Even just looking through the list of communities I can already see two separate “Fediverse” communities on different servers. I’m assuming the posts aren’t shared. How do we keep related discussion as central as possible? Just hope one wins and everyone posts there or is there a technical solution?
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I mean, I keep coming back to that being the entire point of the Fediverse.
Sure, it means in some ways discussion can be different on different servers, but isn’t that the entire point? To not have a single point of failure? If one instance puts down draconian rules that makes a certain community unwelcome, then why not move to an instance that you feel is welcoming?
In other words, post where you feel like, and/or where the people are. I really don’t have an issue with cross-posting to other instances or having different discussions about the same subject.
Some instances have defederated with others, so another aspect of this is having multiple communities means people who have been defederated can still take part in the same community on a still federated instance.
I get it but I worry it’ll limit the success of Lemmy. Reddit’s drawcard was finding THE sub for a topic, if the same discussion is fractured across many different indistinguishable ones it’ll be like a bunch of random small chat groups which is something that already exists. Also means that maybe you’ll be subbed to the “fediverse” sub that sucks and not realise there’s a more established one you don’t know about.
When I moved to Korea 3 years ago then I found r/korea and after a year or something I’ve been banned from posting and commenting there after my 2nd post because of some technicality (posted a link to my a video on my own peertube instance instead of a 3rd party like YouTube). A later found out there was a r/living-in-korea one which anyway fit much better and I was able to post and comment there.
So in my mind having several is much better than having one.
What would be nice is some UI to group and view them together as a user though.
Reddit’s drawcard was finding THE sub for a topic
IMO Reddit’s drawcard was containing the sub, and therefore the community, for a topic. Reddit is where the discussion was, and for many communities still is. Rather than hosting a dedicated forum, people interested in starting a community can just start it and begin moderating and discussing without setting up a backend; it allows users to get to the “socializing” step of building a community in less steps. Lemmy also does this, albeit with a smaller community likely distributed over several instances and earlier in the system’s lifecycle.
Hopefully, Lemmy will implement a “multi-community” option like the multireddit concept so that users can group multiple related communities into one feed.
That being said, I think that similar communities ought to find each other and work together to best serve the people of their communities. Some communities will benefit from collaborative non-competition (for example, a community for discussion about how to use a specific complex product) while some have no need to be centralized (for example, a community for sharing dank memes). However, even in communities that would benefit from non-competition in good times, users should always be free to form their own communities in case the parent community (or their moderation) becomes too odious to bear. This process was much more difficult on Reddit because sub names had to be unique, so new communities would need to pick a weird name.
the activity pub protocol is the thing that will limit the success of lemmy
Just hope one wins and everyone posts there
That’s one way.
Fragmentation exists even on centralized systems, though. (How many Dungeons & Dragons subreddits are there? How many are there about cats?) So it’s probably best to temper expectations of one forum to rule them all, regardless of what platform we’re on.
or is there a technical solution?
We may start seeing fediverse clients that can group related communities together and show them as a single feed, like multireddits.
I don’t see it as needing a solution. I can subscribe to five hiking/camping communities across various instances, posts show up in my “subscribed” feed, and I don’t really care I’m looking at multiple communities. I care about the topic, not the instance.
I picked an instance that has reasonable rules that I believe will play well federating with other civil instances. Its a feature, not a bug, that I’ve found multiple communities focused on my hobby.
Keeping the discussions central may be to the detriment of the community IMO
Follow both and see which one you prefer. I follow a few of duplicate communities and most have reached a point now where there’s a difference between them, whether it be the type of posts, quality of responses, or moderation policy
I would just subscribe to both and then post on whichever is bigger.
Just like on Reddit where you have /r/a_thing and /r/athing
I don’t think it’s a problem everything doesn’t need to be in one place.
Follow both.
Just follow both and if you decide you prefer one, leave the other. It’s the same as on reddit when there are two subs with slightly different names and the same content. One will eventually become larger and people will gravitate towards it.
Some folks won’t be able to access some communities due to defederation, and in other cases folks may want to start a community on their home instance for certain reasons. This isn’t the end of the world; probably in the long run either everybody will centralize on the biggest one, or you’ll end up with one or two alternatives that have a bit different culture or focus.
That being said, if you like to read comments, it can get confusing when a bunch of different communities all have high interaction posts about the same topic at the same time.
