In my opinion the only good thing it does is to create copies of already existing communities, so basically people tend to follow one community or the other and it divides the people who could be active.
If you want to create a community that’s similar to one and for some reason you don’t want to be a part of it, find another name, if you can’t find another name, create your own instance. So if Lemmy is federating now we could have /c/worldnews, /c/world_news, and the same applies to every other instance that decides to do the same. In my opinion this only segregates people.
The same applies to uppercase letters, which Reddit uses but luckily Lemmy does not, imagine how many copies of a community could be created if you use both.
Of course you can make similar copies, the thing is that with this issue people create them without realizing it and it super common, whereas having to find a similar name it’s done on purpose.
Actually I tend to agree with @PP44@lemmy.ml. Maybe the problem you are describing could be better solved by having admins review new communities.
Fair enough.
Thats gonna take a while to implement though (its not even part of our roadmap). So if you think this is important enough, make an issue/pull request.