I didn't meant now, more so in the sense of not being worried of doing so because there isn't a lot of people as in other fanbases. I could've worded better tho.

I will join a community if I really like it, not just because it is a niche community

Give it a shot! Try getting into smaller/niche/more dedicated media communities. There will be fewer people to talk about it, but the ones who do almost always will have something interesting to say and probably become your friend.

It doesn't even need to be obscure media, even media that is somewhat known but not that talked/fan based about often does the trick! Lisa the Painful is a great example of that.

Well, you're right about that

Hyperniche/Obscure communities can behave like that yes, but they are usually the exception rather than the norm.

I'd argue there is still things communities can do to curate freaks, but indeed, it is hard to fight them, and that's why communties staying niche is better. Once the floodgates opens and the sludge starts flowingin it's very hard to stop. So it's better if the problem doesn't happens than dealing with it and the consequences.

The bias towards newcomers is not only in fps games. Sometimes a community can be too niche and some people in that community can be proud of themselves for being veterans of that community, those are the usual hypocrites.
No one can stop a freak from calling himself part of a community, no matter what you say to a freak, he's still a freak, you can't change that.
The undertale community is truly one of the weirdest and most diverse, but then again, who's going to stop freaks from creating new AU's? And who's going to stop other freaks from getting involved? It's very hard to fight freaks online

It's a common misconception that people who defend niche communities want all noobs out, there are cases like this but it's usually happens more where there is competition involved, like certain FPS games. It's not a case for many other types of medias.

One of the biggests issues with big fandoms is that is often very easy for them to attract and allow hoards of people who mischaracterize or only like the media for superficial reasons, not to talk about posers and things like that, up to the point that people like that become the norm and ends up absolutely poisoning the fanbase.

Undertale is one the biggests examples of that by far. The UT fandom was not only infamous for completly missing the point of the game and caring more about AU's than the actual product, but also for making being a Undertale fan much harder due to their awful behavior. This would NOT have happened if UT was a niche game and it very likely would've had a better reputation in the mid 2010's.

From your earlier comments I thought you were biased towards newbies, glad that's not the case.
I agree with the last sentence, love for a product is respect in the community of that product, this applies to all communities without exception

Being niche =/= unfriendly to newcomers, most of the time the only challenge is hearing about the media in the first place.

The super closed communities a lot of people think when they hear about niche stuff is more an exception than a norm. A lot of niche stuff is pretty friendly to new people, the only requirement really just being that they genuinely like and care about the product and not some imaginary version in their heads.

If a community is not friendly to newcomers, those same newcomers will despise that community. Many communities simply sort their members into normal and not normal members, and this is very convenient. But sometimes it happens that the theme of the community was originally aimed at not quite normal people. Genshin impact is a great example of this)

Wouldn't this go the otherway too? The bigger the community, the less likely the chances to find someone who isn't either a freak or only cares about the game in a superficial way. That happened time and time again with lots of fandoms.

Niche communities always foster people who are genuinely passionate about the media they are based around which makes engaging in them much more enjoyable.

Freaks are everywhere, in any community. The bigger the community, the better the chance to find someone whose preferences coincide with yours

Popularity is nice, but it also often runs the risk of attracting a bunch of bad people to the fanbase. Basically, the more niche something is, the more passionate and calm the fandom usually is.

What's the problem with a large community? I think it would be better if this project was a bit more popular

It's what makes it good.

Why is this group so small

50!!!

Up to 40!