Hello everyone,

Opening this thread as a kind of follow-up on my thread yesterday about the drop in monthly active users on !fediverse@lemmy.ml.

As I pointed in the thread, I personally think that having some consolidated core communities would be a better solution for content discovery, information being posted only once, and overall community activity.

One of the examples of the issue of having two (or more) exactly similar Fediverse communities (!fediverse@lemmy.world and !fediverse@lemmy.ml ) is that is leads to

  • people having to subscribe to both to see the content
  • posters having to crosspost to both
  • comment being spread across the crossposts instead of having all of the discussion and reactions happening in the same place.

I am very well aware of the decentralized aspect of Lemmy being one of its core features, but it seems that it can be detrimental when the co-existing communities are exactly the same.

We are talking about different news seen from the US or Europe, or a piece of news discussed in places with different political orientations.

The two Fediverse communities look identical, there is no specific editorial line. The difference in the audience is due to the federation decisions of the instances, but that’s pretty much it, and as the topic of the community is the Fediverse itself, the community should probably be the one accessible from most of the Fediverse users.

What do you think?

Also, as a reminder, please be respectful in the comments, it’s either one of the rules of the community or the instance. Disagreeing is fine, but no need to be disrespectful.

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
    2521·
    1 year ago

    Respectfully, who cares?

    Hard truth… you’re not important. None of us are. No one cares enough about your opinions that they need you to “maximize your reach” by posting in multiple places. That is entirely a you problem, not an us problem.

    No one is forcing you to post everything multiple times to multiple communities. You’re free to choose one and post to it. if it’s interesting enough, someone will likely share it to other communities. And if it isn’t interesting enough, they won’t. Simple as that.

    that’s… how… it… works

    Also, you talk as though browsing r/all on Reddit doesn’t also show multiple copies of the same post sent to multiple communities. Of course it does. Declaring something the “main” community isn’t going to change that anyway.

    • ClymeneEnglish
      224·
      1 year ago

      I don’t understand these “That’s just how the world is. Shame on you for discussing it” comments. I think it is very much worth discussing this, even if the conclusion of the discussion is that it’s not worth changing after all.

      You point out similar dynamics on Reddit, but it’s obviously not exactly the same. The design of Reddit is such that there is a much stronger tendency for main communities to arise. By contrast, lots of smaller communities on Lemmy look like ghost towns, where they would be much healthier if they combined numbers. “You’re free to do whatever” doesn’t address the systemic issue.

      That said, I don’t think this is obvious either way. There are tons of benefits to the current system too. That’s why it’s worth coming back to this topic every once in a while. If these sorts of nitty gritty design discussions bore you, why are you on this community?

    • ZodiacSF1969@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      91·
      1 year ago

      This is a really shitty way to express your disagreement.

      And the fragmentation is definitely an issue worth discussing. It’s a lot more prominent here, in my opinion, than reddit, and that could discourage potential users.