this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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flashlight

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Portable illumination

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Hello Everyone!

I am still enjoying Lemmy and think it is a great place to be! However, this place seems to be low on any content. I understand that we only have around 2.2k people and that is to be expected.

Do you guys have any ideas for driving engagement here and sharing more of what we are doing and what we are looking to get or recently got? I try to share some lights and post every now and again, but I don't want to make like 5 posts a day.

Do you think we should have a BST thread like on Reddit? Perhaps some weekly discussion thread with projects we are doing or maybe we can discuss a different brand or company?

What do you guys think?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, oh my god. I just saw this community and I feel like every single one of you will understand my ire upon replacing a 6volt battery in one of those old flashlights, right, and thinking hey, fuck yeah, this beefy fucker's gotta be lit, right?

WRONG.

Damn thing was dim as shit. LEDs win. Thank y'all for your service.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup. LEDs are amazing. Changed everything for the better. TVs, home lighting, car lighting, PC FPS, etc.

Those old lights have bonk factor though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I got myself a big Sofirn dive light for the bonk factor 😄

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Convoy L7 also has some bonk factor. Can't ever go wrong with bonk factor!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, one of those might have to be on my next Convoy order...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Or the L8...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think that all of us who are already here just need to start posting more content (myself included), and that will draw more people in. Lemmy is now the home of my Anduril 2 diagrams, but I also need to update and port over some of my old posts from Reddit because some of you may get some use out of them. The more we post, the more information we have available, and that has enormous value. I personally love to see mod posts. @[email protected] is one of the most gifted modders out there, and he shares his mods and builds here. It's absolutely incredible the sort cool stuff folks are doing to their lights. It's also great to see "measurement" posts where folks share the results of testing out different emitters (CCT, CRI, lumens, etc.), cells, optics, entire lights, etc. That's all extremely useful information for the rest of us. And let's not forget about good old fashioned New Light Day (NLD) posts where folks simply share info about their latest haul. It's fun to chime in on those, and share your own experiences and mods for those lights. The bottom line is that the content doesn't magically show up for us. We have to create it ourselves.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I wholeheartedly agree. That's why I made this post. How can we drive engagement? With weekly threads, have a certain-kind-of-post day, or something along those lines?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you might have to get more engagement before a BST thread really takes off. Kind of a chicken or the egg thing.

I'd love to see build/mod threads though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

My thoughts exactly. It could attract some people. Or let us get to know each other better.

I think a build/mod thread might be cool, but I think that will start off slow at first. Which is fine by me. I'm looking at modding a Wurkkos FC13s. Looking for drivers and emitters and seeing what is possible.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That's a hard one. Can't force people but many don't know The magic of lemmy. Does reddit still ban for speaking of other platforms?

I know I'm guilty, haven't made a single thread hehe.

I don't like the big threads but others seem to enjoy them. Maybe?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure honestly. The community was pretty clear they didn't want to move over.

I don't really post and try my best to not really interact at all. Not because I hate them or something, but because of the principle. Although I did get a Zebralight h600fc from the BST.

I doubt we'll have big threads. The most comments a post gets here is like 20.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Does reddit still ban for speaking of other platforms?

It probably depends on whether an algorithm decides it's too spammy. I do see people talking about Lemmy on Reddit without getting banned, but if all you post is off-topic comments encouraging people to... it doesn't even matter what. That's spam.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For me, just keeping it friendly, upvoting interesting questions or posts, and commenting when I think I might have something of value to add.

We could probably all have a lower threshold for asking questions like "what's in your pocket right now?", "What's your most recent purchase", or even just "I love this light because...". Five a day from just you is not realistic, but I think you're on the right track. As well as creating some activity, those sort of posts might inspire others to do the same.

A bigger, more active community isn't the goal for me, but discovering cool stuff I didn't know I needed, or getting a window into other people's passions are. I get those two are related - which is probably where your question is coming from.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Lok discovered this post on the main page and thought flashlight was some sort of highlighting Lemmy community stuff.

Nope literal flashlights.

Love it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think posts like that would be great. It starts conversations and would add more than a post every few days.

[–] Reader9 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for posting this. Additionally, I think highlighting some great posts in the sidebar like @[email protected] ’s Anduril diagrms https://lemmy.world/post/1038159 would be great since it shows what’s unique about this small community (on Lemmy).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree that it would be nice to have more engagement here. A weekly diskussion thread is probably a good idea. But I think for now it does not need to have a theme, it could just be something completely different each week. Though it's important that it's something that everyone can participate in, otherwise it will be just an empty thread that is evidence of this place being low on content.

We could start by making a thread where people can suggest topics for the weekly discussions and go from there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm down for that. It would help us find which topics this community finds interesting

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As much as i like Lemmy and want it to succeed, I’m not yet convinced it will. I’m still on Reddit (until the app i use, Narwhal, starts charging) and there just is neither the variety of channels nor a similar level of interaction here. In some ways that is a good thing, fewer shitposts, no endless puns and obscure memes and references etc. But i do miss the often interesting comments and discussions you see in the more niche subs on reddit. It may improve over time when user numbers grow, but i don’t think Lemmy, or the bigger fediverse, is ready for the general public yet.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it's important to have a healthy definition of success.

I think Mastodon is a success for example. It hasn't replaced Twitter as the place where people go to yell at each other about politics, but is that a bad thing? Nearly 500 people follow my photography account there. Sure, I could leverage an algorithm on some corporate social service to get more engagement, but that's pretty cool. 500 people decided for themselves that they want to see my pictures of birds.

I don't expect 180K people to show up here in the first year, but it took /r/flashlight 15 years to get there. The people who are here upvote eagerly and leave thoughtful comments. It's small, but it's nice.

One thing I do is post my reviews here (and to my flashlight Mastodon account) first. I did notice a couple other reviewers who had been posting here aren't anymore. I should probably reach out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I share that sentiment. The niche subreddits are still great places to be.

There are a few subreddits that are totally about the subject at hand and are wonderful places. I would like to see a community like that grow here. We have a great start so far.