12 mo. ago • 78%

Forgive me, but…

It’s my hope to see unity and cohesion is the Lemmy-verse. Looks like asklemmy@lemmy.ml has over 39k subscribers.

Is there a way that this same conversation can “merge” with that one so that this one can be archived there?

How are Lemmy instances coping with two great ideas that might have come up at the same time but one has a lot more traction?

And true story: I’m not trying to start anything. I’m sincerely trying to promote Lemmy and perfect it — this would just be sanding the edges?

36 comments

The redundancy is somewhat the point. While one instance may have a dominant version of a community which is visited by people of numerous instances, other instances having local versions promotes decentralization, and helps smaller instance form their own culture.

The decentralization is good because it ensures a single power mod, cabal of mods, or crooked admin situation can not unilaterally ruin everything. Users can just jump ship to a different community that is run by different admins and mods.

Smaller instances having spaces where their own memes and in-jokes is good to create a culture for that instance to help give some different flavor and helps that specific instance grow. This feeds into supporting the variety of smaller communities on that instance, allowing them a chance at traction rather than existing in a void.

If you want both communities, just subscribe to them both and let them appear on your feed.

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- Also: Cross post to both communities if you like.
  
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  I find cross posting between the communities here kind of annoying tbh. I end up getting a lot of duplicate posts because I subscribe to both like OP suggested
  
  28
- I'd like to see multi-reddit type functionality, so you can see each of the communities as one feed. And the ability to subscribe to that multi-lemmy.
  
  Plus deduplication. One entry in the feed that covers all cross-posts (with some way to pick which comment feed you want to see - or hey, maybe combine them).
  
  6
  
  On the user end, that is a good idea. Individual users should be able to curate what they want to see to the maximum amount.
  
  I am not using Voyager, but I believe it is continually trying to create such features.
  
  6
- And besides, there’s a good chance that eventually only one or two truly survive, so chances are it won’t be a problem in the future. Enjoy why you live in the bleeding edge, where everything is new and still settling
  
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- It fractures good discussions and fosters more social bubbles.
  What we'd need is a sort of mirroring by willingly crossposting and, by that design, share the conversation as a whole and not as a pointer to the original + local discussion.
  
  Especially annoying with tech news scrolling past 5 identical posts because we have 5 different types of r/technology or c/technology (too lazy to link a specific one...)
  
  1
  
  I don’t necessarily see fracturing as a bad thing. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t find the askreddit discussions with 10,000+ replies to be particularly high quality. At least, no higher than what were found in much smaller threads. Fracturing can help make threads less overwhelmingly large. In addition to the other reasons why the redundancy can be a positive.
  
  I understand why seeing ten different versions of ctechnology would get old, but that’s only when scrolling by ‘all’. Scrolling by either local or subscriptions will for the most part fix that. A downside is if you are subscribed to multiple ctechnology communities, in which case having a “multireddit” style feed would be nice. I think the Voyager app may offer that, I actually haven’t tried it out.
  
  But when it comes to browsing ‘all’, seeing duplicates from different instances is a far sight better than having a centralized site where ‘all’ is dominated by low effort rage/horny/stupid bait.
  
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to see unity and cohesion [in] the Lemmy-verse

Pass. It's a a feature, not a bug.

Instead of one community becoming completely dominant on a topic, there's another one close on its heels should anything happen to the first.

And if I subscribe to both, who cares which a particular post comes from? Just scroll down the feed, read a post if it looks interesting, ignore if it doesn't. Which community it originates from doesn't matter.

I wonder if the people who push for one community per topic across all the Fediverse are just extreme tidiness types who get a kick out of seeing everything in orderly little boxes. Trying to Marie Kondo a decentralized internet forum, that way lies madness.

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- One option is them being tied together while remaining separate. Like have the clients all treat them as one channel on the client side, with them still all being separate on the server end.
  
  I think the main problem people want dealt with is when they are in 7 of the same community accross different servers and someone cross posts something to all 7 of them. I don't know if we'll ever be able to solve that problem on the user end, like discouraging cross posts or whatever, but there could be a way that posting to one automatically and invisibly crossposts to all the channels that are deemed "like" that one. Whether communities could have tags that align with post tags, or something like that. I don't know. But it sucks that right now the option is either pick one and deal with missing out on anything not cross posted, or pick a few and deal with all the things you see multiple times.
  
  6
  
  I don't know if we'll ever be able to solve that problem on the user end.
  
  If I see a cross-post, I just block the user. Cross-posters are not the type of people I will miss anyway. Solves the problem for me.
  
  0
- It would be annoying to see repeat posts, this is people's main complaint. In my opinion this could be fixed with a tab system that takes you between comments sections of posts of the same URL on different instances.
  
  This feels like the best of both worlds.
  
  5
- I completely understand your perspective and align with it, but people need to start thinking about these discussions when they push for more mass adoption and expanding the user base. Lemmy is niche; if people want to have individuals join who aren't very tech savvy, they need to consider why people are asking questions such as OP's. The "if you don't like it then leave" mentality cannot coincide with "we need more users and engagement". The platform doesn't necessarily need to change, but it needs to learn to be inclusive of those who are used to centralized platforms like Reddit and make accommodations or compromises. Otherwise Lemmy will not grow. If not growing is the consensus, that's fine, but Lemmy needs to make it's mind up first of what it wants to be.
  
  3
  
  You get me. Yes — exactly.
  
  I can barely figure all this out and my goal is exactly where you are talking about — to make adopting Lemmy as easy as possible to attract as many users away from the corporate social media as possible.
  
  I want all corporate social media flat lined.
  
  2
- I suppose that I can personally tolerate same-theme communities across multiple instances. I feel like I was a late arrival at Reddit and when I grasped it’s potential, it became an important source of information, entertainment and community for me. Then it imploded.
  
  But a lot of people are still over there and I guess I hope to see it flatlined completely.
  
  So I hope that Lemmy can be as easy to use as possible.
  
  But this thread has persuaded me that redundant groups are healthy. I just hope new users come here and abandon all corporate social media.
  
  1
Some communities can have the same name but different moderation styles or focuses.

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I think this is so that decentralization can have any meaning. I am pretty sure that you can have a client that merges them together only for you though. Then both communities posts would appear in that one client-side merged community.

8
- Perfect solution really
  
  2
You can subscribe to whatever@lemmy.ml from any other federated instance, including lemmy.world. Use the one you like.

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- !whatever@lemmy.ml
  
  Don't forget !
  
  5
  
  Sure except I didn't actually want it to convert to a link.
  
  2
So, I’ve seen this question quite a bit within the fediverse. By the looks of it, there isn’t really a good answer as to how it should work. Although, there is this GitHub issue on the topic of multi-instance communities, that will hopefully lead to some implementation soon.

6
Seems like you don't understand the point of Lemmy.

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Not sure this reply will get seen by the kind people who have helped explain this situation to me but I just want to say “thank you”. And I get it. The ethos here is the diversity and the federation — Reddit subs were easily corrupted by power hungry turds… anyway… there were a lot of thoughtful replies and I appreciate all that.

I still feel new here but I’m pleased to be welcomed by a lot of very thoughtful and patient people.

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It’s my hope to see unity and cohesion is the Lemmy-verse.

On a certain level, isn't this against its basic idea? A variety of instances/sites connecting with each other seems more the point of federation than a unified/coherent whole.

The tripping point/growing pain for these various instances/sites at the moment seems to be there's more similar, likeminded groups adopting the software to spin them up than there are distinct groups to create the variety that might reduce/mitigate redundant communities (in the Lemmy sense of that term).

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- Permanently Deleted
  
  3
Why is the situation you described something that requires “coping”?

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Nooope.

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- (rhymes with Snoopy)
  
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