There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit.
Back in the day we used to hang out in irc chats with 5-10 active users or forums with few thousand users max. I made friends there I visted across countries. Years after Id log in and people would ask how you’ve been.
I had a reddit account for over 10 years and I dont think a single person would recognize my username. Its always felt like people aren’t talking to you but trying to appeal to the whole audience for points. Reddit exploits our psychology for attention but nothing humane is gained there. The super massive “community” ends up as a void where 99% of posts go completely unseen and any discussions suffer heavily from mod mentalities.
If this a place where even just ten people call home but feel good doing so, that is more good than a million being miserable. Maybe the best alternative is not to be reddit altogether.
Besides, good things have a natural tendency to spread, we don’t need to focus on it.
One of the most useful things about reddit was that due to the sheer size of it you could quickly get answers on a myriad of different things from health problems to what kitchen appliance is better, often with very good arguments and trustworthy reviews. This is immensely useful and I hope we can replicate it here over time. It’s nice to have a small community, but if it’s good it will grow. There’s not much that can be done about that. You can always start a new group based on some subsection of what the big groups cover to stay nimble.