Hello everyone,
Opening this thread as a kind of follow-up on my thread yesterday about the drop in monthly active users on !fediverse@lemmy.ml.
As I pointed in the thread, I personally think that having some consolidated core communities would be a better solution for content discovery, information being posted only once, and overall community activity.
One of the examples of the issue of having two (or more) exactly similar Fediverse communities (!fediverse@lemmy.world and !fediverse@lemmy.ml ) is that is leads to
- people having to subscribe to both to see the content
- posters having to crosspost to both
- comment being spread across the crossposts instead of having all of the discussion and reactions happening in the same place.
I am very well aware of the decentralized aspect of Lemmy being one of its core features, but it seems that it can be detrimental when the co-existing communities are exactly the same.
We are talking about different news seen from the US or Europe, or a piece of news discussed in places with different political orientations.
The two Fediverse communities look identical, there is no specific editorial line. The difference in the audience is due to the federation decisions of the instances, but that’s pretty much it, and as the topic of the community is the Fediverse itself, the community should probably be the one accessible from most of the Fediverse users.
What do you think?
Also, as a reminder, please be respectful in the comments, it’s either one of the rules of the community or the instance. Disagreeing is fine, but no need to be disrespectful.
Did I just read a complaint about cross-instance posting, that was cross-instance posted?
people having to subscribe to both to see the content
Not a problem. Just subscribe to both. It’s no big deal.
posters having to crosspost to both
Don’t do this! The above “issue” already solves this. If I want to see posts from both communities, I’ll subscribe to both communities. Posting the same content in both will cause me to see duplicates.
The issue is that due to the different defederation policies, if you want to communicate to the whole fediverse audience, you need to both.
Hexbear, the 8th largest Lemmy instance, cannot access !fediverse@lemmy.world. They have to access !fediverse@lemmy.ml.
On the other side, some users don’t want to subscribe to the .ml version due to the political background of the instance.
So in the end anyone posting have to do it twice, otherwise the audience they want to reach won’t see their content.
Posting the same content in both will cause me to see duplicates.
That’s exactly one of the issues I was pointing out in the post. There should be a unique !fediverse community. But as soon as you suggest this idea, people come saying that the only one should be their one (see above). Which brings you to the audience fragmentation.
I think Lemmy should come up with a meta cross post type. Where the post only exists once, but it’s indexed in multiple communities, and moderators of those communities can remove the cross post. Without affecting the original post
Kind of like a symbolic link
If not that then give us the ability to have relative references to posts inside of Lemmy. Instead of referencing a URL to a specific instance, kind of like the ! Or @ for for community names and usernames.
Then across post could at least link to the canonical discussion for talking.
I think Lemmy should come up with a meta cross post type. Where the post only exists once, but it’s indexed in multiple communities, and moderators of those communities can remove the cross post. Without affecting the original post.
This is effectively how the Community-following-Community proposal works. I’ll repost what I commented in this thread:
I still believe the best solution is the ability for Communities to follow other Communities. That is essentially a fully automated version of this sibling proposal.
This has been explained in great detail by ‘jamon’ here:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113#issuecomment-1595273502
This basically lets Communities opt to federate directly with other Communities, abiding by the same network dynamics as the fediverse at large, I.e. cross-network moderation by (de)federation.
Here’s a succinct description of the problem that C-C following solves:
If you are an active user (not moderator) of Lemmy, the requirement for this becomes apparent almost immediately. One of the biggest strengths of these forum are communities-at-scale. Being able to easily post and interact with large groups of people is the benefit to the user that makes Lemmy (and all other social media) appealing.
As a user, I recently wanted to post to AskLemmy. Almost every single instance has thier own separate AskLemmy implementation. Naturally, I’d tend to post to the one with the most users. But inherently, I’m missing the majority of users by only being able to post to one. I.E., I posted to AskLemmy@lemmy.ml (which had 3k users), but by doing that, I’m missing out on the users from lemm.ee, behaw, lemmy.world which in total are far more than 3k.
There is already a FEP for this functionality: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-d36d-sharing-content-across-federated-forums/3366?u=erlend_sh
To be fair, to some of us this is a feature not a bug.
A technology post on a technology/infosec/IT focused instance seems to have a COMPLETELY different focus and conversation than one on the larger instances, for example and I don’t want those mixed in with people saying that AI is a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
There are smaller dedicated art focused instances popping up too. I’d expect that they’re going to have a better set of conversations around those subjects than the same threads on a general instance and I don’t want those mixed up.
If it’s a subject I really want to see a lot of discussion about, I’ll look at multiple threads… can this mean that some subjects won’t have as good of a conversation because people aren’t bouncing off of each other? Yeah, absolutely and that frankly SUCKS, but, as stated, it also means that some of the niche conversations have a chance to grow where they may have previously just been unseen due to how many people are talking.
To me, they’re on different instances for a reason, let it grow organically. The ones that stand out will wind up being the main ones people use.
As for amount of users. A decent amount of those are likely alts people created when instances were having problems or just to try out the different locations.
Or, people just didn’t like the Fediverse for all the reasons you stated, which is also possible, but I don’t necessarily think chasing numbers should be the end all goalA technology post on a technology/infosec/IT focused instance seems to have a COMPLETELY different focus and conversation than one on the larger instances, for example and I don’t want those mixed in with people saying that AI is a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
Completely agree, and I mentioned that in the post as well.
The issue with the current two Fediverse communities on . world and .ml is that they are pretty much the same. There is no adding values in posting and discussing the same things twice.
Yeah, but, I don’t see how that really changes anything.
On a smaller instance (or one that’s defederated from others … in either direction), that might very well completely shift focuses.
For the Fediverse specific community, if you want one with the most chance of getting to the developers, use the instance that they’re on, otherwise, I’d think to just let the cultures develop and diverge naturally as they’re likely to.
I think the issue I have is that I feel that in the last few days, the content seems more stale.
That’s why I had a look at active users and noted that we were fewer.
One potential way to address this would be to have one community to be the announcement one to the rest of the Fediverse.
Today, it feels like getting information to people is a hassle. They arrive on the platform, they subscribe to the top communities, and then what? How are they supposed to learn about LASIM, that if they move to a smaller instance for better performance they might have to ask their admin to run LCS to get a populated All feed, that they can have a look at !trendingcommunities@feddit.nl for rising communities?
We probably lack a reference website to answer all of these questions.
The solution is to stop subscribing to one of them. Eventually, if people follow this method, one will die out.
If the content is the same on each one with prime cross posting each time, then you aren’t missing anything anyway
The issue is that due to the different defederation policies, some of the users don’t really have a choice.
Hexbear, the 8th largest Lemmy instance, cannot access !fediverse@lemmy.world. They have to access !fediverse@lemmy.ml.
On the other side, some users don’t want to subscribe to the LW version due to some decision of the LW admins.
So in the end anyone posting have to do it twice. And when it gets to cumbersome to post, people just stop doing that and go back to Reddit when it’s more simple.
Edit: also see this type of comments
I wish apps would hide duplicate posts. People that crosspost everything results in my feed having double everything because I subscribe to both. It’s super annoying, and I’m tempted to leave one of them, but I don’t want to miss anything because they’re comparable in size.
Maybe you didn’t understand what I wrote? Stop subscribing to both. Only interact with one. If that’s the one people agree with, the other will die.
There is literally no reason to cross post to both of them. Stop doing that. Stop subscribing to both. Pick one and let the other die. The entire reason there are two is because you keep subscribing and posting to both of them. It will continue to be that way until you be the change you want to see.
If your instance has defederated, maybe it’s time to find a new instance that isn’t a POS? Every user has a choice. You can choose to go to an instance that isn’t reactionary and arbitrary in their defederation policies. The whole point of the Fediverse is so you DO have a choice; that’s the foundation of the entire Fediverse. There are many instances that are federated with both if you are wanting content from both. Just because one instance defederates from another doesn’t somehow now make you beholden to one instance.
Well, it seems like you didn’t understand what I wrote either.
Stop subscribing to both. Pick one and let the other die.
User A on Hexbear doesn’t have to choose, he can only access to lemmy.ml. He posts there. He has no option to choose the other one due to the defederation.
User B on Lemmy.world chooses lemmy.world. He posts there.
If that’s the one people agree with, the other will die.
How is any of those communities going to die if people keep posting to both?
