If you recall reddits growth many of their communities evolved as offshoots of a single generic community. This made it easier for people to see discussions they normally would not get involved in, and once the posts in a similar category reached critical mass it moved to a sub Reddit.
I think people are recreating their niche communities here but they are floundering since the user base is still pretty small. Maybe it’s best to post to the “big” communities until the time is right to move to smaller, targeted communities?
Something similar happened to me at first with m/worldnews, never got an answer, the owner owns 8 magazines, but a bunch of us just started posting there and it grew.
Eventually the owner appeared and wrote the magazine rule.
I still sub there but I started my own tiny niche news zine, @worldwithoutus as well, with different rules/parameters.