At this point, we’re beyond the big wave of new users in early- to mid-June with the protests against Reddit’s API policies. (I was one of them!). There was lots of enthusiasm, a bunch of new communities, and lots of posts.
But it seems like a lot of the activity is dying down. How are you (and your communities) doing? How have you been keeping your communities active?
I think this is the most important part - “I’m continuing to post what I personally like for myself at various communities”.
I also agree with the downvotes part, to be downvoted for no apparent reason with no comments is probably the hardest part of posting here, it seems so random. Just leave it alone if you don’t like it. It takes time to get a post organized (has it been posted before, is there a better source, should I resize it, does it look good on mobile, has the model been posted recently, etc.) regardless of the community
My suspicion is that these “no apparent reasons” down votes are coming most from accounts outside of LemmyNSFW, so federation has it’s downsides