hi there. I’m new. I’ve recently migrated from kbin.social (RIP) in the hopes of filling that big empty hole in my webs that reddit left after The Troubles.
First impressions after a week of use:
- Beehaw feels a little lonely. Not a lot of activity. Same posts on my subscriptions front page throughout the day with little movement on upvotes and comments. It’s the summer in the north so maybe people have better things to do with their time, but I am wondering, does it pick up?
- Fewer users than kbin? It feels like there are smaller numbers on the Communities subscriptions than I’m used to on kbin. Granted, kbin was inundated with spammers and bot accounts over the last couple of months so those numbers are probably not as real as I’d like them to be, and I appreciate Beehaw’s limits on new members by pushing a signup form and a review process. A social network needs users though.
- Subscribing across instances feels weird. Maybe it’s the instance (lemmy.ca) but I tried following a couple of communities from there and my subscription was marked “Pending”. Are we defederated?
So, my Ask is this: Do you have any recommendations for a newbie at Beehaw to make the most of my experience here? Are there any non-obvious Communities I should join? I’m looking for friends and fun. Where do?
Hi from someone outside the hive!
Subscriptions sometimes get stuck in the “pending” state on other lemmy sites, too. I assume it’s a federation bug that only affects certain instances at any given time. Waiting a few days and then unsub/resubbing has sometimes cleared it for me. Other times, it has taken admin attention. Thankfully, it seems to be cosmetic; I have still been able to see and post messages in the affected communities.
As for the low traffic, I think subscribing across instances is likely your best solution. While there are often multiple communities for any given topic scattered around the 'verse, people mostly tend to gather around one or two of them, and I think beehaw’s selectivity and preference for a handful of broad topics kind of work against it becoming a global gathering place. I expect that helps filter out jerks, but judging by what you wrote, maybe it also makes for a very quiet neighborhood.
The good news is that many of the bigger instances also have rules about being respectful, and while moderation can’t prevent bad-faith comments, it can at least clear them out when people report them. I encourage you to try a few communities from elsewhere, and see if any of them feel comfortable. This directory might help:
https://lemmyverse.net/communities
so nice, thanks for the helpful suggestions.
Honestly, when I wrote my post this morning I didn’t really expect to get any answers and these have all been great.
Thank you @mox@lemmy.sdf.org and all who’ve replied. This feels like a great space.