The title says it all: How can we grow the Rust community here on Lemmy? Many users fled Reddit or are here for different reasons. But compared to it’s commercial big brother, the Rust community here, feels more or less dead. I would like to discuss ideas, on how we can changes that and make Lemmy the default for Rust related discussions, instead of Reddit.
@h3ndrik @Blamemeta I wonder if having fakebut interesting comments would help (ie. written by alt-account of the author) . I noticed that I have significantly higher chances to participate in the conversation if there are already 5-6 comments than 0-2, especially if they open the dialog.
Sure. I think there is a name for that specific kind of sockpuppeting but I don’t remember. People do that, comment on their own post and it works. I don’t think it’s bad per se. What works best is replying something outrageous or wrong… Because people like to object and correct people more than they do write positive comments.
In my opinion it needs to be genuine. I’m okay with lots if things if people are interested in an answer. What I don’t like is artificial boosting of engagement or manipulation. If people only do it so the number of comments increases and they aren’t really interested in my answer… It just wastes 10 minutes of my day replying to them instead of helping someone with their computer troubleshooting.
Ultimately, I’m not sure where Lemmy is headed. I had quite some good conversations here. And I had some bad encounters. Overall I think it’s a positive place. I don’t think we have to grow just for the sake of it. But we definitely need more people and more engagement to make some communities useful.
I think we just need more open ended posts. A lot are just “check out this blog post,” which is super long and technical so little just nope out.
If most of your posts are like that, you’ll get minimal engagement, and people with more “basic” questions may be intimidated to post.
So post some stuff like, “I went to do X in Rust, but the borrow checker isn’t happy. Can someone explain what I’m doing wrong?” I think that’ll drive some engagement and encourage others to post similar questions. I don’t want this community to only be code reviews and whatnot, but a mix can help the community feel a bit less weighty.
Yes. I agree. A majority of the posts in my timeline is just someone posting the news. Lots of the posts get no engagement. Upvotes, yes, but zero comments. I kind of dislike it. I already have a feed reader and I don’t view Lemmy as a news feed… I’m here for the discussions.
So, news maybe, if people engage and use this to write their 2 cents beneath that. But I’d definitely appreciate genuine conversations and helping people or just talking or learning things.
I see it as a news feed with discussion, but a news feed first and foremost. But either way, I like engagement too, sometimes people bring up really good points that aren’t in the original article.