No Stupid Questions

this gets asked a lot. Yes, the whole point of this platform is to be decentralized. Nothing stops you, or anyone, from following 5 different communities on the same topic. The advantages are many. Basically each instance will be able to mod with/apply different rules to their communities, they will attract different crowds (even if they overlap a lot) and they will have a different style. If one goes down, which is likely in these platforms, or if say an instance cannot be sustained anymore, or if one of the instances defederates your instance, or whatever- not all is lost. You still have all the other communities to follow.

there is a popular saying that goes, ''don't put all your eggs in the same basket''.

We need a feature to combine several communities into a group that we can follow in our subscriptions.

Then it wouldn’t matter anyway.

See this feature request on Github.

I thought about that too, but I also can see a scenario where as the userbase grows, one instance's community is seen as the "default". I suppose the upside is that if something happens to one instance, there will be a backup of sorts on another instance - which in a way is sort one of the points of decentralisation.

For me it doesn't matter. I subscribe to all the communities that interest me, no matter which instance they are on.

As long as there is a way to spin up a new community if the mods go rogue, I'm okay with it.

That's exactly what happened with reddit, I think it's better to have more than one, worst case scenario you only sub to one and if it goes down there's a quick alternative.

Personally I sub to both and if an article repeats no big deal I just move on

I think it's fine, it will all just work out over time.

No, that defeats the purpose of the fediverse and its structure. This avoids power mods from taking over since they're different instances. People can always cross post to the same community across different instances.

I don't think so. I mean, even if an instance with an important community has a problem (e.g. goes offline) we can simply create that community on another instance, but as long as there are no problems I think it's better to have just one community.

They can already be seen in tandem with each other. If anything, it just gives more content for the same topics. I really don't know what purpose consolidation would ultimately serve.

This is how it is supposed to work, yes. However. i will say one suggestion going forward might be some sort of voluntary community sub-federating. The idea is that communities from different instances that are considered similar in topic enough to be under the same umbrella would federate or group with each other. A person who subscribes to one might see content from other communities that have voluntarily opted into this feature. It would connect the scattered communities of topics while also allowing these communities to "defederate" on their own from other communities of the same topic, in the event that malicious communities attempt to joing where they do not belong.

This could also be given to the user, the ability for users to group their own subscriptions together, but this would put way more work on the end user and may not be as intuitive.

For example, I am subscribed to one Silent Hill community, and I think I am the only member beside the mod, with no posts. It would be nice if I could see content from other Silent Hill communities in that feed.

Yes, it's a great thing.

In the old days of forums there were multiple forums for popular topics, so if you didn't like one or didn't agree with how it was moderated you had many more to choose from. It was usually friendly and you got to know all the regulars in a forum.

Next we had centralisation which lead to massive forums, resentment built up against moderators, everyone was faceless and had no sense of community, and it all basically turned in to a competition for attention.

Now we have decentralisation, we can have lots of manageable size communities again - it's great.

I've been thinking about this. There are many up voted clickbait/ragebait articles on some of the popular news communities. I was considering creating a new community with specific rules about the quality of sources and non editorial titles instead of solely relying on votes. Please let me know if this already exists.

Edit: [email protected] seems to be exactly what I was after

Question: How many posts do you view from a given subreddit in a day?

How many comments on any given post do you read?

How many people need to be in a community to generate that many posts and comments? Because communities don't really need to be any bigger than that.

Having FOMO over what's going on in other communities is normal, but it's not helpful or useful. It's not like you weren't missing out on 99.9% of posts on big subreddits, or 99.9999999% of comments. And let's not pretend like what floats to the top in large subs is the best content. Popularity contests are not meritocracies.

Having 1000 communities on the same topic with 1000 active users each is better than having 1 community with 1,000,000 active users. Those users are easier to moderate, they're more likely to see other community members as people, and they're more likely to have their posts and comments viewed and interacted with by others.

And if something really interesting is happening in another one, someone will link to it.

I think that's what this will turn out to be.

Can't wait for an nsfw "awww" to be created and then see the chaos unfold when people wonder why they're seeing pussy instead of cats.

I think so, I've found out quickly that the instance can add a lot of context as the instance tends to be the primary setter of the overall theme or topic, and the communities are just where they intersect. It will be interesting to see which ones get popular and which ones don't.

I think it's a good thing to have more than one community devoted to a topic. I have already discovered that I don't like this or that community on this or that instance but I like another community on another instance dedicated to the same or similar topic. People have different styles and preferences even though they have similar subjects in common. It's like having different supermarkets or clothing stores. Some like to get their jeans at The Gap. Others prefer Levi's. Giving users more choices is good in my experience. It used to be this way in the days of forums and usenet news groups. I think if you're not used to it you will get used to it. It's like shopping around for a good class at college or looking for the right pair of jeans that fits you the right way.

I think that at the moment many communities are too fragmented. A lot of them seem to be a single person. There is a sweet spot regarding size, and that number is different from community to community. I wish people would avoid making duplicates if they didn't have at least one other person ready to join them though.

I've found that similar communities on different instances can have VERY different experiences in terms of the community and attitude. I know I'm generalizing, but I feel a lot of Lemmy.world instances are more negative and hostile than similar instances on beehaw.org. Personally, I'd rather they stay separate. That way I can be more precise on dialing in the experience I want.

I think that at the moment many communities are too fragmented. A lot of them seem to be a single person. There is a sweet spot regarding size, and that number is different from community to community. I wish people would avoid making duplicates if they didn't have at least one other person ready to join them though.