I’ve noticed in the explosion that we are getting duplicate communities in multiple instances. This is ultimately gonna hinder community growth as eventually communities like ‘cats’ will exist in hundreds of places all with their own micro groups, and some users will end up subscribing to duplicates in their list.
A: could we figure out a system to let our communities know about the duplicates as a sticky so that users can better find each other?
B: I think this is the best solution, could a ‘super community’ method be developed under which communities can join or be parented to under that umbrella and allow us to subscribe to the super community under which the smaller ones nest as subs? This would allow the communities to stay somewhat fractured across multiple instances which can in turn protect a community from going dark if a server dies, while still keeping the broader audience together withing a syndicated feed?
It needs to work both ways to have real utility for advanced user topics. Having a distributed community limits the chances of accessing useful specialization for fringe topics. This is the main reason I started using reddit.
Like I start asking questions on reddit about optimising the Linux CPU scheduler and most people haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about. Within 12 hours I get a post with someone’s 59 page thesis covering the exact subject in more detail than I would ever find on my own. The more divided the group is, the less likely one is to encounter specialization, and therefore the less utility of the platform. Bridging users can’t fill the information gap.