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Fedigrow @lemm.ee ElectroVagrant @lemmy.world

Thinking about entertainment communities and other broader focus communities

Gradually we've been seeing the tv and movies or shows and movies communities pick up activity, which is good, and the multiple games communities each seem to be doing okay too.

Entertainment

However, there remains kind of an awkward spot where there's not exactly a general entertainment community (outside of Beehaw, that is) from what I can tell. There is an existing community, !entertainment@lemm.ee, though that someone could try to pick up and make active.

This could serve as a catchall for some of the more business-oriented news and some of the fluff celebrity chatter, depending on how one wants to go with it. Worth noting for celebrity chatter there is also !popculturechat@sh.itjust.works though.

Music

In a similar vein, while there's a variety of music communities, there's only a few generic ones, with the largest outside of Beehaw and Hexbear being the largely undefined Music community on Lemmy World. The lack of definition, that is, no sidebar guidance on what the community may be used for, makes it unclear what the community's expectations/preferences for posts are.

As with entertainment, this could be where more music business news could find its home, alongside some band chatter. Although as with entertainment, there's a music-themed community for the chatter to be found at !popheads@poptalk.scrubbles.tech for those interested.

Sports

Likewise with sports, there's a ton of different sports communities, but only two large generic communities to be found on Beehaw and Hexbear (supposing Lemmyverse is accurate). Before any of the more specific sports communities can gain more activity, I think it'd help to have a generic sports community to help people get oriented and find likeminded folks to form whatever specific communities they'd like.

Much like the first two, this could be for sports news and chatter...But unlike the first two, I can't find any generic fluff sports star/team chat communities.

Ideas on How and Where to Organize

In each of these cases regarding broader communities, I think following a similar organizational approach to Beehaw could be a good idea, but they would be better suited to instances more openly federated and not at as much risk of defederation. A few Lemmy instances that come to mind for this are Lemmee, ShitJustWorks, Lemmy Zip, and perhaps Reddthat?

I'm not sure where Mbin instances are in terms of federation smoothness and stability, otherwise I might suggest some of them. On a different note, if there were more Piefed instances I might suggest them, but last I checked the flagship seems to still be the largest and isn't open for community creation.

In short: there's good opportunities for broad, generic topic communities for entertainment, music, and sports on more widely federated instances. At the same time, even where these communities may exist on some widely federated instances, opportunity remains for more clearly defined variations of these communities to encourage posting with less uncertainty.

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  • For entertainment: https://metacritics.zone

    For sports: https://athletic.center

    Both of these instances (and many others) are part of the network of topic-specific instances that I've created and now I'm looking to find a way to share with other admins.

    The only problem at the moment is that I'm the only with access to these instances, but if you want to create new communities I can give you an account on them.

    • Surprising to see there hasn't been any post since a month on the first one, and no post at all on the second one.

      • Not that surprising, considering active users around here (like you) refuse to contribute to it.

        • I just let you another comment on the thread you opened 2 days ago. We can probably continue that discussion there.

          • I had written a longer response, but I realized that it is pointless to continue there or any discussion with you. Every time I address any of your concerns you came up with a new obstacle. Whenever you were asked to make any form of effort, you refused. This is not the behavior of someone who is serious about coordinating efforts.

            It feels immature, like a college student who still depends on their parent's allowance but wants to cosplay as an independent adult.

            • Not sure why you are owed Blaze's efforts on your instances specifically, and why a "no" prompts such a negative, unflattering comparison. You might not actually believe you are entitled to his efforts, but the harsh comparison in reaction to his "no" is what makes me perceive you as feeling that way. I am really not used to people who don't feel entitled to someone's efforts speaking that way when they refuse.

              I appreciate and acknowledge your efforts, I know you made some software to help people find replacement communities for subreddits and to mirror content from other sites to the Fediverse but to be honest this comment leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Especially given all the posts they do make to try to contribute to the Fediverse and grow it—but at least from what I see, they do not want to take on the additional tasks of modding or administrating your instance and you find their reasons unacceptable so you make this comparison, which frankly looks like an attempt to insult them to me.

              And that unflattering comparison leaves me somewhat scared to post this comment lest I get one too, for having wrongthink, too much sympathy for someone you think I should not, insert other insults here. But I also figure I should probably speak up instead of getting in the habit of letting my fear of conflict (and lack of experience with seeing people speak harshly to me or others irl) control me especially when I feel I see something that should not have happened.

              Did Blaze tell you your communities are all trash or something? I really do not see why you are reacting so harshly.

              • they do not want to take on the additional tasks of modding or administrating your instance and you find their reasons unacceptable so you make this comparison

                This is not what I've asked. All I've asked was to look into the content that he was already interested in posting (e.g, tv shows and football) and to do in the communities from the topic-specific instances instead of the bigger "user" instances, and every time there was some random objection to avoid doing it.

                • You are running these alone, what if something happens to you? I have a friend who worked with me before and has the ability to take over my operations in case something happens to me.
                • This is not enough. He is not involved now Ok, so let me put these instances in some type of collective with the admins. I don't mind to continue operating them and covering the operational costs, all I would like is to have some commitment from any type of current admin that can assuage your concerns.
                • Your domains are too expensive, admins will not be interested in paying for this. I am not asking the eventual co-owners to pay for anything.

                The excuses are getting more and more ridiculous. It actually got to the point where the reason to avoid joining the football instance is because of the domain name having "soccer" instead of "football", but at the same time saying "please don't buy a football domain".

                The funny thing is, I wouldn't mind at all if he came out and said "no, I don't want to help you", even if there was no particular reason for it. The unbearably annoying thing was this concern trolling, this constant "Oh, I don't mind helping, but only after X".

                • Thanks for addressing my concern. With this additional context it looks like he's trying to refuse without being straightforward about it (from my end). Although I get it is a tactic to try to be nice instead of hurtful, it often just leads to more hurt, especially when people take the action to do "X" and they still get a "no". Wasted effort trying to convert a "no" to a "yes" that could never be converted, and probably inadvertently pissing off someone who wishes you would just take a hint when you understandably take them at face value because some people do legitimately say "no, for X reason" and could be converted to a "yes" when X is addressed. It would be better for all parties to be straightforward. As someone who cares a lot about being nice and protecting peoples' feelings, it is, in fact, very possible to be straightforward and honest without being rude or hurtful.

                  • Hello,

                    Thank you for jumping in, I appreciate your concerns.

                    I'll write a long comment later today to provide the complete context of our pasts interactions with rglullis.

                  • Alright, so here we go. The following links point to specific comments from where you can start reading to see our discussions.

                    So, in a thread from 23 days ago

                    Another thread from 14 days ago:

                    Another thread from 20 days ago:

                    Another thread from 24 days ago:

                    Last thread, 3 days ago:

                    So to summarize

                    Rgullis position is that

                    My position is

                    • having too many instances managed by a single person is a high security risk. We see instances disappear regularly, usually it's not a big deal because they are smaller instances, but currently, even if LW were to disappear, there are enough backup communities on other instances to keep going. It would be an issue, but the platform would recover
                    • My next suggestion was then indeed to have someone else helping rglullis with managing those instances
                    • based on the thread from 4 days ago, no admins has jumped in and offered to help: https://lemmy.world/post/20236330?scrollToComments=true

                    As a way to try to help him to get why people are not joining, I pointed out that

                    • relying on paid accounts with amounts such as 30€ per year while some instances have user costs as low as 0,11€ per month (so 3€ per year) https://lemmy.world/post/19466047 is unrealistic (and no, assuming that people browse Lemmy from "shiny iPhones" is not a reason: https://lemmy.world/comment/12172203)
                    • setting up an infrastructure that costs 1700 € per year on domain names alone is unreasonable (hence my comment to not buy a "football" domain name)
                    • having one small team per instance instead of a centralized consortium managing all of these instances seems healthier. The local team manages their instances, they make it grow organically, people see that the instance is reliable, they start trusting it and establish communities on it

                    I already due my due diligence when I choose an instance to host a community I post too. Rglullis do not pass this. I'm not avoiding saying no to him, I think they are a good sysadmin and do a good job, but they need a backup.

                    Hope that clarifies things a bit.

                    • Thanks for providing context, and all the links. I read them, and I really have no idea what to think anymore.

                      I'm just going to keep posting and I'll probably stay out of any of this discussion in the future.

                    • This is not an accurate representation of what I've been defending:

                      users should pay 30$ a year to get access to professionally-managed instances

                      "Should" is not the right verb, and you are omitting the context. What I have been saying for the past two years already is that if people on the Fediverse don't realize that there are real costs to develop the software and operate the servers, it will never be able to grow, and if you doubt that just see how growth has completely stalled in relation to better funded alternatives like Threads, Bluesky and even Farcaster.

                      This is not about paying for my servers. It can be about running your own, from home. It can be about getting together with your real life friends and sharing a server. It can be about convincing the IT department of your company to set up a server for their social media.

                      What I am saying, simply put, is "you'll get what you pay for". I'm saying that those that want the Fediverse to grow need to make significant investment on it. Your idea of "material support" is to "pay for the cost of running the servers", and this is just taking all the work from the developers, instance admins and moderators for granted.

                      (And no, "I also spend time bringing content and participating, so it should be counted" is not true, because this is just standard usage of the application being developed)

                      we should centralize content based on a few of those professionally-managed instance

                      Again, not true. The topic-specific instances are not meant to be a source of revenue for Communick. I never said that I was planning to charge access to those instances, and I never said anything about pushing them to some corporate system.

                      based on the thread from 4 days ago, no admins has jumped in and offered to help

                      @ademir@lemmy.eco.br has already expressed support of the idea and @ruud@lemmy.world is at least considering it.

                      The thread was not meant to get input from the admins. The thread was meant to gauge interest from the communities about using it.

                      There is also issues of "opinion as fact".

                      the cost of these instances is around 6500€ per year setting up an infrastructure that costs 1700 € per year on domain names alone is unreasonable

                      First, I don't know where you got the 6500€ number. I said 1700€ for the domains + 2400€ (200€/month) for the servers. My operating costs are ~4000€/year. 4000€ per year for 18 instances amounts to less than 20€/month/instance.

                      Second, on the occasion that these instances became a more integral part of the Fediverse, it would not be difficult to raise enough money to keep them running. For comparison, the folks from LW are raising ~950€/month on patreon alone and if you go by the rule of thumb that ~2% of users contribute to their instances, the ~360€/month needed for these servers could be raised by less than 20k active users that decided to give 1€/month.

                      Thirdly, domains like nba.space and nfl.community are valuable. They can help with SEO, they provide legitimacy and (should the community agree) they could be one of the first places to try alternative monetization methods to fund the development of all the Fediverse.

                      Lastly - and without offense the fact that I have to explain this to you is a strong indicator that you are either very young or financially illiterate - you are hung up on the nominal prices, but all these costs are business expenses. They are sort of a sunk cost already and/or they can be used to deduct from my tax bill.

                      All in all, this whole part of your argument can be summarized as "I think it is expensive, and I wouldn't pay for that, so I don't think others would/should be interested in it". Your opinion is, just, you know, your opinion, man....

                      having one small team per instance instead of a centralized consortium managing all of these instances seems healthier. The local team manages their instances, they make it grow organically, people see that the instance is reliable, they start trusting it and establish communities on it.

                      How has that worked out for the people on kbin, or feddit.de, or FMHY?

                      The question here is not about "small teams" vs "centralized groups". I think the crux of the matter is:

                      • How much do we really want the Fediverse to grow and become a mainstream social media platform?
                      • If we want it to grow, where are we going to get resources to support its development?
                      • If we really want it to grow, how fast do we want it grow? If it's too slow it risks becoming irrelevant (see Bluesky), too fast and it risks becoming a chaos that is not recognizable by the original members (see web3 being taken by get-rich-quick scammers)

            • The serious efforts I see you do is using this community pretty much solely to promote your own instances. If I was a mod here I'd ban your ass for non stop self promotion :)

              Personally, like mentioned before, I won't touch any instances that you run.

              • I am offering the instances to the wider community, precisely so that they are not "mine".

                The easiest way to get me to quit the "self promotion" is quite simple: step up and start putting actual skin in the game to build the infrastructure needed to support more people.

            • Okay, take care

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