Submitted 3 weeks ago by doenerpate@feddit.org to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://popcar.bearblog.dev/lemmy-needs-to-fix-its-community-separation-problem/
“Separate conversations are splintering discourse, we should all just shout over each other in one massive wall of text!”
The separate communities across instances is a benefit of federation just like separate posts are a benefit over a single thread for everythjngs. Yes, features that allow them to be combined for those that want that way of interacting is great, but we don’t need a single news community between all instances when there are can be massive differences between instances.
you’re right, definitely something I hadn’t really thought about. I just don’t get the sense that some communities are intentionally spread across different instances. Like there are two Plex communities on two separate instances that basically talk about the same stuff. I guess it’s just part of getting used to things, and it throws me off a bit since I’m still new to the fediverse.
In fact, there is a problem of asymmetry of difficulty. It is much easier to start a new community, that dealing with existence of several separated communities. Especially as social solutions (eg in case that the communities are really about the same thing in the same way, asking all members to switch, so for newcomers it is easy to know which one is active and maintained).
Proposed solution 3: Communities following communities
The ability for communities to “subscribe” to other communities is an idea that comes from this Github comment. This is, in my opinion, the best proposed solution by far. Community a can follow community b, making posts from b also appear on a.
What this means is that community moderators can choose to have posts from other communities to show up on theirs. That means if all the pancake communities are following each other, I can post on pancake@a.com and it would show up on the other pancake communities as well, and the comments would simply be grouped into just one post!
The main proposed solution doesn’t force merging on anyone. Mods can decide whether or not they want content from other communities to show up in their space. No two news instances have to merge if they serve different audiences.
It isn’t explicitly called out in the proposal but I could easily see there being an option for mods to unlink individual posts from other communities if they get too spicy.
Exactly. This is a non issue and actually a feature.
This is a non issue. Different communities and instances have different rules, norms, cultures etc. There’s no need to smash everyone together in a monoculture.
Technically, I agree.
Practically, I myself have experienced several fragmented communities about the same topic with similar ethos. This was not a healthy separation based on different norms. It was simple, ineffective fragmentation. Or, at least the ethos and norms differences wasn’t clear.
I feel like it is just a matter of time before either:
Even if that doesn’t happen, redundancy isn’t bad. We’ve seen how hard it is to migrate when there’s only 1 real option and that option disappears or goes bad for some reason (i.e. reddit). If there was another fairly active community with the same focus, that would make it easier to keep going. That’s part of why decentralization is good.
IMO, a more opionate search would fix this. Just recommend the most active community and show the others in gray.
No thanks. This is a dark pattern towards centralization. Just go back to reddit.
I’m not sure if the centralization is worse than the large portion of users on the large servers who joining copies of established communities on their own instances. Also, from my other reply:
It would force you to write a more descriptive name. Maybe we want to hide by community title and not the handle though.
Say you want to have a community for memes. It is terrible UX if you just see seven different “memes@domainname.ending” in the result. So with an opinionated search, you instead name your community Sopuli Memes, Solarpunk Memes, Programming Memes etc., or just Funny Memes Archive, and they would not be hidden.
That kills the less active ones and achieves the opposite of what Lemmy wants to do.
A lot of the “less active ones” are completely dead. Many mid-tier topics (not niche, but not “meme shitpost”) have a sea of dead communities and 1-2 active ones and it’s difficult to find them without actually clicking through the full list of results.
It would force you to write a more descriptive name. Maybe we want to hide by community title and not the handle though.
Say you want to have a community for memes. It is terrible UX if you just see seven different “memes@domainname.ending” in the result. So with an opinionated search, you instead name your community Sopuli Memes, Solarpunk Memes, Programming Memes etc., or just Funny Memes Archive, and they would not be hidden.
Technically yes. The problem would be how to decide which community put in spotlight and which in grey (or any other meaningful distinction). Would it be automatic (if yes, how to decide the algorithm), or manual (if yes, how to decide how to left them). These things can be discussed out and solved, but we should be aware that these questions are here.
And it would work only for real duplicates of communities, not healthy separated communities based on actual, conscious and cherished differences.
Piefed merges comments sections on cross posts.
do you know any client that supports this?
Wait, so am I reading correctly from the wiki page the only app that supports merging crosspost comments is Interstellar, which also doesn’t support crossposting?
Maybe I am misunderstanding something. I am on lemmy.zip, but I see communities from many different instances. How is it segregated?
For example, lemmy.world/c/technology, lemmy.zip/c/technology, and piefed.social/c/technology coexist. Thats what the author meant with “community separation”.
Oh, okay. Im not super familiar with how all this works. Thanks
Nice thing would be to have a structured way to clearly present differences between communities of same name. Eg. possibility to link (in machine readable way) in sidebar to other communities and mark them as pure duplicates, or state the actual difference. This information could show also in search and crosspoting dialog.
There has never been a good blog post.
Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
This is solved by Piefed.
doenerpate@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
how exactly? isn’t piefed “just” another instance in the fediverse?
Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
You have comments from different communities under the same URL post. “Multicommunities” but without user intervention.
It does have some drawbacks. For example, under this post, I can see comments from an earlier post (referring to the same URL) from over a year ago.
Piefed is also a platform, in addition to Piefed servers being instances and clients.
flamingos@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Solution 2 in the post, multicommunities. I’m not sure it actually solves the problem though, as you still have to go to the actual community to post and I imagine multicomms add an extra layer of confusion to that.
Blaze@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Crosspost comments consolidation example: https://piefed.zip/c/fedibridge/p/794856/r-buyfromeu-asking-for-a-reddit-alternative#post_replies