Your communities might be a lot larger than you think!

The number of subscribers listed in the sidebar is only the number of users from YOUR instance that are subscribed. This might make you feel like a community is 'small' or 'dead' when it actually isn't.

I also started to forget this till I was playing with the shields.io badges earlier and the numbers didn't match up.

Here are some examples:

!fediverse@lemmy.world

My instance will see 310 subscribers
This instance will see 22.6K subscribers

!canada@lemmy.ca

My instance will see 6.03K subscribers
This instance will see 1.49K subscribers

Now my question is, what's an accurate way to see the total number of subscribers? Is it in the home instance for a particular community?

If so, it might be worth adding the badges to the sidebars.

(!fediverse@lemmy.world)

(!asklemmy@lemmy.ml)

(!games@sh.itjust.works)

(!canada@lemmy.ca)

(!communitypromo@lemmy.ca)

(!houseplants@mander.xyz)

To do this quickly, go to https://shields.io/badges/lemmy and enter:

myCommunity@example.com for community
lemmy for logo
Total Subscribers for label
modify the colors and style as you like

You can also modify the community and instance here and paste it in:

    
![](https://img.shields.io/lemmy/fediverse%40lemmy.world?logo=lemmy&amp;label=Total%20Subscribers)

swap the fediverse%40lemmy.world portion

22 comments

I don't think this is entirely true, I think the number of subscribers is just not perfectly synced. My instance doesn't even allow signups, I just have my single admin account on there, but the communities have quite a few subscribers
https://lemmy.mods4ever.com/communities
- Yeah the home instance of the community is the only one that tracks the full number, other instances only count their own users
- Interesting, I assumed it just showed the local numbers. What do you see when looking at !canada@lemmy.ca for example?
  
  You just have to view it on the community's home instance. From my instance it says 36, but from
  https://lemmy.ca/c/canada
  It says 6.03k
  The badges are a pretty good idea though
  
  For me, it shows 1 subscriber, 1.4k users per month.
  It seems to be entirely dependent on the instance.

- they're watching you...
- You're not the only one in the dark cave :).

Yeah i post on a french community, and i was surprised to receive 160+ upvotes on a post about AOC calling for climate action. I assumed my post was propagated to international instances. Pretty cool.

That's a great idea! I didn't know about shields.io. Just added it to !celeste@lemmy.ca
I changed the link a little from the one you posted. Mine is:

[![Subscriber Count](https://img.shields.io/lemmy/celeste%40lemmy.ca?logo=lemmy&label=Subscribers)](https://lemmy.ca/c/celeste)
I added alt text (so if the image doesn't load, or people are using screen readers, they can still understand what it is),
changed 'Total Subscribers' to just 'Subscribers',
and made the badge a link to the community in the original instance, so anyone wondering why the numbers don't match up can click the badge to see where the number's coming from.
- Looks good :) Those changes make sense

This is nice, I just added them to both of my communities
- Looks good!
  A difference of 14 users to the full 626 users :)

I don't think this is right? My instance has 6 communities, all of them has more subscribers than the instance has users.
- Ah, you mean remote communities. To me (and those on small instances) surely is easier to understand, but I can see why people on a larger instance might not get it.

no change in users in my community. mhmm.
- It's more for users from any instance that isn't your own
  For example, I only see "7 subscribers" instead of the 390 or so actual subscribers. So adding the badge will let people know there are a lot more people there
  
  oic thanks

- Do you like Jazz?

Remember there are tools to sync an account to another instance so that you can make backups. This will count my backups as additional subscribers to your niche communities if I’m subscribed.

Lolololol.
There are like 1500 really active users here. Tops. I wouldn't worry about official counts, they ain't good.

22 comments