My busiest time of year researching, writing, and posting to a semi-strict schedule during the busiest time in my personal life, and it costs me money because I buy the prize!

I love it though, and people are still excited for it, I'm just glad when the marathon is over.

Am I allowed to do Community Promo? Or am I "too big" for that? I feel I'm to big to toss in a self shout out in random comments anymore even though I think it would be funny, but does this still qualify for the promo community? I'm not sure how that works. I forget if I did it earlier in my lemmyness.

And also, from all Blaze's any other people's Piefed talk, I made a Piefed account since my app of choice (Summit) has been adding so much support for it. I think I thought I had checked it out before, but it was Friendica I had tried instead, which I never got the hang of, but Piefed just looks like another Lemmy instance. Am I missing something, or is the Piefed movement just Lemmy without the ML baggage? You guys made it sound so fun, and now I feel let down (not that let down) 😜

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Am I missing something, or is the Piefed movement just Lemmy without the ML baggage

Piefed has a lot of features Lemmy doesn't have yet. Personal feeds (not yet supported in Voyager), posts and users flairs (same), crosspost comments consolidation, built-in keyword filters.

Also @rimu@piefed.social and @wjs018@piefed.social are very reactive and listen a lot to user's feedback. It's quite nice.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Thank you!

I haven't really followed development, as I have been content with where I'm at, but I can't help but hear piefed trending, so it seemed time to give it a look.

I'll have to cruise the web version a bit to see the differences then to see if they jump out.

I knew you'd be able to give me a concise answer!

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago

On !sumo@lemmy.world, another of the bimonthly tournaments finished yesterday. As usual I posted at the beginning, middle, and end of the 15-day tourney about how to follow it and encouraging people to post. This time around was pretty active, we had a number of other people make posts and comment! I just made a post asking if anyone wanted to be a mod, since we had some questions about things like Spoilers. If any of y'all are interested in Sumo and would like to mod, you're welcome to comment there too!

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm annoyed at the fact that super low-effort posts, specifically screenshots of tweets, seem to be getting a lot more traction than actual memes.

I try to post daily, maybe every other day, and look for good content to post. The other day, I saw that the monthly active users dipped a little, so I wanted to see if I'd get more visibility with a tweet since that had worked before. Lo and behold, it's now the most upvoted post in the community lol.

Don't get me wrong - it's a funny meme. But a screenshot of a tweet is just, like, the lowest effort content you could produce. Lemmy is full of it, and I usually don't mind since I do get some enjoyment out if too, but not a point where I'd think "yes, that's goat material right here".

Other than that, I'm happy. Posts get engagement, outside people have been posting too etc

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 4 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Lemmy is a much smaller group than many of use are used to these days. We notice changes in userbase here easier, and it's been hard for me to deal with until recently, as I have been here a number of times thinking I was doing something wrong. I'm not old, but older, and don't have kids or much close family, so I have to remember that it's almost Thanksgiving for a large subset of users, college is close to wrapping up, people are traveling, getting ready from Christmas, and just probably doing more family and IRL stuff right now and will be until the end of the year. Numbers are going to drop, and it's going to be a higher percentage of users, but they will be back. My post count drops from close to 200 upvotes per post to closer to 50, and as someone who was always just a lurker but is now a significant contributor, I thought people were tired of me, but Blaze and the crew here kept telling me, they'll be back, they're just busy.

Like the other people said too, some content is just quick and easy and easy to consume. I do modestly educational content on a very niche topic, and even during busy times, I spend a lot of time on stuff hardly anyone cares about. But 1, I'm making content that I personally enjoy, so I am still getting satisfaction from it, which is the way posting should be. This isn't a gig, so why are we doing it if it isn't something we're happy doing even if no one else is here? And 2, some people are still enjoying it. You're still making some people laugh and have fun, even if it's not the number you are used to. I don't follow meme stuff, so I'm not familiar with your stuff that I know of, but I'm sure you have a regular group of people that look forward to your stuff, even if they won't come out and tell you. I pop on LemVotes from time to time and see the same names upvoting me for months or years, even if they never say a word to me in the comments. And heck, even if for some reason nobody likes your stuff, which is very doubtful, you're still keeping the place active! 😜 They're so few of us still doing a big hunk of the posting, we just gotta keep doing our things.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you for this insightful comment

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I owe it to having a few of these same conversations here myself from the other end 😀

You and this community helped keep me going when I needed this same talk!

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Lots of good points. Thanks for putting into perspective what matters and for pointing out parameters I hadn't considered before.

At times, it's a little too easy for me to overfixate on numbers since that's the only visible metric for success at a first glance - it's not like you constantly have people dropping by praising the content you post. But ultimately, I should enjoy posting, I should enjoy what I post, and what comes after as a result of that is secondary.

It's not like I can complain either. Most stuff I post that does matter gets enough traction. Memes don't matter too much to me in the grand scheme of things - they're just a tool to get people to visit the community. If a tweet is the icebreaker, who am I to complain.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Glad I could help a bit!

Keeping yourself having fun has been key. What you said about numbers being primary feedback was one of my exact biggest issues. Reading people in person is so much more natural, but getting an out of context number rating only left me filling in too many gaps on my own.

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 hours ago

💜

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

a screenshot of a tweet is just, like, the lowest effort content you could produce

I hear ya, but... another way of thinking of it is: the tweet screenshot is being upvoted based purely on the words it uses. They're witticisms or insights. If Oscar Wilde or Voltaire or Dorothy Parker were still around, they would totally rule that format.

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yea a friend of mine brought up a similar point where they didn't get my being so upset about the post's performance. It feels like less effort is needed for a tweet like that, but I might be mistaken too

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Optimistic take: if people see that low-effort screencaps are welcome, they're more likely to start contributing.

Personally I made two feeds, one of memes and one without memes. That made things a lot better.

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 1 points 21 hours ago

Good point :)

Wow, another Piefed W. Might be time for me to switch over too. Good thing we've got instances for both set up :)

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Usually the low effort posts get much more reaction. I totally get you, it's a bit annoying, but not sure if there's anything that can be done

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unlikely. Since most people are lurkers on here, a drive-by upvote is all you get most of the time. Little time for meaningful discussion, I feel like

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

People are quite chatty if you give them opportunities. I'm usually surprised how many answers I can get on !casualconversation@piefed.social or even today on !android@lemdro.id

I guess for more general communities it's easier

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

There's definitely a benefit to asking open-ended questions, especially the type that everyone has an opinion about. I kinda wanted to ask a bunch of those on !gothindustrial@lemmy.world, but unfortunately my mind just doesn't work that way.

[–] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Definitely. Although I can't complain about the engagement I get for most discussion pieces I post. Explicit questions usually get more of a reaction out of people vs. just memes.

Thanks for the links too!

[–] Icytrees@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

Having fun. Interesting to see slow but steady growth and learn what people like. Definitely learning what they hate.

People get very excited for animals and drugs.

News scrolling/research is part of my work, so I started posting articles and sources I don't see here very often. I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm having a great time.

[–] cloudless@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

Not my communities, but I think !screengrabs@piefed.social is a cool community and I hope more people will participate:

A place to share screenshots/screengrabs from entertainment media such as movies, TV shows or games that are aesthetically pleasing.