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i don't have a big stake since this is a community i don't really take part in, but i will say when i see those bot posts that are just grabbing reddit posts and tossing them here i don't really engage with them.

i feel compelled to comment on posts that were made with intention by a user that will actually see my input. it might add content but to me it seems like it would kind of be filler, less substantial than an actual poster making a thread.

That's a fair take. On the other hand, we might need to artificially create some engagement so that new joiners are more inclined to visit Lemmy. That should probably be over once the community is large enough

yeah, it's a bit of an uphill battle to create communities online with how centralized the internet has gotten, especially on a whole different platform than where most users congregate. it might be a reasonable concession to make.

though i'd hope new users can take up the task of generating content themselves, that's what platforms like this are made for. best way to nurture a culture of posting and engaging is to post and engage, which there should be enough users for at this point i think. it's a bit idealistic though, not an easy issue.

The problem is that the vast majority of users just lurk, a minority just comment, and maybe less than one in a hundred actually submit content.

Take yourself as an example - it's great you've been actively commenting but you haven't actually submitted anything for people to engage with yet. And therein lies the problem.

At this early growth stage, Lemmy/Kbin need as much content as possible so that new users see the value in joining. If that means that mods have to take stuff from Reddit and submit it here, then so be it.

yeah, i do my best to add input and discussion to the platform, but like a lot of users, i lurk, or at least did historically. so it's a habit i've been trying to break on here. i comment to add bits of input when i can but i've never really had the posting mindset. i am making it a point to add to discussion here, but i have to work on starting some myself 😅.

Just me but trying to achieve growth at all let alone by "marketing" is why reddit is so bad. But at least people are able to move to an instance that doesn't believe in that kind of growth so no biggie I guess.

I agree, I'm the same way.

Agreed. I feel like participating in posts that have waaaay more participation on Reddit and that OP will never ever see is just... Stupid

May be once a day only one post which is the top post for the day until we start generating our own content could be good.

I'm currently running a bot doing this exactly, some communities might want to get a post more often, that's why I made mine configurable.
Github: https://github.com/daniel-lxs/BotIt

I know this is a dumb question but in the communitymap section of your example YAML why is worldnews there as the source twice? It looks like the first time it targets to world@lemmy.world and the second time to worldnews@lemmy.ml

Is the 2nd one just in there to show an example of how to target multiple communities?

Yeah, the second one is to show that you can map the same subreddit to multiple communities at the same time, you are not limited to just one per subreddit.

Edit: not a stupid question :)

Edit2: Sorry I misunderstood your question, the answer is yes, it is an example showing you can target many communities at once from one source.

I like this idea, or a modification of it. Keeps this space fresh and active while keeping the focus on OC.

Fair modification might be something like a one/day minimum, but it can be more if we have more OC. Encourages OC but also allows the sub to get the ball rolling with imported content.

Some subs (like news related subs) that makes sense. Absolutely not for AITA or anything else that calls for interaction, or for any sub where the content is assumed to be created by the person who posted it.

I agree with this. It would just feel weird.

Reminds me of the "people of Imgur" phenomenon where Imgur would react and reply to Reddit content, seemingly with no understanding that the OP was posting it for other purposes and could not see their comments.

Yeah, like best of or other compilation subs would be ok IMO.

Rumor on the streets is reddit also faked user accounts and cloned content in the early days

It would make sense to be honest

You are right just commenting

Yeah, Spetz had a tone of alts...

It's true. They manufactured a lot of discussion and posts to get off the ground and not appear abandoned.

I'm a supporter of encouraging OC more than reposting from Reddit

I will disagree with most of the comments here, as long as it is specified in the title, there should be no problem with reposts from reddit.

Basically all link aggregation sites repost stuff from other sites. OC can be a fuzzy concept

I just saw there is another sub that crossposts from reddit, so I change my stance on this.

What I'm doing currently, is if on a community that exists as a subreddit, there is no post in the day, I'll find some content on reddit (trying to find something relevant) and post it; to make communities "more alive"

If there already was some posts, I do not crosspost from reddit

That makes sense. FYI, there is an instance specialized in reposting: https://lemmit.online/c/AmItheAsshole

Great take and approach, going to apply this as well. It’s up to us the community to drive engagement, I’d love to do my part.

I agree with this, as long as it is also clearly stated where the content comes from

I tried to do this with NFL Memes, but all the images I downloaded from there got corrupted when downloading for some reason.

I've found I enjoy communities less as more content is copy/pasted from Reddit. A lot of value is in the comments, and it's off-putting when you have an AITA post without any replies. I don't really see the point in replying either, as the person asking is never going to read it anyway.

No, give it time.

There'll be assholes here, before you know it!

As AITA lives from interaction with OP, please don't.

I think so, if it helps the community grow during a transitional period I think its a positive and I'm all for having more content archived and viewable on open platforms to lessen the need to visit reddit at all.

No. Not unless the person themselves chooses to crosspost. Remrmber, the person owns their content

I think Reddit would argue they don't /s

I’m going through all time top subreddit posts to seed content here. I’m mostly grabbing links to other websites. Unfortunately there are a lot of subreddits that strategy doesn’t work for, though, if the top are all self or image posts.

thats not the way to do it. you want more people.. convince the users of those top posts to repost here.

Point taken, but moat of those are at least a year or two old, so the posters might not even be active on Reddit anymore.

No, despite meaning our community will grow slowly, I am hating the repost bots shoveling shit from Reddit. That is giving Reddit more traction, and takes away from the engagement that is the core of a tifu post.

Uh... This is AITA, not TIFU. Although there are definitely times where both can apply to a single post. Have a nice day!

Omg lol sorry, brain fart while posting, but the sentiment remains the same! This community is about responding to the poster, I would feel weird responding to some guy on Reddit who will never see it!

Agreed, taking original content like text posts, post with images or video hosted on reddit are also a bad idea.
The bot I'm using takes links to external websites and images hosted not on reddit.
So far it's been generating discussion as it doesn't spam the communities, it posts 1 post per hour

Generally my answer is yes, but I feel like for AITA it would be better not to.

No.

I'm more along this line of thinking. While Reddit had a lot of good things, there was also a lot of bad. This isn't Reddit and maybe that could be good in more ways than just ownership.

YTA ;p

Automatically mirroring content will come with a couple of issues. One is that you won't be able to actually address the OP. This is fine in a context like WhitePeopleTwitter or something where you're talking about a thing someone has said on another platform, but if someone is posting something that's specifically driving engagement, there's a meaningful bit of environmental context missing.

Having a Best of Reddit community makes sense for stuff like that.

The other issue is that the current population here can only support engaging with so many posts. Yes, an environment with a lot of content is important to make the space feel useful and alive, but a space with thousands of posts with zero comments or upvotes actually ends up looking like a ghost town populated by forgotten animatronics.

Plus, posts pulled from Reddit will drown out anyone trying to post original content here, discouraging actual, real engagement, and pushing people out.

Please don't. It doesn't make sense for a place like this.

FROM reddit: Copy-paste, NTA; links YTA.
TO reddit: links to Lemmy threads, NAH. Answers to posts, NTA/YTA (depends on point of view).

edited to correct NTA/YTA/NAH format

Can you please edit again with what in the name jesus you are talking about here?! 😄

I developed a bot for this purpose, it only crossposts links to external websites like news, it's being used in a couple of communities that need a little push with content.
It only crosspost 1 post every hour to each community to avoid spamming and it can handle multiple subreddits at the same time.
That's how I think it should be done, so far, users engage with the posts made by the bot in an organic way.
If you want to check it out: https://github.com/daniel-lxs/BotIt
I'm open to suggestions :)

Very neat! Using /u/L4s for /c/technology and /c/til, working like a charm so far!

Glad to hear it's working! If you have any problems or suggestions let me know :)

Actually have a question! I apologize if it's an obvious answer, I'm more familiar with Python/PS.

I noticed you xposted from /c/TIL to /m/TodayILearned, is that possible in the current commit? Currently modding /c/sysadmin and it'd be useful to have the other /x/sysadmin's have the same content across instanes.

Also do you want credit in the "bio" of that profile?

Excuse me if I don't understand your question but, you can definitely have this setup:
r/sysadmin -> c/sysadmin
r/sysadmin -> m/sysadmin
You can repeat the same subreddit in the config.yml files as many times as you want, the bot caches the response from reddit so it doesn't request the same thing over and over.
Also you don't need to credit if you don't want to, but you could add a description about your bot so other users know what is doing.

I'll definitely credit, and add an explanation so people don't think I'm "karma" farming with it.

Yeah after looking at the xpost it's not doing what I thought it was - my thought was: xpost from /c/TIL would show comments/description in the xpost to /m/todayilearned, and allow users to see comments from both posts regardless of which one they're in, but it's a xpost so it makes sense that it doesn't work that way.

Thanks again for building this!

Yeah, it doesn't synchronize anything between posts, it just takes posts from reddit and posts it to the community you assign in the config.

I'm glad you found it useful!

Interesting, thank you!

I see alot of posts coming which are like “How do i do this and that” which i want to respond to, only to realize it’s a Lemmit bot reposting from somewhere.

Makes no sense to answer a bot so i don’t engage with it at all.

Makes sense if it's a bot, and coming with a question. Part of the appeal of AITA is indeed interacting with the OP, but sometimes the story itself can also be interesting.

No

I understand Lemmy to be a content aggregator like Reddit, so I don't see a problem with aggregating (interesting) content.

I'm going with NTA for a AITA post... just repost your own stuff.

It doesn't make sense to me to crosspost from AITA. If there's no way to actually tell the actual person what you think, you might as well be reading bot content on youtube.

There are some subreddits I can see value from cross posting from, but this isn't one of them. News and stuff, sure, go for it. Stuff that's personal to a user though feels weird to me.

I'm only submitting content to kbin/lemmy from now on, but maybe that's just me

To the extent that you can do it without spamming, promoting communities themselves wouldn't be a bad idea, especially if you can offer a unique twist on an existing community or no analogue exists. You can reply to users who are looking for an off-reddit community. That way you attract genuine interest.

I think x-posting content is a good idea, but creating unique content, genuine content is better. Why would they come here if they can also see it on reddit? If there's content here that people are interested in that they can't find on reddit, they'll come here organically.

May take a bit of identity away, only if it proves effective on pulling redditors in