I think you have the wrong idea. I don’t personally care about taylor swift. Just the same as I don’t care about Micheal Jackson, and only slightly like The Beatles.

My point is, if you want expanded userbases for the WHOLE platform, you have to cater to the mainstream first, and THEN the niche stuff will follow.

Look at reddit’s userbase. At one point they had a subreddit that was just pictures of toasters. It probably still exists, but I haven’t personally looked into it since 2015.

The point is, reddit has some of the most random, most batshit insane concepts for subreddits I’ve ever seen.

Meanwhile, the average user (so, not most people who are already here) would have trouble even knowing there IS a place to talk about one of the most popular musicians of all time.

There’s this whole untapped potential of this Lemmy concept, and all it needs is a few minor adjustments, and a grassroots effort to grow this place.

The search engine at https://browse.feddit.de/ should just be the built in propriatary search platform wide.

The main directive of growing this site, should be “easy”. I’m telling you guys, that linux mindset won’t work here.

It reminds me of when I played monopoly on Nintendo Switch with my grandma, for the first and only time. Her turn ended, and she wanted to do something, I think maybe build a house. And she asked me a simple question. “How do I build a house?”

And I answered with a simple answer. “You press the L button.”

My grandma at that time was 101 years old. She had never played a video game. She had ZERO concept that L stands for “left trigger”. She didn’t even know what a trigger was.

So after I told her it was the L button, she starts turning the controller all sorts of ways looking for L. I watched her do that for about 3 seconds before I realized what was happening. And then I showed her with my finger.

I was so used to playing with other people who at some point have played a video game, that I hadn’t even considered that there was a disconnect for her. I was about 38 years old at that point. I knew controller layouts from playing with them for 30+ years. My grandma had not. So me giving her the answer in basic terms didn’t carry over in an easy to understand way for her. But once I showed her the button with my finger, she understood.

Then she pointed at the other side, and said “Is this the M button?” And I said “No, thats actually the R button. And the one behind it is ZR.”

And she gave me this look that said a lot of things all at once without saying a word. That look told me that in that moment she felt stupid. A feeling she’s not used to feeling. She was sharp in the mind all the way until her final days. But this whole video games experience, she saw me knowing what to do, and her NOT knowing what to do.

THAT is the thing that will either kill Lemmy, or let it blossom. I’m not quite at my grandmas levels of frustrated, but I still don’t see an easy way to find all the niche communities I can think of, across ALL instances.

I don’t see a clear and decisive way to say "oh, you’re searching for THESE interests? Ok, here’s the ones you searched for, but here’s some more that may also interest you based on what you searched for.

For example. I subscribed on Lemmy to !gamegrumps@lemmy.world

But it never suggested anything for Ninja Sex Bang, or Starbomb, or (not that I support him) Jontron.

I agree with all of this … and good to hear too!

I hope you start it and goes well!

While I agree with all the arguments about how effective topic specific instances can be … one counter I’ll just share is that they can maybe be rather damaging should they go down or sour on people, because the communities then fracture as there isn’t an obvious place to go afterward.

This kinda happened with the start trek instance, where, if you don’t know, the admins were viewed as being toxic or incompetent by some and so drifted away from the instance. Some reforming happened around some communities on lemmy-world, but I don’t think things are the same afterward.

Which of course doesn’t mean that a topic-specific instance can’t be great … quite the opposite really … I think the lesson from the above is that ensuring that a good, healthy, transparent and sustainable admin team and culture would really be invaluable.

Perhaps one principle to center policies around (just a suggestion off of the top of my head) would be the idea that the instance kinda belongs to “the fans” … so some democratic mechanisms or feedback, some ideas around changing “the guard” (as you’ve spoken about already) etc … just to instill the idea that the instance is for the topic not just the admins hobby.

Do it.