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.

  • CrayonRosary@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    people having to subscribe to both to see the content

    Not a problem. Just subscribe to both. It’s no big deal.

    posters having to crosspost to both

    Don’t do this! The above “issue” already solves this. If I want to see posts from both communities, I’ll subscribe to both communities. Posting the same content in both will cause me to see duplicates.

    • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
      51·
      1 year ago

      The issue is that due to the different defederation policies, if you want to communicate to the whole fediverse audience, you need to both.

      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 .ml version due to the political background of the instance.

      So in the end anyone posting have to do it twice, otherwise the audience they want to reach won’t see their content.

      Posting the same content in both will cause me to see duplicates.

      That’s exactly one of the issues I was pointing out in the post. There should be a unique !fediverse community. But as soon as you suggest this idea, people come saying that the only one should be their one (see above). Which brings you to the audience fragmentation.

        • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          Sh.itjust.works, the 4th biggest instance, is defederated by beehaw, the 7th largest instance.

          Should the 2357 monthly active users of Sh.itjust.works just leave to another instance to be able to access Beehaw communities?

          It’s also your choice to subscribe to both communities. If you only subscribe to one, then the problem is solved.

          • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.mlEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Beehaw defederated with instances because they didn’t want to interact with its users. If the users of those instances migrate to another instance en masse, then Beehaw will defederate with that instance as well. Give up on interacting with Beehaw, because they don’t want the same things that people not registered on Beehaw want.

            • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              And also, to give some weight to Beehaw’s position, there was a thread two days ago about refederating with SJW in !support@beehaw.org .

              A few minutes after the discussion started a SJW account started to post pictures of feces.

            • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              We need a replacement for subredditdrama to learn about this stuff. I’ve heard of the instance, but don’t know anything about the site’s opinions, or how I feel about being defd from them.

            • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I guess that boils down to the point I was asking about in the OP.

              Can we/should we have a single community when people can post updates about tools, evolution, etc. of the Lemmy platform, or will people who want to bring content to that audience have to post to all the local !fediverse communities of the instances clusters?

      • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        The issue is that due to the different defederation policies, if you want to communicate to the whole fediverse audience, you need to both.

        Besides Beehaw, have any other big instances defederated from lemmy.world? I don’t think defederation is a widespread issue.

        • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I mean, beehaw is the 7th biggest.

          LW also defederated from Hexbear, which is the 8th biggest.

          Beehaw also defederated from SJW, which is the 4th biggest.

          https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list

          The tensions between user bases probably justify the defederations, but it bring the issue I showed in the OP about having a community where all Lemmy users can discuss the platform together.

      • PopularUsername@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        It would be nice if they developed some way to merge communities and splice crossposts together. This is a common issue with many communities.