Sibling communities: A middle way - sh.itjust.works
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/3508135
[https://sh.itjust.works/post/3508135] > There’s been an ongoing debate about
whether communities should combine or stay separate. Both have significant
disadvantages and advantages: > > # Combine: > > - Network effects. Smaller
communities become viable if they pool together their userbase. Communities with
more people (up to a point!) are generally more useful and fun. > -
Discoverability. Right now, I might stumble on a 50 subscriber community and not
realize everyone has abandoned it for the lively 500 subscriber community
somewhere else, maybe with a totally different name. > > # Separate: > > -
Redundancy. If a community goes down, or an instance is taken down, people can
easily move over. > - Diffusion of political power. Users can choose a different
community or instance if the current one doesn’t suit them. Mods are less likely
to get drunk on power if they have real competition. > > This isn’t an
exhaustive list, but I just want to show that each side has significant
advantages over the other. > > # Sibling communities: > > To have some of the
advantages of both approaches, how about we have official “sibling communities”?
For example, sign up for [email protected] and, along the top, it lists
[email protected] [[email protected]] as a sibling community. > > - When you
post, you have an easily accessible option to cross-post automatically to all
sibling communities. You can also set it so that only the main post allows
comments, to aggregate all comments to just one post, if that’s desirable. > -
The UI could detect sibling cross-posts and suppress multiple mentions of the
same post if you’re subscribed to multiple sibling communities, maybe with a
“cross-sibling post” designation. That way it only shows up once in your feed. >
- Both mod teams must agree to become siblings, so it can’t be forced on any
community. > - Mods of either community can also decide to suppress the cross
post if they feel it’s too spammy or not suitable for cross discussion. > - This
allows you to easily learn about all related communities without abandoning your
current one. This increases the network effects without needing to combine or
destroy communities. > > Of course, this could be more informal with just a norm
to sticky a post at the top of every community to link to related communities.
At least that way I know of the existence of other communities. I personally
prefer the official designation so that various technologies can be implemented
in the ways I mentioned.
Sibling communities: A middle way - sh.itjust.works
There’s been an ongoing debate about whether communities should combine or stay
separate. Both have significant disadvantages and advantages: # Combine: -
Network effects. Smaller communities become viable if they pool together their
userbase. Communities with more people (up to a point!) are generally more
useful and fun. - Discoverability. Right now, I might stumble on a 50 subscriber
community and not realize everyone has abandoned it for the lively 500
subscriber community somewhere else, maybe with a totally different name. #
Separate: - Redundancy. If a community goes down, or an instance is taken down,
people can easily move over. - Diffusion of political power. Users can choose a
different community or instance if the current one doesn’t suit them. Mods are
less likely to get drunk on power if they have real competition. This isn’t an
exhaustive list, but I just want to show that each side has significant
advantages over the other. # Sibling communities: To have some of the advantages
of both approaches, how about we have official “sibling communities”? For
example, sign up for [email protected] and, along the top, it lists
[email protected] [[email protected]] as a sibling community. - When you post,
you have an easily accessible option to cross-post automatically to all sibling
communities. You can also set it so that only the main post allows comments, to
aggregate all comments to just one post, if that’s desirable. - The UI could
detect sibling cross-posts and suppress multiple mentions of the same post if
you’re subscribed to multiple sibling communities, maybe with a “cross-sibling
post” designation. That way it only shows up once in your feed. - Both mod teams
must agree to become siblings, so it can’t be forced on any community. - Mods of
either community can also decide to suppress the cross post if they feel it’s
too spammy or not suitable for cross discussion. - This allows you to easily
learn about all related communities without abandoning your current one. This
increases the network effects without needing to combine or destroy communities.
Of course, this could be more informal with just a norm to sticky a post at the
top of every community to link to related communities. At least that way I know
of the existence of other communities. I personally prefer the official
designation so that various technologies can be implemented in the ways I
mentioned.
On the future of Lemmy vs reddit - sh.itjust.works
Please indulge a few shower thoughts I had: 1. I wouldn’t worry about Lemmy
having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure
of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to
be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal
people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments
on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there
are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.) 2. Lemmy
is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn’t fully set up to
take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and
gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was
rudimentary, and communities weren’t yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a
high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready. 3. Lemmy
has way more potential than reddit. Reddit’s leadership has always been
incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive
to user feedback in comparison.
