The number of subscribers listed in the sidebar is only the number of users from YOUR instance that are subscribed. This might make you feel like a community is ‘small’ or ‘dead’ when it actually isn’t.

I also started to forget this till I was playing with the shields.io badges earlier and the numbers didn’t match up.

Here are some examples:

[email protected]

  • My instance will see 310 subscribers
  • This instance will see 22.6K subscribers

[email protected]

  • My instance will see 6.03K subscribers
  • This instance will see 1.49K subscribers

Now my question is, what’s an accurate way to see the total number of subscribers? Is it in the home instance for a particular community?

If so, it might be worth adding the badges to the sidebars.

([email protected])

([email protected])

([email protected])

([email protected])

([email protected])

([email protected])

To do this quickly, go to https://shields.io/badges/lemmy and enter:

  • myCommunity@example.com for community
  • lemmy for logo
  • Total Subscribers for label
  • modify the colors and style as you like

You can also modify the community and instance here and paste it in:

![](https://img.shields.io/lemmy/fediverse%40lemmy.world?logo=lemmy&label=Total%20Subscribers)

swap the fediverse%40lemmy.world portion

    • cwagner@lemmy.cwagner.meEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      Actually, I think that’s for local communities only. Those get synced, my meta community (which is just to have a log for myself) has 34 subscribers, but this community has 1 subscriber.

      edit: On my All tab, you can even see which communities I used to be subscribed to but unsubscribed, as they have a subscriber count of 0.

      • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        Yeah the home instance of the community is the only one that tracks the full number, other instances only count their own users

  • cryomancer20x6@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    Oh geez. My extremely niche (and I mean niche) community where I am the only poster ever has 60 subscribers. It’s almost horrifying.

  • Syl ⏚@jlai.luEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Yeah i post on a french community, and i was surprised to receive 160+ upvotes on a post about AOC calling for climate action. I assumed my post was propagated to international instances. Pretty cool.

  • NicoCharrua@lemmy.caEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    That’s a great idea! I didn’t know about shields.io. Just added it to [email protected]

    I changed the link a little from the one you posted. Mine is:

    [![Subscriber Count](https://img.shields.io/lemmy/celeste%40lemmy.ca?logo=lemmy&label=Subscribers)](https://lemmy.ca/c/celeste)

    Subscriber Count

    • I added alt text (so if the image doesn’t load, or people are using screen readers, they can still understand what it is),
    • changed ‘Total Subscribers’ to just ‘Subscribers’,
    • and made the badge a link to the community in the original instance, so anyone wondering why the numbers don’t match up can click the badge to see where the number’s coming from.
    • Otter@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Looks good!

      A difference of 14 users to the full 626 users :)

  • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think this is right? My instance has 6 communities, all of them has more subscribers than the instance has users.

      • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Ah, you mean remote communities. To me (and those on small instances) surely is easier to understand, but I can see why people on a larger instance might not get it.

    • Otter@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s more for users from any instance that isn’t your own

      For example, I only see “7 subscribers” instead of the 390 or so actual subscribers. So adding the badge will let people know there are a lot more people there

  • Tygr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Remember there are tools to sync an account to another instance so that you can make backups. This will count my backups as additional subscribers to your niche communities if I’m subscribed.