come here when it's 80+% political shit and rage bait and virtue signaling. Hell, I've got 80% of the content here filtered out as it is, and I want to be here.

Find your nearest non-political hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see and maybe we might see some growth or people sticking around. My current hyperfixation/hobby is Meshtastic, so I've been pretty active there lately. If that's not your thing, then there's:

If you're like me and not good at any of that, tell us about cleaning your gutters or doing your laundry over in !Dullsters@dullsters.net

The point is, we need more posts about what make us happy and less about what we're angry at (which is pretty much goddamned everything).

[–] Ofiuco@piefed.ca 1 points 6 minutes ago

100% agree, I can just check once a day, skipping basically everything you mentioned + the non-memes in the meme comms and that's it, no need to open the threadiverse again until the next day.

We also need artists and creative people on board, yes, even the ones who draw porn, but the threadiverse users seemed kind of hostile towards many things during the reddit exodus they decided it wasn't a good place.

Wonder if they'd have a different experience now, since most instances have defederated hex, ml and grad, and those were the loudest when it came to brigade and complain about anything sexy.

[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

It would be a huge improvement if politics were corralled into the political communities.

There are accounts that double post in both politics and news as well as other communities, I assume because people who have politics filtered actually secretly want to see politics... (/S)

[–] Dupelet@piefed.social 3 points 11 hours ago

!Nonpolitical_comics@piefed.social!

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 37 points 21 hours ago (5 children)

I agree with everything that you've said. I would also add:

Find your nearest non-political non-tech hobby community and start posting things people actually want to see

Because if we're going to cast the same net reddit does, people with a more varied set of interests need to come here. Can't be all linux, politics, and news. We're going to need people who like baking. We're going to need sports fans. We're going to need music.

I could type new communities we need to be active all day. Humans are surprisingly a diverse set of creatures. You have one set of interests, I have another. Different set of interests. And both are totally valid.

The thing people here don't seem to grasp is that OTHER interests and OTHER people using the fediverse isn't a bad thing. If a bunch of boomers come here, and make their own communities to talk about Taylor Swift, and whatever else they talk about on facebook. That's good that it would be here! Not bad!

They could talk about gardening, and model trains, and whatever else. It wouldn't appeal to you, and thats ok.

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 7 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

We're going to need sports fans.

This. We are in huge lack of sports discussion here on lemmy. I'm looking at other places for sports content because it's just not here. I miss live threads.

[–] GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

There's also !sumo@lemmy.world I have been meaning to check out the current tournament.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 4 points 6 hours ago

!football@sopuli.xyz has live threads. The bot supports a few sports.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

I agree, Go Guards!

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[–] Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 19 hours ago (5 children)

Niche hobbies and small communities (that are active) is what is needed

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago

Yes! We need more esp32 users to come up with bonkers ideas.

[–] gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

This is the number one thing I would bring up tk the question "do we need more users". We need more users if we want more niche communities, and I want more niche communities without having to post.

[–] Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Comes with numbers. Not before.

[–] Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 hours ago

Unfortunately yes

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[–] solidheron@sh.itjust.works 5 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I had the idea to revive dead c/ by reposting from reddit. It's controversial to use a bot

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe limit the bot to only copy the top post that week.

[–] solidheron@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah it's weird that top post for the day doesn't work

[–] TerranFenrir@lemmy.ca 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Here's the thing imo. Bots used well can be really useful. The most attractive part about Reddit/Lemmy though is the comments. Seeing what people have to say about stuff is quite nice.

BUT. I can see how bots can be super helpful to subscribe to content where community interaction isn't that important (like art posted by artists on Instagram, Twitter and so on). The main attraction is the art itself. Not the comments.

This way, I can see what my favorite instagram artists are up to without selling my soul to zuck.

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[–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

A "per user" graph is not indiciative of the number of users, or any change in that metric. You cannot use this graph to determine any effect of the total user count.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 36 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Yes.

Do we want Reddit amounts of users? No.

But there's a lot of growth between here and there.

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[–] cron@feddit.org 29 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

One thing that annoys me about each statistic about posts is that I don't know how many of these posts are actually interesting and engaged with.

For example, there is a specific instance that just mirrors reddit content and has barely any engagement. The bot posts mulitple posts per hour, mostly without any comments or upvotes.

It seems rather irrelevant to compare these posts to actually interesting posts with a nice discussion and a couple of upvotes.

My suggestion would be to count and plot the number of posts that have at least a few interactions.

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