this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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So since the mass-exodus from Reddit we can see that the total amount of active users has gone down rather heavily: https://i.imgur.com/MeQok2F.png

This can seem a bit sad at a first glance. Where are we heading? But one has to remember that back during the summer many of us created several accounts to settle at an instance, there were also problems with spam-bots of various kinds.

So active users in itself is actually not that interesting. At least not the comparison with the peak. Instead we can watch the total amount of posts, how is that looking?

Well it's steadily going up actually: https://i.imgur.com/i3Vse7Y.png

Though the increase has gone down slightly. This number however is influenced by other parameters as well. There are several reposts bots and such that mass-post to different instances. But it's definitley a good tell it's not going down.

Another interesting factor is comments: https://imgur.com/hWT8xvF

The amount of comments per month has gone down, but not by all that much. A 10% decrease from the top or so. What's interesting here is that the decline has plateaued, which could indicate that the userbase has settled and become somewhat consistent. This is great news.

All in all, it seems like Lemmy has settled into a rather comfortable spot, with a decent amount of users, posts and comments. That is very slightly decreasing. Ideally we'd like to see this trend reverse, and perhaps that might happen naturally with due time when things have settled even more. For Lemmy I'd reckon the growth will look a bit like this. Whenever Reddit does something horrific (and it will happen more), we'll see a mass-exodus with more users over here. Then it'll decrease for a bit, settle and hopefully we can rinse and repeat. Anyway - that's some irrelevant thoughts from me on the subject.

Just wanted to post these rather good statistics!

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[–] dojan 217 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I feel like the overall engagement has increased. I see a lot more niche communities (like people butchering their VWs in various ways 😂) and it’s nice! There’s generally conversation to be had and such, it feels like a healthy platform.

Lemmy slotted in the gap that Reddit left really easily for me, and I’m getting what I wanted from the platform.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One thing I love about lemmy is how easy it is to get a conversation going. On reddit it's really easy to be buried in a thread, and if you get a response it's often just a joke or a snarky remark. Here there's so much genuine engagement. It reminds me of the transition from Twitter to Mastodon. I guess people who bother to make the move are more likely to be more engaged users, too.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy's comment sorting does also actively prevent getting buried, unlike reddit (?). Newer comments are biased towards the top, and even heavily-upvoted older comments will fall towards the bottom. The lack of "global karma" and our community's propensity to heavily downvote anyone doing redditisms like pun threads are also doing a lot of work here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I didn't even know about that, that's really cool. I have noticed that if I come back to older posts there's often a lot of new activity since I was there last.

[–] dojan 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah! It doesn’t matter how stupid whatever point I have is, there’s usually some sort of conversation born from it, and I really enjoy that!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago
[–] Kerandir 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a forever lurker, I agree with you, I'm unleashing up votes like never in my reddit life

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Someone better versed in Lemmy may correct me, but isn't comment activity more of a factor with some of the sorting algorithms (e.g. Hot/Active) here? In which case your upvotes may help but your comment may be even better!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i need to see those VWs please

[–] dojan 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TIL how to link to communities on other instances in a way that keeps you on your own instance. thanks for that!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No problem :)

It definitely makes life easier

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where are these VW communities you speak of..? Asking as the owner of an old Mk IV Jetta lol

[–] dojan 1 points 1 year ago

They’d turn your Jetta into a fridge, I’m sure.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I had to block that sub, I can't stand classic cars being cut up like that.

[–] dojan 2 points 1 year ago

My roomie is German so I share stuff from that community with him from time to time. It might be against the Geneva convention, but I’ve not faced repercussions yet.