For the unaware, Lemmy is a Fediverse alternative to platforms such as Reddit and Tildes. I've been using Lemmy as one of my main social platforms for the pa...

I made a blog post on my biggest issue in Lemmy and the proposed solutions for it. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

  • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    242·
    10 months ago

    I appreciate the effort, but what is happening is option 1, aka merging of communities, naturally.

    About knowing where to post, you can usually have a look at https://lemmyverse.net/communities, search the community name, and have a good idea of which one is the most active.

    Sometimes different communities can coexist, and that’s fine. !science@mander.xyz and !science@lemmy.world have different audiences, and that’s okay.

  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    151·
    10 months ago

    I’ve already went on on why merging communities is Bad for the Fediverse (and only really helps the big corpos that get into the Fediverse), so it’s good that the badness of that “solution” is acknowledged.

    As for #2: multicommunities: I seem to recall Kbin already does that, so it should work. As for sub-issue 1, "To create a multi-community, you would have to know where each community is and add it to your list. ", well that’s what webrings are for! Let’s bring them back from the '90s. Basically get’s give the power of “static search” back to the users.

    Numero 3 Electric Boogaloo: Making communities follow communities, is not much of a bad idea, but I’m wary fo the issues already mentioned in it. I’m mostly concerned also about it making it harder to maintain smaller Lemmy instances due to the extra communication overhead.

    • 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social
      21·
      10 months ago

      The third solution wouldn’t cause extra communication. If you’re subbed to a community that follows other communities, you receive all the posts once. That’s the same as if you followed all of those communities yourself.

      If your server hosts communities that follow others, that would still be the same as having users on your server follow those servers. It’s the same amount of communication.

      I’m assuming you were talking about this comment. That doesn’t explain why merging communities is bad, only why you may not want to do it. Which would always be an option. Having the option to merge duplicate communities doesn’t mean you can’t maintain similar communities without merging them.

      • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        If your server hosts communities that follow others, that would still be the same as having users on your server follow those servers. It’s the same amount of communication.

        Oh that’s a very good point! I had the wrong impression there was extra data sharing needed in this case but yeah, looking back it makes sense that the amount of data transfer is about the same considering the focus is on the verb (actor A sends to / pulls from actor B) rather on who is doing the action.

    • popcar2@programming.devOPEnglish
      46·
      10 months ago

      I hope they can revisit the idea. There are many cases of duplicate communities splintering the community, making finding content more difficult.

      • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        41·
        10 months ago

        Do you have an example? Because all the evidence shows that people want to be seen when they post, and will naturally gravitate towards the most active communities, except if they are against the instance the most active community is.

        • 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social
          1·
          10 months ago

          Because all the evidence shows…

          What evidence shows that? This post is in fediverse@lemmy.world and crossposted to fediverse@lemmy.ml. There’s also fediverse@kbin.social and I know I’ve seen others. Most of these communities have been running for a few years now and there’s still no consolidation.

          You can see the same pattern with communities for gaming, linux, gardening, movies, tv, etc. I’m subscribed to multiple communities for each of those topics on separate servers because the consolidation doesn’t happen.

          • Blaze@discuss.onlineEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            What evidence shows that?

            The merge of the cooking communities I shared with you in another comment: https://lemmy.world/post/7578470

            This post is in fediverse@lemmy.world and crossposted to fediverse@lemmy.ml. There’s also fediverse@kbin.social and I know I’ve seen others. Most of these communities have been running for a few years now and there’s still no consolidation.

            Didn’t find it in https://kbin.social/m/fediverse nor in any other community except lemmy.ml (2 comments)

            Don’t you think that we pretty much consolidated around fediverse.world?

            For Linux, the main one is !linux@lemmy.ml.

            For movies, the most active is !moviesandtv@lemm.ee, there is also !movies@lemmy.world, but it’s getting less and less active, so we’ll probably consolidate around the first one soon.

            Gaming is an interesting choice, there are a few of them, but each have their reasons of existing

            There are others, but the interesting aspect is in this case, every community has enough people to stay active.

            • 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social
              1·
              10 months ago

              I don’t think we’ve consolidated around fediverse@lemmy.world. You’re using a single post as an example. I’ve posted links that got 40+ comments in fediverse@kbin.social but way less in other communities. I’ve posted or seen threads in fediverse@lemmy.ml that got more discussion.

              The merge of cooking communities on lemmy.world is also not really relevant. Those communities were each supposed to be specialized communities, not general cooking communities. They shutdown because they couldn’t sustain enough activity. And they were all on lemmy.world so the userbase likely all overlapped; I’d bet that most ppl subbed to them were already subbed to cooking@lemmy.world anyway.

              What I’m talking about is when small and medium sized servers (not lemmy.world) have their own communities that overlap with other communities. Users who join those servers aren’t necessarily going to know about lemmy.ml or lemmy.world. They’ll see communities they’re interested in and sub, but then won’t see as much interaction as they want. This leads to ppl just giving up and going back to the corporate sites.

              Even if consolidation is happening, there’s a transition period where ppl are posting in multiple places, ppl get the same post in their feed multiple times, comment threads are separate. Then when consolidation happens, you have a single community where those mods hold all the power. If we used something like the proposal above, each community could still exist but all the conversations are still consolidated. That keeps the power spread out and likely keeps each mod team in check and provides multiple on-ramps to the community. You could find movies@a.com or movies@b.com but if they’re grouped, you still find the super-community. And then if one of those servers goes down, only users subbed to that community have to migrate and they should be tangentially aware of the other community so migration is easier. Their server could even handle that migration automatically.

              • Blaze@discuss.onlineEnglish
                1·
                10 months ago

                If you want an example of community consolidation between different servers, there is !unixporn@lemmy.ml and !unixporn@lemmy.world. Most of the activity if happening on lemmy.ml, and there was a backlash when the mods from the sub wanted to takeover the lemmy.world community. Both are still open, but someone who wants to post would see that the LW isn’t as active as the .ml, and post to the latter.

                About your point, there are two things at hand.

                First, the technical possibility of it happening. It has been linked elsewhere, the Lemmy devs are not interested in this. Kbin has it, somehow, but the userbase is now on Lemmy, and I don’t see it moving the Kbin/Mbin, except if they surpass Lemmy in features. Maybe sublinks will have this, we’ll see.

                But beyond the technical aspect, there is also the “political” aspect. People who don’t like communities on LW are not going to enjoy being forced to have their content shared to LW communities too. People who avoid Lemmy.ml due to the political stance of the users are also not going to be happy to discuss with the people they are trying to avoid.

                The point is that Lemmy has been around for some months now, people know each others, the other servers, and more or less where everyone stands. If people keep communities separated, there is a reason, and it’s not going to be solved by technical measures.

                • 0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social
                  1·
                  10 months ago

                  the Lemmy devs are not interested in this

                  I know. I’m the one who posted that one of the lemmy devs is not interested in this. But if the userbase gets behind it, they could convince the dev team. Kbin, mbin, or sublink could implement this and even if lemmy doesn’t it would improve things for lemmy users because who follow communities hosted on those implementations and could serve as a proof of concept.

                  there is also the “political” aspect

                  Everything about the proposal is optional. Nobody would be forced to do anything, unless the owner of the community decides to go against the wishes of the community members.

                  Lemmy has been around for years, not months, and this is still an issue that ppl are having. Some ppl know each other and can choose to keep their communities separate. But for ppl who want larger, more in depth discussions and new ppl, this simple technical measure can make the platform better for the multiple reasons I mentioned above.

                  Your arguments against it seem to be:

                  1. Its not needed. - I’ve pointed out multiple reasons I think its needed. Consolidation either doesn’t happen, is never actually completed, or is a years long process. Discussions are fragmented which leads to communities that don’t have enough activity. New users are unfamiliar with the platform and unaware of large players so don’t know how to find the most active community. Consolidating on a single community means you’ve centralized the community and put it at risk if that server goes down.
                  2. People might not want it - The proposal doesn’t force anybody to group their communities. They can maintain their independence. I imagine that mods thinking about grouping with another community would have a discussion with the other mod team and both communities’ members.

                  I disagree with both of those arguments but even ignoring that, I don’t understand why it matters to you. You seem to be fine with the current state and this proposal wouldn’t disrupt that. Either the communities you’re in don’t join up with others or they do and you wouldn’t notice (unless a mod groups with a wildly different community)

  • veee@lemmy.caEnglish
    81·
    10 months ago

    I think the multi-Reddit approach as the default would work best. Users subscribe to a “central” Group or Topic and immediately pull content from every federated community that self-designates as such.

    One problem with this is if the community changes their mind and turns into something else. Either they check a box and designate under another Group or Topic, or get unsubscribed by users manually.

  • HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    I think Lemmy needs to work on the basics first. I made a post on a .world community from a .dbzer0 account and it got several upvotes and comments. When I look at it from the account I posted it with, it has 0 upvotes and 0 comments.

    • popcar2@programming.devOPEnglish
      56·
      10 months ago

      You didn’t read the post. The suggestion is to make the platform more decentralized not centralized. I’m not even going to reply to most comments in this thread that also, clearly, did not read the post and is making stuff up.

  • gullible@kbin.social
    5·
    10 months ago

    Option c seems far and away the best. The reason I browse certain communities over others comes down to admin moderation. Certain instances have stricter admin control and seek to influence political dialogue one way or another. I just don’t want to get banned again for posting the word “tankie” when it’s entirely relevant to the discussion at hand.

  • RobotToaster@mander.xyzEnglish
    5·
    10 months ago

    I don’t think it’s a huge issue, there were often multiple communities for the same thing on reddit

  • noride@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    10 months ago

    I think the biggest issue for me with your proposal is any time a single pancake post is made, four communities now show recent activity and are likely to all show on everyone’s main feed.

    • popcar2@programming.devOPEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      Ideally only one post would be made, no crossposts. One pancake post would be on your feed, and that same post would be visible from other communities

      • noride@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Ahh, I think I got you. So, ideally, ‘followed’ content wouldn’t trigger recent activity within the ‘followers’ community? Is that the idea?

        • popcar2@programming.devOPEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Followed posts would just link to the original post and wouldn’t be a crosspost, yeah. So assuming a and b are following each other, a post from a would show up in b. If someone in b clicks on the post, they would just open the same post from a.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    10 months ago

    Once I thoroughly understand Lemmy’s functionality through the Sublinks Re-implementation (since Rust is like Greek to me but Java I know), I want to try and put in a community tag feature that would be able to assemble a feed of communities across the Fediverse dedicated to one topic.

    I may take me 6 months to a year if I commit to it, but I do think some community aggregation mechanism like that is sorely missing from Lemmy and could help distribute post load better while ensuring a userbase on non-general topics remain active.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        I’m not a software engineer by trade so no guarantees, but I’ve been wanting to improve it in some way. I still have yet to understand how Lemmy works, but from using Lemmy I’ve identified two big areas that could use improvement:

        Community Tags: Mods being able to tag communities on topics for better aggregation of related communities.

        Post Flairs: Users/Mods being able to assign a flair to a post for better client-side filtering of posts, from either a pre-defined list or freeform based on community preference.

        For ActivityPub compatibility purposes, either of these could potentially be analogous to Mastodon hashtags, but I still have yet to decide on how that would work especially without it becoming tumblr level.

  • pruwyben@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    5·
    10 months ago

    I personally don’t think this is a huge issue, but it is an issue. I usually pick the biggest community on a topic, or if there are multiple that are fairly active, subscribe to both/all. The only real complaint I have about it is that users will often make the same post to both communities, so I see duplicate posts on my timeline and the discussion is split in half.

    I do think it would be nice if there was a way for community mods to choose to combine two communities across instances, in a way that they would appear as a single community to users. I don’t know how that would be implemented though.

    • Blaze@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      I do think it would be nice if there was a way for community mods to choose to combine two communities across instances,

      If they are willing to cooperate that far, they could as well merge the communities

      • pruwyben@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        That’s true. I guess I like the idea of being able to distribute a community across servers, but it may be more trouble than it’s worth to implement.

      • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        And then the users who were in the moved-from server but are defederated from the moved-to server get automatically banne d/ blocked from it.

        Thanks but no thanks. Sharing is the solution, not merging. Merging is the solution that corporate sells for every problem.

  • spaduf@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    I’m personally of the mind that we should be imagining a world where all 3 of these solutions are at play. 1 is absolutely the most important, and Admins should be taking an active role here where possible (particularly as it relates to dead community cleanup). I personally think they are the missing element needed to negotiate these sorts of consolidations. 2 and 3 on the other hand are pretty simple features and even if Lemmy never takes it on, I think it’s reasonable that any one of the new fediverse link aggregators could take this up. The only other thing I’ll say is multi-communities absolutely must be sharable. Ideally, it should even be possible to link multi-communities with the “!” syntax or similar.

    • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      1 is absolutely the most important,

      1 is literally the worst of the three, opening the Fediverse to a death at the hands of corporate. And I’ve already explained its other issues.