I’m a reddit refugee trying to figure this out. It seems to me like it’s a decent idea to break up countrol like this, but unfortunately there are some inherent problems that mean it might not work in the real world.
The biggest in my view is that communities are scoped to the instance they started in. You could have 2 different communities with the same niche and the same or similar name but different insurances and the subscriber numbers will be split across them. I think this is damaging to growth because it spreads active users.
Eventually if the niche grows one of the communities of the niche will be the biggest and most active. So generally users will consolidate around the instances with the most active communities thus making those instances have a lot of control and defeating the purpose of federation.
Is there something I’m missing here? Because currently I’m not convinced this can both grow and keep things decentralized.
Others have pretty well covered how multiple communities serve different purposes. I’m going to cover why that isn’t a problem.
When you first decide to follow a community on Lemmy- either as a brand new user or an experienced Lemming branching into a new subject, there’s going to be a few ways you find a community.
The most obvious is a search, which will list the various communities. You’ll check the few most active, and either subscribe or skip each one. Multiple communities isn’t a concern because every Lemmy client will aggregate them in your feed. When you decide to start posting, you’ll have a decent feel for which one(s) are a good match for your content. The downside is cross posting, which is still a problem that needs to be solved.
The next option, mostly used by new users, is a direct link. Someone tells you about a specific community. You follow the link, read the posts, and decide to subscribe. Other, similar communities don’t matter- the person sending you the link already filtered it down for you.