why do people register new communities and then not post content on them?

I'm sure it's because there are a lot of new people like myself just getting their toes wet in Lemmy. People can only post so much per day. Slowly, I think more people will post. Can't always force content on some subs!

Just seems to be a lot of lurkers in general. I try and post in my communities but it starts to feel weird when you're the only one posting in it.

Yes weird. When I create a new community or sub I post like 6x a day to bring people so they subscribe. Only thing I can think of is people make the community as a place holder. So when people come and post they will be the moderator!

The only thing more terrifying than my community failing is it succeeding.

Joking aside my community is of the one-post-every-week-or-two-even-on-Reddit variety.

Probably the bystander effect. Everybody sees all the other subs and is just hoping someone else will take charge and submit something instead

If it exists anyone can start creating posts for it. If it doesn't exist, they can't.

The worse part is when they put absolutely no love into it. E.g. there are some where the banner is just the original logo form Reddit, but stretched all across... With no description or anything.

The reason why other communities/social media sites have so much content is that they’re massive with millions, or in the case of Facebook, BILLIONS of users. Lemmy/Kbin is a fraction of a fraction by comparison, and people are mostly used to browsing without contributing. New platforms tend to suffer because of this and ultimately die off. You need that snowball effect to happen quickly like what is happening right now on Threads. Sadly only established mega corps have a good chance at succeeding in the long run.

I imagine it has a lot to do with having the community available for people to post in and hoping they will use Lemmy community finding services.

If they are coming from Reddit they may not have a ton to post that wouldn't just be reposted from a subreddit

It's easy to make a community. Making or finding content is hard. We need to make it so you need to solve a difficult sudoku before making a community.

They want to have these new communities but not enough people there are posting for them to post.

That‘s why I try to post as much content as viable in Bassment, a Bass Community I recently created. There might be another Bass community, but the other one‘s basically empty.

I created a sub. Added a few posts. Was hoping others would join and we'd have some of the community and conversation that was on reddit. That didn't happen.
Guess I'll try keeping it updated with content for a bit longer, and if there's no traction I'll abandon it.

I understand why they do that. I wanted to do that too with the communities I've made. I noticed there wasn't a community for me to visit here that I used to frequent on reddit, and made a community so that people could have a place to share.

What sucks though, is that I've posted more than several times to each, gotten close to, or over a hundred users, and no one is contributing (on most of them). I didn't make a community to hear myself speak. People need to realize that the thriving lemmy community as a whole isn't "free". The payment of it succeeding are their contributions, even if that's upvoting, and leaving a "good share" comment.

I was a huge lurker, and being a mod is absolutely not why I made it. In fact, once most of my communities grow large enough, I plan to hand them off. If they become actually substantial (think thousands) and no one is still posting, I'll might just have make it to where only I can post links, and it'll become like my personal community, since I'd be the only one posting anyways. That way moderation will at least be easy, because I hate moderating.

Edit: Man I sounded like a salty dog writing this lol

Because I joined before the Reddit rush and created lots of spaces I follow elsewhere that didn't exist here. I want to make sure people who are posting content on those topics have a direct when they join

My plan was simply to make sure they exist and then hand them over if and when they take off.

I registered three when I first joined not expecting any of them to take off and then this one did. So the other two kinda have been getting ignored.

I should do something about those.

Pretty sure it's due to a larger social phenomenon called the 90-9-1 rule:

The 90-9-1 rule is an observation-based rule that states that 90% of internet users are lurkers who read or observe, 9% of users contribute from time to time, and 1% of community members create new content.

Source: https://search.brave.com/search?q=90+9+1+rule&source=android