I’m seeing the federated content, but it’s hard to tell where the content came from. Currently, the only reliable way to see the source is by reading the URL when you’re viewing a thread. It doesn’t work well on mobile though and it doesn’t work for the feed.
How work everyone feel if the magazine included the source always? So instead of saying kbinMeta, you’d see [email protected]? Or would you prefer another solution?
Yes and no.
Reddit suffered from some massive subreddits that made it basically impossible to actually interact with people. You post something to the sub, no one notices it, and you get no engagement. You comment on an active post, but so do 10,000 other people, so the OP or whoever you replied to doesn’t see your comment, and doesn’t reply back.
It’s just pure noise, and you don’t get to recognize anyone, and no one gets to recognize you. There’s no repertoire building.
Smaller communities are very different, though. You actually get to see the same names pop up over and over again. People actually talk to you. You get to know peoples’ patterns and opinions, and kind of get to see them as people.
So, yes, if all you care about is adding your voice to the public record on something someone else has done, without any care for whether anyone will ever read that record, indiscriminate commenting and posting is fine. And you’re welcome to do that. But if you’re involved in a couple of different communities on the same topic, which happen to have the same handle but live on different sites, it’s really nice to know which one you’re looking at at a glance.
It matters when you decide you care about the community, not just the topic.