[hasbot]

I'm kinda surprised that a hyper-local forum has enough posts to encourage engagement. I'm subscribed to many city specific subreddits over the years and most have few posts (except for /r/Portland but that's a different beast) beyond "Who has the best hamburgers?" and "Thinking of moving here."

[beezle]

FPF isn't about "encouraging engagement" in the back and forth discussion type. It is more about giving/getting very localized information/resources. Think "did you get my package" "I need someone to put a new culvert in" "lost dog" "hens for sale" "town hall closed today"

[hasbot]

In your neighborhood, how many posts per day (or week) are typical? Are there notifications or is manually checking the forum required?

[beezle]

sry delay - my area is typically 2 email digests a day, each with about 15 posts. Varies a bit by day of week and season.

[mplanchard]

Generally 3-5 posts per day in downtown-ish Burlington.

They come out in a digest once per day, which the app notifies you about or you can get via email

[oglop]

Reddit overall selects for a certain population to use it. I would not use it as a comparison for something like this.

[mplanchard]

As an example of what you’re saying, the Vermont subreddit skews wildly snarky and mean-spirited relative to either front porch forum or actual people in real life

[arresin]

You’re describing every subreddit

[kevin_thibedeau]

My small city's Reddit sub is fairly well managed and has a variety of tame posts on local interests, events, and Q&A. You need to have enough people who aren't stuck on a monomaniacal groupthink to keep things civil.