this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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I created [email protected] a few days ago. Now it has >4k subscribers. I credit that to my meticulous reposting of content from other places (90% from /r/maliciousompliance, 10% from elsewhere). It took a bit of effort but now people are posting their OC.
A site like this needs to reach critical mass to be self-sustaining. I see a lot of new communities with 0-1 posts from the mod. That’s not nearly enough to get people engaged - users are going to see that it’s a ghost town and leave. Reposts are a temporary measure to get past the chicken-and-egg problem of "there's nothing here so people aren't visiting" and "people aren't visiting so they aren't posting stuff".
Reddit itself exists on reposts. As a (ex-)Redditor of 12 years, I've seen countless reposts. Ideally, reposts make up a small percentage of the content, but given the small nature of this universe, I'd personally encourage and advocate reposting of content from elsewhere to kickstart discussion.
This is absolutely the case. Communities need content to aggregate around before the community itself grows to a point where it can become content in its own right.
Reddit itself launched with the founders operating sockpuppet accounts to post content and have conversations, just so that it looked like there was already a community to join and activity happening when early adopters showed up.
Well said. A good mod (especially in these times) needs to take care of his sub. And that thing motivates the sub users.