Ideas to make Lemmy even more engaging

One thing I think Lemmy could use more of is recurring community events. We have great discussions, but there aren't many activities that bring people together over several days or weeks.

A few ideas I've been thinking about:

A live, expanding username crossword where people volunteer their usernames and each new one has to connect to the existing puzzle.
Community scavenger hunts.
Weekly trivia challenges.
Screenshot or photography contests.
Geography and history guessing games.
Seasonal community events that become traditions.

These don't necessarily need to be built into Lemmy itself. They could simply be community-run events that moderators host on a regular basis.

One thing I like about the username crossword idea is that it becomes a living record of the people who participated. As more users join, the puzzle grows into one large connected community creation.

Stuff like that... I'm curious what others think.

Lemmyvision? Canvas? I think there are others too.

we need more like the reddit pixel wars kinda thing, sponsors contests...

I believe piefed has something like that? I know it has Events with dates/times/etc....

You can probably code something up with the API. Im not sure about the scheduling on lemmy but I think piefed is cron based?

We need something unique

Not sure if its the best client api but looks like theres a couple of APIs that work with lemmy: https://github.com/db0/pythorhead

Throw that onto cron/scheduler as a proof of concept and have at it.

I try to run discussions and challenges in some of my communities, the problems are just me getting busy and general forgetfulness.

The womens stuff community does a great job of keeping people engaged with daily topics and weekly chat threads, which other communities could take notes from.

Beyond that, better mod tools, public calendars to schedule events and puzzles would be great for larger communities.

Personally, I think Lemmy needs more 'best of' posts, or maybe just awareness of the best-of communities, to encourage engagement and showcase the community.

i'm just the idea guy :)

The world cup is on right now, why not a mini 2x2 game or something? 1 vs 1, fuck make it pong!

Canvas is Lemmy's version of the pixel wars thing, and it's happening soon. Applicable community: !canvas@toast.ooo

The lemmy.zip folks have also been running The Button: !thebutton@lemmy.zip

A fun event I saw on a message board was a hotseat rimworld game. Someone started a world played for a bit then posted the save next person picked it up played it a bit and posted it.

It was pretty fun.

yea shit like this! Create lore..

I think this is what the gaming community should be about. Its always peeved me that the gaming community on here and reddit are always filled with slop news and 0 gaming content.

Have a Quake 3 Arena tournament.

Team Fortress 1 tourney.

Gonna be honest i dont care enough to make it. But gl!

You could be the finance guy instead of just an idea guy 😉

point me to some literature on how someone would do that please

I have some things planned for the community I manage once I get some more people participating.

No thanks, this is a link aggregator. Why will you people do anything except join a BB forum

Be the change you wanna see and organize something? The communities are small though, and the fraction of interested people even smaller, probably good to take into account for the choice of what you want to organize.

Oh yeah! And status updates! And quirky emoji! And reels! And an AI assistant!

The yearly owl votes.

!football@sopuli.xyz

Scrolled a bit further and found this intriguing game

https://sopuli.xyz/post/48181032

I always liked the community events Reddit did. I wish we could do something like /r/place. I guess the next best (low-tech) thing is starting with a blank image file, adding a line, and uploading it for the next person to add a line, so on and so forth. Make some kind of collaborative artwork where everyone contributes a bit. Whether it becomes a graffiti wall, a collection of memes, or nothing but multi-colored dicks, I know I'd have fun.

I guess it's one way to induce community engagement. Though an idea, don't overpost if you do it yourself, first for the risk of being ignored, and second to not burn through ideas too quickly.

Also, if you want ideas for filler community games, there's always some popping up at GOG's general forum.

As someone who helps organize events in person, it’s a lot of work, especially if it’s for free. While I appreciate seeing people with ideas, there needs to be more people that volunteer to help execute said ideas.

The only thing I've missed, like truly missed about old Reddit was Secret Santa. There was something so fun about it, and the system was so good. I know it's logistically challenging, even more so for a federated platform, but it was one of the things that made the site feel unique.

No enshittification.

You mean the Superb Owl Owl of the Year.

Not that I'm getting into it, but do you have ideas for fundraising for such organisational work?

I wouldn’t say I have the most experience in the fundraising part. It usually starts with getting a group of like-minded people together, pooling whatever money/resources you have together to kickstart some stuff. One you have a meetup/group with some traction then you start looking at what kind of grants are available in the area, since sometimes you have options. Going to local shops in your neighborhood that are willing to donate food/time also helps. Ultimately it comes down to how many people you know and how well you can network.

Well, every year Theres a giant canvas to paint onto (similar to r/place) and since last year we have been holding our own version of the ESC called Lemmyvision.

There are also some other events that happen regularly, but those are more bound to single communities.

I completely forgot about that and had never participated. How did it operate?

Well, what message board was that hot seat game save system on? I don't own that game, but you can always start something like that.

I'm pretty sure they were being sarcastic. On a serious note, what this place needs more is activity in niche communities, like !syncthing@programming.dev and so on. I personally don't believe that system-wide events like what you propose are a major contributor to such growth, but I could be wrong.

Like a well oiled machine by the end of it. You'd submit some information; likes, interests, hobbies, etc. and then you'd be paired with another participant based on a random draw with some selection restrictions (i.e. national vs international). You had roughly a month from being matched with someone to get a gift shipped out.

It was particularly fun to get to know the person both through their suggested interests but also to take a peek at the communities they participated in. You could post gifts you received to a gallery (which I wish they archived), confirming receipt and letting the sender know your appreciation.

Some people sucked, and wouldn't deliver on their end, so there was a volunteer "elf" system that would let folks become secret santas for any recipient that was let down by their own santas. Not sending something generally got you banned from future participation, and filling the elf role would gain you general reputation within the program

uhm, idk, in my mind "community events" just translates to "something that makes users addicted". i typically nope out of that as soon as i detect it.

but, upon second consideration, some of them even sound like fun. might be worth a try.

ok i'll start with the quiz: name one civilization that lived in northern europe in the medieval age and frequently terrorized the english.

well not really. the news "communities" are for link aggregation, but real communities are not only for gathering links.

it could help with the popularity of non-tech niche communities, but it likely won't help the syncthing community that's true

Yes, really. This format is atrocious for a community. The pressure to conform and groupthink is insane. Every community that is primarily about its own content invariably descends to bubblebrained extremism.

something that makes lore, maybe makes news, unique to Lemmy. Something that make other people want to join to participate, log in daily to check results. look forward to year after year, month after month. just fun stuff..we need a tiny bit of addiction not much, like the early days before enshittification.

This Christmas lets buy toys for kids or something...latch on to a charity.