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...
It sounds like community pruning is the better solution here. Users don’t need to find dead remote communities in their search results. If there are multiple active communities, that’s not an issue, and there’s no real reason to homogenize them behind lizard brain FOMO. If there’s one active community and 6 dead ones, there’s no reason for users to find any of the dead ones.
Forcibly merging communities that exist on completely different websites just because they run the same, or even just similar, software continues to scream “I want centralization”.
It sounds like community pruning is the better solution here.
This I absolutely would agree with. An option to hide communities that haven’t gotten at least X amount of activity recently, so you can find them if you want to, but there’s some kind of indication whether it’s [email protected] or programming@crickets x5 that you want to access, sounds great.
Forcibly merging communities that exist on completely different websites just because they run the same, or even just similar, software continues to scream “I want centralization
No, it’s just consolidation of activity to a sustainable level.
Those communities have no active counterpart, are they a threat to decentralization?
Yes, they are. The case of the last one is exemplar: there was a similar community elsewhere, which had grown organically from people recreating the same name Reddit sub in the manner it was over 10 years ago (memes, people talking about their real life, news); it was by far the most followed of several similar communities. Then mods/admins of a more recent instance infiltrated the successful community and convinced existing mods to shut the main community down and move to the one on that new instance. Now all that is left is selected news and orientated propaganda. The modus operandi is to bring or recreate all communities in this language to their own instance, so that they can apply their own rules on them, whereas they had zero power over the other ones. If an outside community is in zombie state, they have no interest into reviving it (it would just requires posting to generate a regular trafic, and after a while waking up a sleeping mod or request its replacement), but they are going to create the equivalent on their instance, it will probably go zombie too after un short moment since they have no interest in the subject, they just want to exert control.
There is a reason why on Usenet, parallel hierarchies (typically alt.*) came up to life beside the more successful big 8 and national hierarchies. Even in BBS time, BBSs often subscribed to 2 or 3 networks offering conferences on duplicate subjects, one was more popular than the other, but so what? There is a need for several communities on the same subject, even if one is more popular than the others; it allows people who are banned (or simply harassed or shunned) from community A to go to B and those who are banned or feeling unwelcome on B to go to A. It is the same with regular Web forums: when you get pissed at people or the mod/admin has it in for you on server A, you make an account on server B. With web forums, I have witnessed a special case and its consequences: a clique of the same 2 or 3 persons managed to infiltrate moderation on both existing large forums on the subject, and therefore could silence any other opinion than theirs. That’s the same issue as with concentration/centralisation, whether you call it consolidation or another name. It is better to keep several communities alive: even if their trafic is very scarce, there are always lurkers already present, and it is easier to revive/vivify them that way than starting from scratch as a 1-man effort, often with no way to advertise it, while the main community still lives.
Yes, they are. The case of the last one is exemplar: there was a similar community elsewhere, which had grown organically from people recreating the same name Reddit sub in the manner it was over 10 years ago (memes, people talking about their real life, news); it was by far the most followed of several similar communities. Then mods/admins of a more recent instance infiltrated the successful community and convinced existing mods to shut the main community down and move to the one on that new instance. Now all that is left is selected news and orientated propaganda.
Hey,
It seemed familiar but I had to check.
We redirected from [email protected] to [email protected] as Lemmy.world was having a lot of technical trouble at the time, and also because it was nicer to have an instance in French.
Then mods/admins of a more recent instance infiltrated the successful community and convinced existing mods to shut the main community down and move to the one on that new instance. Now all that is left is selected news and orientated propaganda.
There’s something I don’t get in this scenario: why didn’t anyone ask the mods of the old community to reopen it, to act as an alternative to the new community?
A bunch of members organized and created [email protected]. They posted about it on [email protected] and other meta communities, allowing people to join on the new community while avoiding potential censorship from the original mods
[email protected] is now by far the most of the three communities. It showed that having the option to reorganize elsewhere is good, but also that usually people will just consolidate on one community.
What prevented a similar reaction in your scenario?
Forcibly merging communities that exist on completely different websites just because they run the same, or even just similar, software continues to scream “I want centralization”.
The “merging” in Proposal 3 would be mutually opt-in by community moderators, not forced.
It sounds like community pruning is the better solution here. Users don’t need to find dead remote communities in their search results.
Who gets to determine if a community is dead or not? That seems like a form of centralization.
It sounds like community pruning is the better solution here. Users don’t need to find dead remote communities in their search results. If there are multiple active communities, that’s not an issue, and there’s no real reason to homogenize them behind lizard brain FOMO. If there’s one active community and 6 dead ones, there’s no reason for users to find any of the dead ones.
Forcibly merging communities that exist on completely different websites just because they run the same, or even just similar, software continues to scream “I want centralization”.
This I absolutely would agree with. An option to hide communities that haven’t gotten at least X amount of activity recently, so you can find them if you want to, but there’s some kind of indication whether it’s [email protected] or programming@crickets x5 that you want to access, sounds great.
https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected] still gets posted to while the instance has been gone for around 2 years
No, it’s just consolidation of activity to a sustainable level.
Consolidation happened in the past
Those communities have no active counterpart, are they a threat to decentralization?
Yes, they are. The case of the last one is exemplar: there was a similar community elsewhere, which had grown organically from people recreating the same name Reddit sub in the manner it was over 10 years ago (memes, people talking about their real life, news); it was by far the most followed of several similar communities. Then mods/admins of a more recent instance infiltrated the successful community and convinced existing mods to shut the main community down and move to the one on that new instance. Now all that is left is selected news and orientated propaganda. The modus operandi is to bring or recreate all communities in this language to their own instance, so that they can apply their own rules on them, whereas they had zero power over the other ones. If an outside community is in zombie state, they have no interest into reviving it (it would just requires posting to generate a regular trafic, and after a while waking up a sleeping mod or request its replacement), but they are going to create the equivalent on their instance, it will probably go zombie too after un short moment since they have no interest in the subject, they just want to exert control.
There is a reason why on Usenet, parallel hierarchies (typically alt.*) came up to life beside the more successful big 8 and national hierarchies. Even in BBS time, BBSs often subscribed to 2 or 3 networks offering conferences on duplicate subjects, one was more popular than the other, but so what? There is a need for several communities on the same subject, even if one is more popular than the others; it allows people who are banned (or simply harassed or shunned) from community A to go to B and those who are banned or feeling unwelcome on B to go to A. It is the same with regular Web forums: when you get pissed at people or the mod/admin has it in for you on server A, you make an account on server B. With web forums, I have witnessed a special case and its consequences: a clique of the same 2 or 3 persons managed to infiltrate moderation on both existing large forums on the subject, and therefore could silence any other opinion than theirs. That’s the same issue as with concentration/centralisation, whether you call it consolidation or another name. It is better to keep several communities alive: even if their trafic is very scarce, there are always lurkers already present, and it is easier to revive/vivify them that way than starting from scratch as a 1-man effort, often with no way to advertise it, while the main community still lives.
Hey,
It seemed familiar but I had to check. We redirected from [email protected] to [email protected] as Lemmy.world was having a lot of technical trouble at the time, and also because it was nicer to have an instance in French.
The memes still exist on [email protected] or [email protected]. Discussions moved to [email protected]
There is [email protected] , [email protected] even [email protected] or [email protected]
There are other France communities around, the most active one recently being [email protected]. There is also [email protected] and [email protected] but you said you found news boring.
What prevents you from creating [email protected] and use it to grow your own version of the community?
Edit: I was also the second mod of [email protected]. There was no infiltration.
There’s something I don’t get in this scenario: why didn’t anyone ask the mods of the old community to reopen it, to act as an alternative to the new community?
Another case in hand is the 196 story
[email protected] is now by far the most of the three communities. It showed that having the option to reorganize elsewhere is good, but also that usually people will just consolidate on one community.
What prevented a similar reaction in your scenario?
The “merging” in Proposal 3 would be mutually opt-in by community moderators, not forced.
Who gets to determine if a community is dead or not? That seems like a form of centralization.