I have been thinking about community growth and how the voat fracture has split several communities apart.
Compared to Reddit the userbase at voat was small. To grow a non political sub on voat took work and dedication. It really takes one to two very active and motivated mods to get a sub going and stay going. It’s extremely easy to get burnt out. Over the years the majority of communities on voat have disbanded and have tried to replicate their subs on several platforms. Non have really matched the spark that was voat in its prime (IMO).
I’m curious about how the future of poal and phuks relationship will work and how that relationship will effect community growth.
Phuks seems content on small growth with little to no advertising on other sites were Poal seems the opposite, very eager to gain users and growth. Voat got its growth from Reddit fucking up and Poal was created because Voat is fucking up. Seems fucking up is the growth strategy here.
There’s a lot of cross posts on all three sites. Does this hinder community growth?
Just running “whatever” thoughts I had this morning.
Happy Friday Phukers.
That's my understanding. I don't have a problem with Poal, I consider it a sister site of sorts to Phuks. That said, you just won't find me there much for the same reasons I haven't really been around voat for a couple years. It's just not for me, and that's OK.
The slow growth is a double edge sword for me personally. Because I've got a shorter attention span and an addiction to novelty, I prefer a busy site--there's always something new to see. But after a certain size you can't know or recognize everybody, or in reddit's case anybody. I like recognizing and "knowing" people, I prefer that and it only comes with smallness. Sure, Phuks could advertise, but I've seen what happens.
I ran a Minecraft server, Werdcraft, after Voatcraft took the money and ran, just like Voat has gone the admins simply fell off the face of the earth and weren't participating in or running the server anymore. I felt the community deserved better so I just got some people aboard and did it. It went good, but eventually people got tired of playing Minecraft--it happens to everybody. The server basically died. Before it completely died, I tried to advertise and attract more people to 1) keep it interesting for who was left and 2) keep the community from dying completely. Well, the need to manage the community got a lot higher when people just came in to shit all over everything--it was a bad time, and totally backfired. Advertising actually accelerated the death of the community. Everybody left and I gave up and shut it down.
Any, I'm concerned about that happening from advertising: attracting too much attention too fast, causing too much work for admin staff and sub moderators, leading to everybody determine that it's just not fun anymore. I don't know what the best answer is, but the current track seems to be going pretty good I think.