Hello everyone,

Opening this thread as a kind of follow-up on my thread yesterday about the drop in monthly active users on !fediverse@lemmy.ml.

As I pointed in the thread, I personally think that having some consolidated core communities would be a better solution for content discovery, information being posted only once, and overall community activity.

One of the examples of the issue of having two (or more) exactly similar Fediverse communities (!fediverse@lemmy.world and !fediverse@lemmy.ml ) is that is leads to

  • people having to subscribe to both to see the content
  • posters having to crosspost to both
  • comment being spread across the crossposts instead of having all of the discussion and reactions happening in the same place.

I am very well aware of the decentralized aspect of Lemmy being one of its core features, but it seems that it can be detrimental when the co-existing communities are exactly the same.

We are talking about different news seen from the US or Europe, or a piece of news discussed in places with different political orientations.

The two Fediverse communities look identical, there is no specific editorial line. The difference in the audience is due to the federation decisions of the instances, but that’s pretty much it, and as the topic of the community is the Fediverse itself, the community should probably be the one accessible from most of the Fediverse users.

What do you think?

Also, as a reminder, please be respectful in the comments, it’s either one of the rules of the community or the instance. Disagreeing is fine, but no need to be disrespectful.

  • Spzi@lemm.eeEnglish
    15·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think there’s really a good reason to keep communities split.

    The federated nature of the fediverse with all it’s implications.

    An instance hosting a community might

    • become unstable
    • disappear forever
    • defederate or become defederated from/by my instance
    • same for the instances of other users of that community

    Communities can have the same topic, but differ in

    • moderation style
    • policies regarding if and how bots are allowed

    I think it’s good to have some redundancy both as a backup and to have some choice. As with all things fediverse, we don’t need to find a consensus. Those who like to have one big instance or community can join the biggest. Those who prefer some diversity can spread out and create duplicates. Reality will most likely always be something in between.

    Another approach could be to ask: Why are communities split? If you’re right and there’s really no good reason, then how comes this phenomenon occurs so often? Maybe the prevalence of the phenomenon hints at reasons which exist, but are not well understood.

    • kopper [they/them]English
      4·
      1 year ago

      Communities can have the same topic, but differ in

      Communities can also look like they have the same topic on the surface level, but be completely different when in the context of their own instances. The obvious example is “news” or “politics” or other “real world things” communities on separate country-focused instances, but also “news” on an art instance could be dedicated to “art news” or “writing news” in a writing specific instance.

      Or the distinction could be more subtle, like a tech community on slrpnk could focus towards more eco-friendly viewpoints to news about tech compared to a general purpose instance’s tech community. Or Beehaw, for example, seems to lean on more “serious” talk and discussion (or I imagine it would given it’s history, I avoid visiting too news-heavy communities due to vaguely gestures at everything) compared to, say, .world which really seems to embody Reddit’s free-for-all vibe.

      • Spzi@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Good point, thanks for spelling it out. I was only vaguely aware of what you just described.

        That seems to be something unique, tied to the federated structure. Could be confusing for people coming from monolithic platforms. They may not realize what they are seeing.

    • severien@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      An instance hosting a community might

      become unstable
disappear forever
defederate or become defederated from/by my instance
same for the instances of other users of that community

      I kind of get this, but:

      • it seems premature to split the community “just in case”
      • this is largely a technical problem. IMHO communities should be federated in the sense that losing the instance shouldn’t automatically mean the community is lost.

      Communities can have the same topic, but differ in moderation style policies regarding if and how bots are allowed

      Also possible, but in most cases a large majority of community members can certainly agree on some compromise.

      Why are communities split? If you’re right and there’s really no good reason, then how comes this phenomenon occurs so often?

      • the lack of community federation
      • “my instance is better than yours” - which IMHO originates again from the lack of community federation
      • some mods just like the unrestricted power over their fiefdom