In my experience, once a community reaches certain size, it grows organically. But reaching that cricial mass is hard.
So I thought that a coordinated “consented white hat brigading” might help. What I mean is for a group of users to focus on one or a few communities for a while trying to get them to that point posting and commenting (quality content).
It should be done asking the moderators for permission first. There may be communities that don’t want to grow this way.
Disclaimer (because I got a comment in a similar post saying “Give it time”): I’m not trying to rush the growth, IMHO people should post as much as they want and not take it as a chore. I’m thiking of focusing the (natural) activity of those users interested in helping small communities (that want to grow).
That’s not really what OP is suggesting we do. They’re not suggesting that posts should be upvoted for visibility, but that communities should be posted to for discoverability. The former would only be a transient bump in the stats, but the growth that comes from the latter, that being subscribers and new contributors, is not. Every sub, every new poster, will engage because they want to. The point isn’t to “fake” activity with a lot of posts, the point is to be found by real, but simply more casual, users.
A community can live by one avid poster, or ten less active ones. But to get the latter, you need a jumpstart by the former.
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