If I understand Lemmy correctly, you can create duplicate communities on different instances. Isn’t this kinda counter productive because this may lead to less user interaction in those communities, because the user base gets split up between competing communities.
Is there a way to fight this division of the (small) userbase or is this effect even desired because it leads to more tight knit communities on the different instances?
I suspect it doesn’t really matter - users can see all of the communities across all of the instances when they search, and they can choose which ones are of interest to them.
it matters a lot. if something is happening you want a quick overview of big discussion and not jump between a bunch of 10 small discussion rooms.
Reddit also has a bunch of homogeneous subs. Not a problem.
Embrace it, my homie. Think of lemmy use as more of a multireddit. Subscribe to things you prefer, then view it through that tab. So what if there’s a dozen posts about something big? It’s that way on reddit, facebook, and twitter for sure.
That’s the benefit of federation. You get to see all of what’s out there once you get used to the way it works. You’ll have less of a stranglehold on information because nobody can bogart a single community name. My edc community might restrict politics, but the one on beehaw might not, and the one at feddit might encourage it directly.
It’s much harder to accidentally fall into an echo chamber here with news. Not impossible! But harder. You’d have to choose to do so usually.
I know it seems weird, but trust the principle that underpins federation. It will settle out within a month or so of the migration. And it’ll be fairly democratic, with communities becoming popular based on how they function rather than name camping.
This is a culture shock for us r/efugees, but it is going to be so much harder for our communities to be ripped apart because of it.
Stop asking this. Reddit has this kind of problem as well but people ultimately sort it out.
‘Stop asking this’ is not a really helpful thing to say. We have a lot of new users, including myself, and everybody is figuring out how Lemmy works. Redundant questions will occur and lets answer those in a respectful manner.
Exactly. I was subbed to both meirl and me_irl without issue
I think this is desired. Lemme give my case. I think r/historymemes is absolutely flooded with racism, tankies and neo-nazis, and perhaps more than the rest, colonial apologia. Reddit being centralised, I can’t create another r/historymemes.
Say we have a c/historymemes in some instance. The same racism and shit happens. No problem, I can look for a new c/historymemes on some other instance that is better moderated in regards to those problems.
Lemme give my case.
I see what you did there.
Yea, it’s an endless debate lately.
Just subscribe to everything, and use your judgment where to post if you post. We can already see some clear bias towards the largest ones so it’s possible the small clones will be left behind.
Or not and dupes will remain. Wait and sew after things settle down a bit.
Duplication happens on Reddit too. It’s not intrinsically bad and has some good aspects.
Community diversity can allow for diversity in moderation, sub-culture, vibes etc.
I think a good balance can be reached here on the #threadiverse/#fediverse (ie, with decentralisation).
The real question isn’t whether it will be good/bad … it’s what we can do to make it as good as possible. The key issues are around searching and surfacing communities. The lemmy software can get better in this regard. Some basic third party tools like what feddit.de have made can also help.
I often preferred using the alternate/splinter versions of many reddit subs. When a sub got too large, the quality went down fast. I think the redundancy is maybe a good thing.
I don’t see this as an issue. One of two things will happen:
-
Each community that has similar or same topics will begin to specialize: ie: the 25+ Apple subreddits. These communities will then become (if I have the nomenclature correct) “Comminities” within an “umbrella” topic.
-
If there are competing communities with a narrow topic, one will prove out, or if one goes off the rails, another will spin up to replace it. The Fediverse is, like a mesh, self healing.
The goal here is not to try and artificially constrain Lemmy to the limitations of the Reddit architecture, but to explore what is possible within a federation structured “information aggregator.”
Personally, my experiences on Lemmy have not differed much from Reddit, with the sole difference I did not need to purge a pre-defined Front Page. The only thing I really miss are some of the specific subreddits that have no analogs in the Lemmy Fediverse; and the ability to aggregate “like topics” as I did with multi-subreddits).
-
I don’t really see the issue. I’ve subscribed to Technology maybe 4 times now? All that means is I get more tech in my feed. It doesn’t really matter which specific community it is, does it? If there is an interesting tech-related story or news item I’m bound to get it on one of them, or all of them, and each post might have its own insightful comments on the subject. It’s just more content and more opportunity for discussion. I think Lemmy will excel at bringing forward content in this way because you can sub to many different communities around a singular topic. You’ll never be limited to just one place like a subreddit with mods who shape the content you get to see. If any one community started to be artificially controlled like this, there are 3 more who aren’t.
