the DUMB forum, balatro modding, and the good (and bad) of small subcommunities

i am no stranger to niche subcommunitiesforums with 50 people max, discord servers small enough that everyone knows each otherthey often come and go, a cycle of me getting too attached and becoming annoying and kicked outthere have been two recent communites that have really stood out, one good and one bad but still standingthe bad is the balatro modding communityor most of it at leastsince it spawned off the modding section of an intensely large serverthere was absolutely no leader or anything, since localthunk (the creator of balatro)rarely paid attention to the small subset dedicated to moddingthere has also been MULTIPLE controversies about mods banning people from the main serverwhich has lead to a lot of splintering across multiple serversthe big ones being Clams, Book of Shadows, and Entropythe main problem is also that servers dedicated to specific modsend up blowing up way too hard and making those devs "leaders" of the communitymost notably ruby and jade, devs of the entropy…