Mastodawn

How to fight division of the user base?

https://lemmy.world/post/91149

How to fight division of the user base? - Lemmy.world

If I understand Lemmy correctly, you can create duplicate communities on different instances. Isn’t this kinda counter productive because this may lead to less user interaction in those communities, because the user base gets split up between competing communities. Is there a way to fight this division of the (small) userbase or is this effect even desired because it leads to more tight knit communities on the different instances?

softhat Jun 13, 2023

I suspect it doesn't really matter - users can see all of the communities across all of the instances when they search, and they can choose which ones are of interest to them.

Kasrean Jun 13, 2023

it matters a lot. if something is happening you want a quick overview of big discussion and not jump between a bunch of 10 small discussion rooms.

TexMexBazooka Jun 13, 2023

Reddit has the same situation with subreddits. People will just gradually conglomerate into the largest 1-3 groups, save for the ones that can't get along with anyone who will go form their own little echo chambers.

elonspez Jun 13, 2023

Stop asking this. Reddit has this kind of problem as well but people ultimately sort it out.

animist Jun 13, 2023

Exactly. I was subbed to both meirl and me_irl without issue

Stumblinbear Jun 13, 2023

To be fair they are very different subs

animist Jun 13, 2023

Eh, I guess I was just a casual viewer bc it all seemed the same to me. Never went to the comments

Aardonyx Jun 13, 2023

The most effective solution is to search for existing communities on federated instances before creating a new one on your instance. Then new communities are ideally only made if the existing community doesn't meet your particular need or specific interest (eg. UnitedKingdom vs UKCasual), or if your instance doesn't federate with the main community.

The same dispersion of userbase is present on reddit but the more popular urls/content will eventually become clear and less popular communities will either aggregate into the main one or become more niche (eg r/games vs r/gaming).

CaptainBlagbird Jun 13, 2023

It would be nice if on creating a new community which already exists on another instance, a recommendation is displayed. Something like

/c/whatever already exists on the following instances:

lemmy.ml/c/whatever (xyz subscribers)
beehaw.org/c/whatever (ab subscribers) You would probably reach more lemmings there. Would you still like to continue creating your.insurance/c/whatever?

Right now where each instance doesn't yet know many remote instances, it's would not work that good yet, but once instances have more users that already added many remote communities it could work great.

Ghost_Seeker69 Jun 13, 2023

I think this is desired. Lemme give my case. I think r/historymemes is absolutely flooded with racism, tankies and neo-nazis, and perhaps more than the rest, colonial apologia. Reddit being centralised, I can't create another r/historymemes.

Say we have a c/historymemes in some instance. The same racism and shit happens. No problem, I can look for a new c/historymemes on some other instance that is better moderated in regards to those problems.

jarredpickles87 Jun 13, 2023

Lemme give my case.

I see what you did there.

Ghost_Seeker69 Jun 13, 2023

Didn't intend to do that, but hey...

MiddleWeigh Jun 13, 2023

They'll start to have their own cultures. People will gravitate towards one they vibe with. Sub them all for now. Some will consolidate anyway.

Chainweasel Jun 13, 2023

There were duplicate communities all over Reddit too, as long as he didn't have exactly the same name there were lots and lots of subs that had more or less the same content with overlaps of subscribers. Whenever those duplicates eventually one will pull ahead and most people will be active there.

maegul (he/they)Jun 13, 2023

Duplication happens on Reddit too. It's not intrinsically bad and has some good aspects.

Community diversity can allow for diversity in moderation, sub-culture, vibes etc.

I think a good balance can be reached here on the #threadiverse/#fediverse (ie, with decentralisation).

The real question isn't whether it will be good/bad ... it's what we can do to make it as good as possible. The key issues are around searching and surfacing communities. The lemmy software can get better in this regard. Some basic third party tools like what feddit.de have made can also help.

Parsley Jun 13, 2023

I think critical mass is needed for certain communities, and user splitting is bad for that.

maegul (he/they)Jun 13, 2023

In the early days during growth, yes I think you’re right. Adds to the frustration of people learning about federation and all that to.

maegul (he/they)Jun 14, 2023

Which gets to what we as the actual community members here can do to help in these early phases … share and collect information about what communities are gaining traction and which people should join.

For instance, there are two NBA communities I’m aware of, one on lemmy.ml, which is rather old, and one on lemmy.ml, which is very new. The old one is basically dead and everyone should go to the new one. I’ve posted this much to the old one so people know where to go.

Creating meta community communities for discussions around this can help too.

Boozilla Jun 13, 2023

I often preferred using the alternate/splinter versions of many reddit subs. When a sub got too large, the quality went down fast. I think the redundancy is maybe a good thing.

Modal Jun 13, 2023

Users who are looking for larger communities can just dogpile whatever is popular and users who aren't will find something that fits them better just as they always have. I think some people do struggle with not having the massive fire hose they are used to though but everything starts somewhere; it never was going to be everything to everyone all at once. I'm personally finding not being lost in a sea of noise to be more engaging.