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.
I think Lemmy should come up with a meta cross post type. Where the post only exists once, but it’s indexed in multiple communities, and moderators of those communities can remove the cross post. Without affecting the original post
Kind of like a symbolic link
If not that then give us the ability to have relative references to posts inside of Lemmy. Instead of referencing a URL to a specific instance, kind of like the ! Or @ for for community names and usernames.
Then across post could at least link to the canonical discussion for talking.
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.
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?
Thank you for your comment.
Lol what fucking idiot downvoted this
I stopped being upset with downvotes a while ago.
Lemmy is nicer than Reddit, but people are still going to downvote for no reason
Yeh I don’t care either, I just find it funny that most Lemmy users hold themselves out as some how ‘better’ than reddit, yet they engage in exactly the same dumb behaviors that make reddit a terrible place.
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.
To be fair, to some of us this is a feature not a bug.
A technology post on a technology/infosec/IT focused instance seems to have a COMPLETELY different focus and conversation than one on the larger instances, for example and I don’t want those mixed in with people saying that AI is a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
There are smaller dedicated art focused instances popping up too. I’d expect that they’re going to have a better set of conversations around those subjects than the same threads on a general instance and I don’t want those mixed up.
If it’s a subject I really want to see a lot of discussion about, I’ll look at multiple threads… can this mean that some subjects won’t have as good of a conversation because people aren’t bouncing off of each other? Yeah, absolutely and that frankly SUCKS, but, as stated, it also means that some of the niche conversations have a chance to grow where they may have previously just been unseen due to how many people are talking.
To me, they’re on different instances for a reason, let it grow organically. The ones that stand out will wind up being the main ones people use.
As for amount of users. A decent amount of those are likely alts people created when instances were having problems or just to try out the different locations.
Or, people just didn’t like the Fediverse for all the reasons you stated, which is also possible, but I don’t necessarily think chasing numbers should be the end all goalA technology post on a technology/infosec/IT focused instance seems to have a COMPLETELY different focus and conversation than one on the larger instances, for example and I don’t want those mixed in with people saying that AI is a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
Completely agree, and I mentioned that in the post as well.
The issue with the current two Fediverse communities on . world and .ml is that they are pretty much the same. There is no adding values in posting and discussing the same things twice.
Yeah, but, I don’t see how that really changes anything.
On a smaller instance (or one that’s defederated from others … in either direction), that might very well completely shift focuses.
For the Fediverse specific community, if you want one with the most chance of getting to the developers, use the instance that they’re on, otherwise, I’d think to just let the cultures develop and diverge naturally as they’re likely to.
I think the issue I have is that I feel that in the last few days, the content seems more stale.
That’s why I had a look at active users and noted that we were fewer.
One potential way to address this would be to have one community to be the announcement one to the rest of the Fediverse.
Today, it feels like getting information to people is a hassle. They arrive on the platform, they subscribe to the top communities, and then what? How are they supposed to learn about LASIM, that if they move to a smaller instance for better performance they might have to ask their admin to run LCS to get a populated All feed, that they can have a look at !trendingcommunities@feddit.nl for rising communities?
We probably lack a reference website to answer all of these questions.
The solution is to stop subscribing to one of them. Eventually, if people follow this method, one will die out.
If the content is the same on each one with prime cross posting each time, then you aren’t missing anything anyway
The issue is that due to the different defederation policies, some of the users don’t really have a choice.
Hexbear, the 8th largest Lemmy instance, cannot access !fediverse@lemmy.world. They have to access !fediverse@lemmy.ml.
On the other side, some users don’t want to subscribe to the LW version due to some decision of the LW admins.
So in the end anyone posting have to do it twice. And when it gets to cumbersome to post, people just stop doing that and go back to Reddit when it’s more simple.
Edit: also see this type of comments
I wish apps would hide duplicate posts. People that crosspost everything results in my feed having double everything because I subscribe to both. It’s super annoying, and I’m tempted to leave one of them, but I don’t want to miss anything because they’re comparable in size.
Maybe you didn’t understand what I wrote? Stop subscribing to both. Only interact with one. If that’s the one people agree with, the other will die.
There is literally no reason to cross post to both of them. Stop doing that. Stop subscribing to both. Pick one and let the other die. The entire reason there are two is because you keep subscribing and posting to both of them. It will continue to be that way until you be the change you want to see.
If your instance has defederated, maybe it’s time to find a new instance that isn’t a POS? Every user has a choice. You can choose to go to an instance that isn’t reactionary and arbitrary in their defederation policies. The whole point of the Fediverse is so you DO have a choice; that’s the foundation of the entire Fediverse. There are many instances that are federated with both if you are wanting content from both. Just because one instance defederates from another doesn’t somehow now make you beholden to one instance.
Well, it seems like you didn’t understand what I wrote either.
Stop subscribing to both. Pick one and let the other die.
User A on Hexbear doesn’t have to choose, he can only access to lemmy.ml. He posts there. He has no option to choose the other one due to the defederation.
User B on Lemmy.world chooses lemmy.world. He posts there.
If that’s the one people agree with, the other will die.
How is any of those communities going to die if people keep posting to both?
Close the one on Lemmy.world to promote decentralization.
