In theory something like a !gaming community could crop up on multiple large instances, especially during the mass exodus while instances are getting hammered with spikes in volume.

If that's the case, we'll have fragmented communities across instances. Is there any way besides subscribing to each of them to combine them into a sort of multi-reddit type aggregation? Or is this considered a temporary (albeit important to adoption) problem during the crazy stages?

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[–] possibleHipster@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Yeah I this is my biggest problem, and there's always like 30 people saying "it's not a problem, it's a feature!"

Either they are in denial or I'm just completely incompatible with federation.

Why would I want 100 fragmented communities for the exact same thing? If I wanted to consume content from all of them sure, I could follow all 100 but that is so tedious. Plus what if I wanted to interact with them? I'd have to ask the same question 100 times!

[–] cuck4mai@lemmynsfw.com 19 points 1 year ago

I think it's just a problem that will work itself out over time with more users. There are redundant subreddits as well, but as the overall userbase grew only one or two subs maintained the subscriber growth to continue showing up on r/all. And in cases where redundant subs both grew together, they evolved to be very different atmospheres. For example, r/games vs r/gaming; one is focused on news and discussion while the other is mostly memes. Both great subs, but started out nearly identical until they found their identity.

[–] Balthazar@sopuli.xyz 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The reason you want a 100 communities over one is what is happening over on Reddit. Make one big thing, and greed will take over. Make many smaller ones? Is significantly less likely to happen.

[–] foggenbooty@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

The communities are also significantly less likely to grow. It's a double edged sword.

I think both sides have a point here, there are clear positives to federation and clear negatives. I hope a lot of the negatives can be overcome by streamlining the user interface and better apps.

[–] CannaVet@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You might be completely incompatible with federation. I mean this with zero ill intention, it just might not be the alternative YOU are looking for. Reddit and lemmy are separate projects with separate goals and means. Centralization is what led to the issues leading to people exodusing from Reddit, but now everyone is upset that it's not centralized here. If you want one single set of users crammed into one single set of communities, this just isn't it by design.

As somebody who likes sharing my opinion and bickering about them, I've run afoul of power mods on Reddit in the past and been blanket banned from like 8 subs at once for liking firehouse subs over subway or some such nonsense. Here, if I'm banned from !AITA@lemmy.world I can still fiddle around on !AITA@lemmy.ml. I can spin up my own instance and start !AITA@lemmy.mything if I want.

It's important to remember that this is NOT REDDIT. This is a different project with different goals and different methods of achieving those goals. IIRC there are people trying to build a more 1 for 1 replacement for Reddit, and if that's what you want - great! Find one and enjoy it, but don't try to force lemmy to centralize and just become Reddit 2, because that's not the goal or intention of the project.

[–] dx1@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

undefined> Centralization is what led to the issues leading to people exodusing from Reddit, but now everyone is upset that it’s not centralized here

Every locals complaint about people moving to their area ever, "they hated Idaho so much but now they're here trying to turn Arkansas right back into Idaho!"

[–] tebee@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Here, if I'm banned from !AITA@lemmy.world I can still fiddle around on !AITA@lemmy.ml.

Huh, you can? I've been told that bans are federated, so if you're banned on one lemmy instance, you are also automatically banned across all connected instances.

[–] DarraignTheSane@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If you're banned by an admin on your login Lemmy server, then that account is basically done for and you'd need to create another account on that server or on another server. However, by default I believe server bans are temporary, usually only for a few days.

But if you've been banned from a community (a sub) by a mod, that ban is only in effect for that community on that server. Nothing is stopping you from participating in any other community on any other Lemmy server.

[–] tebee@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for the clarification!

And what happens if an admin of a non-login server bans a user? Is that just a ban across all communities of that specific server?

[–] DarraignTheSane@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I would assume so. The ban wouldn't affect anything beyond their own server.

[–] Houdini@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I don't think that's accurate.

[–] CannaVet@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm as new as the next guy, but that certainly doesn't mesh with my understanding of federation at all. Per my understanding, communities are completely unrelated across instances. AITA on lemmy.world can be run by UserA and have SetofrulesA with BanlistA, while AITA on lemmy.ml can be run by UserB with SoR-B and BL-B. AFAIK It's the entire point of federation, that if I don't like how AITA on lemmy.whatevs is run I can spin up my own and go on my merry way.

Perhaps someone more in the know will turn up but I believe that you were told wrong.

[–] Whisdeer@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Why would I want 100 fragmented communities for the exact same thing?

I believe over time it'll sort out and one community will be dominant. But the reason you want this is so whoever got c/canada won't be dominant. If the mod of c/canada was a QAnon lizardpeople nut, you wouldn't need to make c/RealCanada because there's not a single real c/canada. You would make c/canada@lemmy.ml

But also, many communities were spread out even in reddit. Like r/traa and r/egg_irl.

[–] killerbees@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Tbh this isn't even unique to Lemmy. Even on reddit, creating a new subreddit is free. If you don't like the moderation or the general vibe of a subreddit, create a new one and build the community that you like. with the ethos that you see fit. That's how there's r/gaming, r/truegaming, r/games, r/pcgaming, r/gamernews, etc.

Reddit also only allowed comments in 2008, and Digg v4 was released in 2010. Therefore much of the reddit "canon" was developed after the Digg migration (e.g. today you tomorrow me, cumbox, forthewolfx, swamps of Dagobah, discoball, jolly ranchers, double dick dude, taco show, broken arms). Digg didn't have custom communities. Reddit did. And now Lemmy has custom communities in infinite instances. If there's going to be a Quit Reddit Day (maybe July 1st?) like Quit Digg Day, we're in the forefront of shaping Lemmy.

[–] Gray@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think it's a problem or a feature. It's exactly what we saw on Reddit before it grew. It's not like Reddit had a limit on the number of subreddits a topic could have. As far as I'm concerned it'll eventually sort itself out just like it did on Reddit. It'll just take time to establish which communities are the largest. Eventually people will stop posting/subscribing to the communities that don't have as many people, and the largest one(s) will win out, just like they did on Reddit. This is an issue that requires patience. In the meantime, subscribe to them all and post to the one that has the most subscribers just like you would on Reddit if there wasn't a clear central community.

[–] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think 100 is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration and it matters in this case. Subbing to perhaps 5 communities about Formel 1 cars or whatever have you is not so much of an ordeal. Especially because probably most users in these communities will also be subbed to the other communities. So you very likely won't need to post the same stuff multiple times.

It would be great though, if communities would group better in some way, perhaps like tabs in my own dashboard where I can sort the communities by topic.

It would also help if people would use the community browser to see if there are similar communities already to the one they plan to make, so that they can connect with each other.