For example, I’m on Lemmy.ml and I’ve joined !photography@lemmy.ml, !photography@lemmy.world, and !photography@kbin.social. In this example, it’s not very different from the number of similar groups on Flickr but, in comparison to Reddit, it seems like the decentralized platform can be a little unruly.
How are you going about joining different communities and managing your engagement? Are you only participating on the community on your instance? Are you joining and posting in as many instances that seem relevant?
That’s fine on an individual level, but unless everybody does it, you probably still have the downside of the users — and therefore the content & comments — being spread too thin. If the mods of the communities had a tool to federate/merge at the community level, that gives the benefit of the network effect. And if the “merge” functionality just mirrors all content to all connected communities across instances, it would make popular ones more reliable.
But that should only be an option for communities, never forced. There’s strength in diversity too.
See though, I still don’t see the issue.
How are they spread too thin?
This thread and the OP are on lemmy.ml. I’m on kbin.social. You’re on lemmy.world. And the only reason I know all of that is because I checked each one. Until I checked each one, it was just a thread and I responded to it and you responded to me and it all just worked and there was no way to even notice that three different instances were involved, since it made zero difference.
What benefit is that?
Right now, I can go into the list of communities on any instance and search for a subject and get all the communities that are about it. And yes, as I already noted, if I want all of them, then that means I have to click on more than one subscribe button - a few seconds of extra effort.
So the only “benefit” I see is saving myself that few seconds of extra effort, which hardly seems worth caring about.
I genuinely don’t see a real problem.
It all comes down to the network effect that I mentioned. It’s not a matter of making the users’ lives easier, it’s a matter of making the content better, especially the comments.
A single merged community may kick off discussions and debates that would never happen if the users were spread across 10 different communities in different instances.
I mean, maybe the conversations would still happen if everybody subscribed all 10 of the instances’ communities. If everybody interested in, say, photography subbed to every photography community out there, you’d basically have the same effect as merging. But people won’t do that. Some will, but I bet most won’t.
I’m not sure that most wouldn’t, but yeah - I don’t doubt that some wouldn’t subscribe to multiple instances.
I had a whole section here about the notion that quantity equals quality and the benefits of barriers to entry and so on, but it felt digressive at best, so I’ll just say that (with multiple provisos) I do at least see how it might be legitimately believed that redundant communities are an actual problem, so that’s something.
Thanks for the responses.
We may be thinking of different populations of users. The folks using Lemmy right now don’t really need much help to get what they want out of it. But if the fediverse is to grow, even if it never hits Reddit/Facebook/etc numbers, its developers should look at ways to decrease friction to getting the best experience.
And to be clear, I did not mean to argue that redundant communities are a problem. I can just see potential benefits of allowing cross-instance merger of communities IF the leaders of those communities decide they want to.
There undoubtedly IS strength in redundant communities, just as there is with all the different instances to choose from. One mod, one admin, one hardware failure or seized server, etc cannot just shut things down. Plus competition is good. There can be a natural selection process to determine over time which community is the best run.
But thanks to the network effect, there is also a first mover advantage, and an inertia to whichever community gets the most users at the beginning, since many people will just sub to the one or two most active communities on a subject. It would be interesting too see how, and IF, such a “merge communities” feature would be used by like-minded communities/mods. That kind of feature would/should be low priority in these early days though.
Yes and no.
Much of that bit I excised from the last response concerned the users you’re specifying. It is true that I wasn’t initially considering them, so you’re right as farcas that goes, but…
a lot of the reason I ended up excising that part is that it was an overall shift in the topic. Yes - as I noted, I can see how that “friction” could be considered a problem. But personally, I think it’s a good thing.
But again, that’s really a different topic.
And as a bit of an aside, it’s taking every ounce of my willpower to not translate that admirably diplomatic passage you wrote into less generous terms…