Isn’t it a bit of an annoying having repeat communities across various Lemmy instances?

Honestly, I can see why some people find it annoying but in my experience so far it's been fine. Do a sweep on lemmyverse, sub to all the communities around a given topic, never really think about which one it actually came from when I see a post in my feed.

There are some quite niche topics that have been unnecessarily split, essentially just because people want to be in charge rather than joining forces, but that's people for you and railing about it isn't gonna get us anywhere. From an end-user pov, subscribing to multiple has been fine.

I strongly prefer it.

It's a much more organic reflection of older systems. It used to be that there were local newspapers, national ones, and international ones. I want the same thing with my memes. I want a place I go to see what the hot movies and games across the world, and another where discussions are mostly people in my geography or who share a common set of tastes with me.

This idea that the internet should flatten the world into one monoculture has been, in my opinion, both naive and destructive to a lot of tastes that don't align with the dominant tastemakers.

Reddit has multiple repeat communities too, they just have different names. Just to take one example, there's /r/Canada, which got taken over by right wing assholes, /r/metacanada for those same right wing assholes to go full mask off, /r/onguardforthee for the people who didn't want to put up with the right wing assholes... You get the picture.

The fact that there are multiple overlapping communities with similar purposes can be frustrating, but it also provides layers of redundancy, which is what the fediverse is all about. We've been learning a lot of object lessons recently about the problems of putting all your eggs in one basket.

Not really. I usually just check the subscriber count and pick the larger one. Unless if they’re about the same, then I’ll sub to both. Just means I’ll see more content. Might be a bit of overlap sometimes, but not always.

Why not subscribe to them all? Content will still appear on your home feed …

There were a bunch of subreddits I was subbed to on Reddit that were effectively the same thing, even if they had different names.

Once again, this is a feature, not a bug. Two different servers, two different communities, united by a common communication protocol. This is what separates Lemmy from other Reddit clones, and what made it thrive, unlike non-federated sites who are either splintered and languishing, or attracting an unsavory audience.

I don't like it as well. People have to realize that Lemmy needs active members who are NOT part of the Nerd/tech bubble because they bring in a other type of content. I don't know enough about the feediverse protocols to know wether it's possible but what would help is if there where something like grouped communities consisting of multiple communities which are all about the same topic. Then you could search for e.g. "Cats" and it's shows you this grouped community which subscribes you to all cat content. I know that there are web based tools which already do a similar thing for a transfer from Reddit to Lemmy but those Groups would have to be integrated into Lemmy itself to be user friendly.

I'd like to point out what just happened to !android@lemmy.world.

It was closed and migrated to another instance explicitly to keep things from being "spread out".

It also happens that the instance it was moved to has extremely overbearing moderation that effectively prevents actual discussion. It's so "curated" that everything is segregated into hyper specific feeds, everything except "official" news is removed, and no one is contributing because of the overbearing rules (no questions, no memes, no "rants" i.e. don't make opinion posts).

It's controlled by the "experienced" moderation team from /r/Android, that subreddit that would get like one or two posts a day that weren't removed. It was strangled. We are supposed to defer to it this "experienced" team, hence why the lemmy.world instance has been locked. Now that instance sits pretty as having thousands of subscribers, and that will hurt the growth of smaller android groups because people gravitate towards the biggest ones and the second biggest one on lemmy.world is locked.

In essence, forced centralization. This is exactly what federation was supposed to prevent. Subverted in less than a two weeks since those communities formed.

I'm just curious, what is the harm in subscribing to both for a little bit? If you feel they post similar content you can always drop one of them. Or if one ends up 'winning' then the problem is solved.

What's more annoying to me is the few users spamming every instance non stop with "engagement" content. Like dang bro chill this isn't about karma.

I'm curious, what's your concern with subscribing to both? I had the same thought when I switched and then thought "is this just a knee jerk reaction? I can't think of a decent reason why it's that annoying when they both appear in my subs feed anyway"

I'm interested to hear why others might not like it as that might be what I'm thinking without realising.

The upside of this is that if you don't like how a particular community is being moderated, you can follow a different community about the same topic

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113

Once this lands it'll be all the positives and none of the downsides, so, meh.

To make matters worse, I'm on Beehaw, which has defederated from Lemmy.world, so I can't see the politics community on there even if I wanted to.

It's one thing having different instances, but quite another when users on one instance can't see the communities of another.

On the other hand, having two different communities does mean that people in my situation could still participate on one of those.

I found out quickly that the instance matters. California at exploding-heads is not the same thing as my California, and they won't be talking about fun hikes to do on the weekend over there.

It just feels like forums of old to me

This might have to come from the app developers. The app is the one pulling from different instances so they will have to be the one that combines things from all over into one feed

I don’t think it’s bad, every instance has slightly different moderation rules. Reddit also has multiple variations of one subreddit, like offmychest and trueoffmychest.

If one sucks we can just hop to the other one. I like it.

Reddit had duped of everything too. I’d rather subscribe to both and move my thumb a quarter centimeter to scroll past a dupe. I can deal with that.

Remember lemmy is in it's infancy still compared to reddit. I imagine as lemmy grows certain communities will end up being the more populated ones, and they will kind of become the default. The downside is that that will take time, the upside is there is always an alternative if something goes wrong.

Actually, I kind of like this aspect. I digress ... yes, there will just never be one !politics because this is the feature of the fediverse. The idea is that, should you get banned from a community for politely expressing even slight disagreement, there could be a community on a different instance for you to join or you could form your own . Sometimes mods can be heavy handed and the decentralized approach to Lemmy helps to lessen speech being stifled. Some people get some mod power and it goes to their head.

Instances are like countries that have their own values and rules. For example, technology@beehaw.org will not be the same as technology@lemmy.world. Beehaw is a heavily moderated instance, while Lemmy.world is more “free”. What can be posted on technology@lemmy.world will not necessarily be the case on technology@beehaw.org.

I expect most clients, including the official web client, to have "meta-community" support soon, which will include the ability to meta together communities with the same name on different instances.

Yes it is. But that doesn’t mean we should congeal onto one. Instead I’d strongly prefer clients being able to merge multiple communities into one feed. That way, if a node “drops” (defederated, closes, technical issue etc) the congealation (I’d like that to be the word, please) would still survive.

Discovery services could then be built around popular congealations.

It's okay for general topics like politics, news, ecc but for specific ones is just a waste to have multiple communities. Eventually, with more people joining lemmy, only one community per topic will prevail, I hope.

That is inherent with the decentralized nature of instances. Hopefully with all the new dev attention we'll get community grouping and account linking to make it a bit another. But if you don't like the power consolidation from centralized systems this is the solution, warts and all.

I like it.

One big problem with Reddit was that subreddits became personal fiefdoms of the mods that have captured them. If the same happens here, we can simply move to the same community in another server.

Fragmentation is good.

Isn’t it a bit of an annoying having repeat questions about repeat communities across various Lemmy instances?

It will work itself out. There have been splits in the past. /r/Indianapacers became /r/pacers and /r/prowrestling became /r/squaredcircle.

The real issue is having the same username on multiple instances. It's going to cause issues.

Honestly, I'm fine with it. If servers go down, we have multiple fallback communities

To be fair, this often happened on Reddit as well. I was subscribed to 6 virtual reality subs, and at least that many 3d printing.

One issue I’ve found with this model is that content is being cross posted pretty heavily, meaning I’ll see the same post by the same person 5 times in the matter of a few minutes.

I’m trying to keep in mind that it’s still early, and communities are still finding their way. The ones that form an identity will have a larger base, and will become the de facto place that posts are made.

I don't think there's a problem with that. Diversity is a good thing. I sub to both in that situation. I'm subbed here and to an ask lemmy community on .world as well.

Why does it bother you?

To be honest I don’t see the issue with multiple similar communities. It’s no different to how Reddit would have many subreddits with similar themes. For example on Reddit there were dozens of Star Wars subs so people would subscribe to them all

"Freedom of choice,

Is what you got,

Freedom from choice,

Is what you want."

DEVO
"Freedom of Coice"
Freedom of Choice
1980

No.

Why is it annoying? What would happen if you subscribed to both?

Sounds good to me. Those big default subs were always trash and prone to brigading. Not that i think there was ever a state where a general political discussion group couldn't be trash but you get what i mean

I’m subscribed to both and I’ve barely seen any posts from either. I’m hoping to start getting some diverse content from both of them.

I would rather see instances focused on topics with niche communities within them.

For example, a lemmy.POLITICS instance with communities for WORLD, US, EU, LATAM, etc

Not really - as the weeks and months go by, people will gravitate... and individual groups can update their names/descriptions if they become aware of a similar instance.

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They aren't repeat instances they are very different.

I understand why it can be beneficial but it brings so many potential complications and issues that I think on balance it would be worth trying to address it somehow, maybe through codes of conduct, policy and enhanced search and validation at the point a community is created. Wouldn't be perfect by any means, and I don't think it should be a requirement to stop duplicate communities - but as an example to prevent issues with mergers and fractured user bases, with the android community being a recent instance of a disgruntled users where an established community has been shut down and moved to another instance with no way for the existing community to reclaim their space.

There are potentially issues with community name squatting, duplicate content and cross posting, users missing out on conversation from one instance if they aren't aware of it; and when large companies start to move into the space, there will be communities swallowed up potentially, and the various issues and questions and clashes it causes.

I suspect there are also going to be issues as the site grows with where servers are located and how compliant they are with GDPR and other regulations too.

Even the getting started guide for .world (and others) mention check other instances for duplicate communities first, so it is likely something that needs to be addressed in some form.

It's a really interesting subject that will be fascinating to see how it unfolds over time!

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It's certainly the biggest annoyance to me so far. I like things to be streamlined and as simple as possible. Having multiple communities for the same topic is just messy.

Yeah. I too find it annoying.

This is federstion

Its kind of annoying seeing amazon and walmart on the same internet as well.

Yes it is annoying. And you have to create a new account on each instance to interact.