Can anyone clarify what this community is for? The only post here suggests it’s to replace the auslaw subreddit, which is mostly lawyers shit-talking about the legal profession and a lot of fun. However it’s got the same name as the auslegal subreddit, which is a train wreck of non-lawyers asking other non-lawyers legal questions and getting terrible hot takes and badly Googled answers in reply.
There was a mad rush to recreate subreddits without waiting to see what naturally formed.
Some of us suggested waiting with generalised communities to split them as required but fell on mostly deaf ears.
There will be hundreds of these orphaned “subs” all over. Is deleting them the best option?
I think this comes down to how we use the !australia!australia@aussie.zone community. At the moment it seems to be flooded with news - is that a good thing or a bad thing?
We have a !news!news@aussie.zone community for news but no-one uses it - is it time to shift the conversation of news content over there? With less news content and just discussion content we could people might be more interested in sharing their opinions or asking for advice instead of going to one of these smaller communities where they probably won’t receive much interaction.
I’m not seeing much niche personalised content all over Lemmy; a lot is a rehash, an old meme, a RSS feed bot, or a news article (hopefully written by a journalist). I tried for a bit before falling into news as a regularity thing, there is only so much one person can write about on a personal level and the posting people aren’t here yet (or ever). Say what you want about news articles but c/environment is sneaking up the active user table and that would have been impossible to pull off without it.
The only big change I can see is separating c/Australia from Aus Politics. News articles do tend to lean into politics more often than not and keeping them out of Australia sets an early standard. I don’t use the downvote and I don’t think its an effective tool to actually tell a poster where or what to post.
I think throwing news into c/news is a good idea but it will be a full time job because a few that post news seems to be coming from another larger instance. c/Australia seems like the only obvious place to put it. I can’t even get people crossposting environment news into enviro, if I see them in the c/cities I will just leave it there now and try and not double up.
I’d bet opinions and questions will likely localise into the city communities. Or the nightly threads that look like Mastodon microblogging from a distance.
Certainly, news content has been very important here and most discussions here are prompted by news stories. So on the one hand moving most news content to c/news might strip the Australia community of much interaction, but on the other hand since these are still relatively early days, it might be easier to do it sooner rather than later.
But as you said, since their aren’t many people on here posting original content, opinions or questions I would say that opinion pieces or seeking discussion of larger issues would be welcome in the Australia community. For example:
- Foreign interference through social media is an active threat. Here’s what Australia can do
- Why are so many boys and men feeling alone and in the cold?
- Families distressed after ‘highly misleading’ video used by anti-Voice campaigners goes viral
Would all be on-topic for c/australia. But:
- Burger giant Wendy’s signs deal to open 200 Australian stores by 2034
- These Australians are happy to get on their hobby horses — and they’re keen for others to do the same
- Australian government lifts humanitarian intake cap to 20,000 visas
- Mushroom mystery: family lunch leaves Australian town reeling after three deaths in suspected poisoning
would be more on-topic in c/news and/or Australian Politics.
I brought up political content in c/australia in a comment on this post, however the OP was concerned that if we split off into niches the community might not grow as well. I’m thinking of doing a sticky post to invite discussion over there on this topic and perhaps follow it up with a poll to see where everyone else sits.
EDIT: probably should have previewed the formatting first
I understand the “build it and they will come” mentality. Without a place to start those discussions, I presume they won’t start at all.
I suppose it’s a bit of a question about how do we define what a sub is for and let people know? Even then, no guarantee people will run with it.
I think legally-themed communities are prone to falling into the pit of people asking for legal advice on the internet at the best of times. I know the mods at the auslaw subreddit, despite as clearly as possible saying “no legal advice, no real lawyer is going to answer you,” spend plenty of time removing legal advice requests or people saying “not asking for legal advice, but hypothetically, if I had a kg of meth down my pants, could the police search me? Just hypothetically?”
Well, the sidebar is about the only way. A series of stickied posts too maybe.
A moderator, usually the person that floats the idea of the community to the admin, would edit it in and explain the purpose.
I notice this hasn’t got a sidebar so there is no listed purpose. Since it got created to recreate reddit, we can assume the purpose was the same as over there?
Have you thought about messaging the admin and taking it over? You could be the one to build it?
I think it is meant to be like Auslaw, just not many people posting that kind of content here unfortunately
It exists to be whatever the subscribers need from it. If it isn’t fulfilling the needs of the people we can happily create a community that might. For now, it is yet to find its feet.
