Lemmy Needs to Fix Its Community Separation Problem
popcar.bearblog.dev
For the unaware, is a alternative to platforms such as Reddit and Tildes. I've been using Lemmy as one of my main social platforms for the past 6 months...
  • [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish
    92·
    10 months ago

    “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.

    • doenerpate@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      51·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • kubofhromoslav@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        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).

    • Ludicrous0251@piefed.zipEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      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.

  • Derpenheim@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    Maybe I am misunderstanding something. I am on lemmy.zip, but I see communities from many different instances. How is it segregated?

  • kubofhromoslav@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    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.

  • nimpnin@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    16·
    10 months ago

    IMO, a more opionate search would fix this. Just recommend the most active community and show the others in gray.

      • nimpnin@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        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.

    • kubofhromoslav@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      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.