I know I’m not posting anything, but I didn’t abandon the place lol. I’m just waiting to have at least ten or so members, because it’s a problem-solution oriented community, so we need someone to come in and drop a problem so people can offer solutions. I’m very inexperienced in these things, so I have no idea how to promote this place to grow it, any ideas?
My personal experience is that a good way to grow a forum of this type is to start is to post papers, articles, code repositories, etc… anything related to image analysis, the tools or workflows involved. Content attracts people and new users. On the subreddit, I tried to create a simple taxonomy of post flairs to help frame each post and guide users in understanding the purpose of the forum:
- Questions
- Tips (links to tutorials, how-to posts)
- Discussions (general issues)
- Research (journal articles)
ProjectsShow-and-Tell
That last category I’d suggest renaming as “show-and-tell”, since many researchers confuse the concepts of project and question. Encouraging single-image posts as a form of show-and-tell would probably be a good first step, since single images attract higher engagement. It’s also delightful to see what people are working on. The only caveat is that I’d suggest encouraging those posters to provide that a brief description of what we’re looking at as well as the analysis being performed, e.g. link to the paper, code, workflow, or verbal description is included as a comment.
Over time, Q&A posts will eventually take over (or maybe not!), but it’s also good to highlight cool examples of work that you’ve observed. And there aren’t enough spaces dedicated to those other concepts. And many people doing image analysis unfortunately are deprived of a fair share of the recognition for their work in advancing science especially within larger research groups.
One last piece of advice: To start off by framing the community as “academically-inclined” is limiting. There are image analysts out in industry as well as hobbyists and even high school students. Often their questions are more interesting and engaging than the academics who post. Likewise, “microscopy” could be limiting too. Macroscopic images of bread mould, leaves, crystals, and insects are often subjects of image analysis as much as the microbiome or organelles.
I’ll keep an eye on this place too. And I’ve pinned your post on the subreddit so it will gain some additional visibility. Wish you the best in growing this new community!
Wow, thank you so much for the advice! Means a lot that :) and thank you for the pin!
I will adjust the description to welcome a more broad audience and see what I can do about the other pointers. Still trying to get the hang of how Lemmy works lol.
