Over the past few days, I've witnessed a remarkable surge in the number of communities on browse.feddit.de. What started with 2k communities quickly grew to 4k, and now it has reached an astonishing 8k. While this exponential growth signifies a thriving platform, it also brings forth challenges such as increased fragmentation and the emergence of echo chambers. To tackle these issues, I propose the implementation of a Cross-Instance Automatic Multireddit feature within Lemmy. This feature aims to consolidate posts from communities with similar topics across all federated instances into a centralized location. By doing so, we can mitigate community fragmentation, counter the formation of echo chambers, and ultimately foster stronger community engagement. I welcome any insights or recommendations regarding the optimal implementation of this feature to ensure its effectiveness and success.

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[–] roomey@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think a community needs to add the option of a topic hashtag, so communities can group together in that way if they want to, and people can subscribe to these hashtags if they want to (with the ability to remove single instances of they want to)

The theme here is "if they want to" giving choice to both the communities and the subscribers

[–] OptimusPrime@lemmynsfw.com 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think this would be the best, but it will probably be a choice of each community moderator not the users.

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

Agree, would be a great mix!

[–] sanguinepar@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a good idea - I just suggested on another comment that the mods of similar communities might (optionally) agree to include links to each other in the sidebar, but a tagging system might be better, especially if there were dozens of communities on the same topic.

That said, might tagging also lead to spamming if people misused the tags? I'm not sure, just a vague idea.

[–] roomey@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I was thinking to combat spam, either the federation could use an instance block, or the user could have a block all from instance option

[–] sickmatter@fedia.io 1 points 1 year ago

Communities are sort of already hashtags when using the microblog post type. Seems like an interesting approach.