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.

  • 46 minutes

    Screenshot or photography contests.

    I like this one as it is also content creation and sharing. Maybe some themed contests? Like screenshots from horror games or nature photography.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • 13 minutes

      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.

  • 13 hours

    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.

      • 13 hours

        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.

  • 15 hours

    Lemmyvision? Canvas? I think there are others too.

  • 15 hours

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

  • 15 hours

    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?

  • 12 hours

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

  • 11 hours

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