I understand that a user on any instance can subscribe to any community in the fediverse, but I have been a bit confused when searching for communities to join. Sometimes there are communities on different instances, with the exact same name.
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Do these communities talk to each other at all, or are they completely separate, with a different host, posts, mods, subscribers etc.
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Should I just join the largest (and presumably, most active) one?
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Is there anything in place to discourage communities of same name, but different instances, from “competing”?
Yeah it’s a bit of a weird situation, isn’t it? Same names but different communities. I actually think this is a bit of a barrier to new users. It’s not an intuitive situation and doesn’t immediately make sense. I think it adds to the “this is all too confusing” problem that is inherent in the fediverse.
Eh. Most people will just see posts from the more popular one in their feed and subscribe from there. Or search for something and they’ll pick the top result which is going to be the larger one.
It’s not really much more confusing than say /r/Tech vs /r/Technology. Or /r/offmychest vs /r/trueoffmychest etc
One will get big, the other will die. Give it time
I think the opportunity is more interesting though for apps to provide a federated multi-community experience seamlessly. E.g. a/technology shows me an intermingled feed of all the c/technology communities that my home instance federated with
And what happens when you go to make a post?
Plus that would lead to you seeing many identical or near identical discussions
Ideally it would post to whichever instance you’re logged into, but show up on all federated instances.
But I don’t have a c/technology on my instance - and I don’t need one.
A much more interesting thing about the fediverse is that [email protected] and [email protected] are both about “trees”, but one is about getting high and the other is about therapeutic uses of trees and shrooms.
I wouldn’t what a “I didn’t tidy my room - because I got high” in a community about treating mental illness with plants
Disallow posts when viewing a custom feed like this. Force users to click/tap in to the community they want to post in before they’re allowed to start a post. Might be a little wonky at first, but I feel like you’d get that muscle memory eventually.
It’s a different kind of friction/confusion than we’re used to.
Plenty of people have declared the fediverse “too confusing” etc, but once you’re here and places to be you’re fine. It’s about the people and social activity not the tech.
And sure, there are plenty of UI and UX issues, this is young software without big investment running on volunteers and donations that’s been waiting for the users to come on the basis of values rather than killer features. It’ll get better the more people come.
But duplicated communities with the same name but in different instances/domains isn’t really more confusing than duplicated subreddits with different names. Rather, we’re used to big central platforms and haven’t internalised decentralised platforms where the domain or instance name means something.
If anything, the decentralised version, once you know that decentralisation is a thing, is more clear: different people doing the same thing. More similar to real life and meetups or groups in different cities. Subreddits with different names was always tricky because you had to work out what the actual difference was.
Yeah I think this is what I meant. It’s confusing because it’s a different paradigm to all of the other big social media that we’re used to.
I like your analogy with real life communities. Lemmy does have that unique feel of different communities coming together which I actually like.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113 this will fix it, so meh.
Honestly, if someone declares the fediverse as “too confusing”, I don’t care too much to interact with them.
The concept of “same name but hosted on different instances” is really not that hard. Sure you might be confused at first, but it shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to clear up and then you’ll never have to think about again.
Tech-literate people aren’t the only people with anything of value to say, imo.
You don’t have to be tech-literate. Problem is people are expecting Lemmy to behave exactly like Reddit. You have instances and then you have communities.
I agree. The sad fact is that most non-IT-pros use Facebook, what’s app and Instagram, mayyyybe reddit.
The fediverse is by (and for) und people who care about these things. And we understand how it works.
I expect all drivers on the road to know how to drive. I expect every cook at a restaurant to know how to cook. I expect every person on the internet to know how to cook a quesadilla. It’s just logic
- Completely separate
- Join both
- No
They’re separate and you should probably just join them all. There’s a ton of “gaming” communities, for example. There’s no reason for them to feel they’re competing, since people can just join them all and they can have their own separate rules. I think over time some will naturally become more popular and others will die off. Depends on the mods and how they manage it, really, plus other organic factors. But they are literally just different, unique communities. Consider the @instance to be an important part of the community name.
I imagine apps will eventually allow you to group communities under custom “topics” or something, so it seems cohesive from the users’ perspective. If you’re familiar with Apollo, you could create “Multi-Reddits” for a custom feed with any subs you put in each Multi-Reddit. It was super useful. I had one for gaming, one for news, one for cats. In this case where so many have the same name, it would be helpful to have a reminder label when you comment or post so you see exactly where you’re posting, and maybe a helpful link to the sidebar so you can double check the rules for that particular community. Maybe the Lemmy devs will even add an option for the communities to group together on their end somehow, someday, while still maintaining their decentralized independence.
The sky’s the limit for what may happen in the coming months/years, and improvements are happening fast. For now, enjoy the fact that there are many community options. I don’t see it as a problem, but a feature of decentralization.
You can always group them yourself, if you want, by creating a different account for each topic you’re interested in and only subscribing to a narrow number communities on that account. That way your home tab on one account would show all the gaming or cat pic communities you chose. Then switch back to your ”main” account for all the beans memes, etc.
Also, if you’re searching from your instance or in an app, you may not be seeing all the communities that exist if your instance hasn’t already connected to them. You also don’t see how many total users across all instances are subscribed - just the number of your local instance users that subscribed. So check out https://lemmyverse.net/communities for a better and more complete way to find and view communities and their stats - especially if you’re looking for the largest ones. Copy the full URL (starting with the !) and then paste it in your app’s search bar for a foolproof way to get to it.
- No
- Yes, or both
- No
It’s like the early days of Reddit. Plenty of competing subs for one topic. /r/Tech and /r/Technology
Eventually more people join one, and that one becomes more active and gets shared more, then it becomes the clear winner with way more users than the other. Just give it time
Lemmy’s decentralization is a lot like email. So, they’re as similar as a “[email protected]” mailing list and a “[email protected]” mailing list. So, completely separate, since they live on different services.
And just like public mailing lists, you can join both if you like both, join only one if you like only one, or join none if you like none. It really isn’t more complicated than that.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113
This issue tracker addresses everything you want resolved.
but:
- they’re separate
- yes
- no.
My understanding is that some instances can attract particular users for particular reasons and those instances also can have particular rules. So, by that, particular communities will have filtered/moderated posts… for example, but not limited to, political leanings, other proclivities etc
It’s not confusing at all, the names are different. Maybe just come up with something original for a domain name
Why is this comment so controversial!
