First and foremost, before the usual argument happens, I know that more is not necessarily better.
Having said that, it would be better if lemmy’s userbase were much bigger. There are many, many, interesting communities that are basically dead. We need a bigger userbase to drive some content to those communities.
If person A wants to discuss topic X, but there are barely any people with whom to discuss topic X, person A will go back to the usual for-profit corporations to do just that. This is obviously not good, for obvious reasons: just look around.
And an equally important point: for profit services, such as reddit, need to die. The userbase create the content and a select few get rich from it? Fuck them.
So the question is:
- In your opinion, what can we do to increase the userbase?
Ripping communities away from moderators to merge them is going to drive them away.
Yeah, the ship has largely sailed. But also, there are lots of communities that are empty and also functionally unmoderated, so some could be removed.
Unmoderated is different. Many aren’t though, even if low activity.
Does become a bit of a philosophical question though doesn’t it: Is a community really moderated if it has zero activity?
Also, I somewhat object to the framing of “moderators owning communities”. I don’t own the community I mod, I serve it. If it was a ghost town, and closing it down would prevent people stumbling into it and wasting their time, I would be completely in favour of it.
Of course by inactive, I mean no activity.
I run television@piefed.social. 90% of the posts are by me. I forced it into having a presence. It however does get engagement when I post.
This is true for many communities.