I had not realised this before, that there are multiple versions of the same community on different instances. For example there are multiple meme communities on different instances.
I wonder how this affects engagement considering that although there might be one large community there are several smaller ones. Perhaps not everyone assumes that there’s a larger community on a different instance.
Also how does this affect niche communities where it may be that due to high fragmentation these communities might seem unusually small.
Further, if these niche communities remain unusually smaller than there Reddit counter parts would users leave do to perhaps lack of content versus their Reddit counter parts.
This is kind of a chicken and egg - users migrate or engage the more activity there is and it may lead to discouragement if their first impression is that there isn’t content.
I don’t know I’m probably rambling and don’t know what I’m talking about.
I’ve had exactly this same thought. Doing it client-side seems easy enough, it’s just like creating a multi-reddit and then when you want to post you have to choose which instance to post in.
The hard part is probably that these communities will have different moderators and different rules which complicates things substantially.
It’s an issue that could be solved within lemmy where communities with the same name should be able to merge and show each others content.
It also happens when users join and pick the largest community at the time, which may be overtaken later but the user will never know unless they often go looking
It’s an issue that could be solved within lemmy where communities with the same name should be able to merge and show each others content.
This is bad idea though, unless if it’s an optional feature that the users themselves choose to activate (e.g
similar to multireddit, but you don’t have to manually curate the communities yourself). Imagine the same community from two opposing instances (e.g. blahaj and hexbear) somehow got merged by default. That would be an absolute shitshow. Also, how would moderation work? Those communities often have different moderation rule. Can mods from one community remove posts from another community with the same name? This would also be an absolute shitshow.
Aliasing would work here. Allow a user to create an alias “meme” community that contains multiple meme based comunities. So when a user submits content to the alias the home server can just publish it on all communities. This is only user visible, so the community itself doesn’t change… but from a user perspective you see more content under the same alias. Posts made this way could also have some additional Metadata to condense them together when you see the same post on multiple communities.
This should be an optional feature for moderators. Mods from both communities must virtually shake hands and merge their communities into one. They could tweak how cross-moderation works. If one side becomes unmanageable, the other side can cut the line and split the community again.
Genuinely sounds like a solid idea to me. There are some lingering questions - both technical and non-technical - but they’re fairly small. Such as:
How easy or hard is it to implement?
When communities merge, do their histories merge too or do only new posts show up to both? (My opinion: only new posts)
When a merged community splits, do both sides keep a full copy of the posts from the time they were merged, or do they delete the posts that were posted to the other community? (My opinion: keep the history)
Do they have to match everything - community description, exact wording of rules, graphics, exact name, etc - or do they just need to show each other’s posts? (My opinion: just show each other’s posts. It should basically be an automatic cross-post.)
Should Lemmy software make this apparent to users, or should the responsibility lie on the mods to make the announcement? This question could be asked separately for merge events, split events, and the merged steady state - i.e. should Lemmy show some info about it while the communities are merged. (My opinion: I think especially for splits, it’s important to let the users know especially if the mods want to hide it. The other cases I think it could be left up to the mods, although it would do no harm if Lemmy let you know which communities are merged)
My opinion to those questions is what I think is the “right” way to do it, but I also suspect my opinions to 2-4 are the easiest to implement.
I had not realised this before, that there are multiple versions of the same community on different instances. For example there are multiple meme communities on different instances.
I wonder how this affects engagement considering that although there might be one large community there are several smaller ones. Perhaps not everyone assumes that there’s a larger community on a different instance.
Also how does this affect niche communities where it may be that due to high fragmentation these communities might seem unusually small.
Further, if these niche communities remain unusually smaller than there Reddit counter parts would users leave do to perhaps lack of content versus their Reddit counter parts.
This is kind of a chicken and egg - users migrate or engage the more activity there is and it may lead to discouragement if their first impression is that there isn’t content.
I don’t know I’m probably rambling and don’t know what I’m talking about.
The same is true in reddit. You have multiple communities effectively about the same thing. Eventually one settles into the “primary” one
I wonder if there shouldn’t be a way of federating duplicate groups after the fact so one doesn’t have to “win”, they just all combine as one.
I thought Lemmy already had a solution for this that overlaps communities with the same name
I’ve had exactly this same thought. Doing it client-side seems easy enough, it’s just like creating a multi-reddit and then when you want to post you have to choose which instance to post in.
The hard part is probably that these communities will have different moderators and different rules which complicates things substantially.
It’s an issue that could be solved within lemmy where communities with the same name should be able to merge and show each others content.
It also happens when users join and pick the largest community at the time, which may be overtaken later but the user will never know unless they often go looking
This is bad idea though, unless if it’s an optional feature that the users themselves choose to activate (e.g similar to multireddit, but you don’t have to manually curate the communities yourself). Imagine the same community from two opposing instances (e.g. blahaj and hexbear) somehow got merged by default. That would be an absolute shitshow. Also, how would moderation work? Those communities often have different moderation rule. Can mods from one community remove posts from another community with the same name? This would also be an absolute shitshow.
To ensure maximum shitshow, when channels merge the mods only are allowed to mod users from the merged instances not their own.
Nah. Make the mods battle in a gladiatorial arena for my enjoyment. Winner get the userbase.
Aliasing would work here. Allow a user to create an alias “meme” community that contains multiple meme based comunities. So when a user submits content to the alias the home server can just publish it on all communities. This is only user visible, so the community itself doesn’t change… but from a user perspective you see more content under the same alias. Posts made this way could also have some additional Metadata to condense them together when you see the same post on multiple communities.
I like this idea as it could all be done in-browser client side.
This should be an optional feature for moderators. Mods from both communities must virtually shake hands and merge their communities into one. They could tweak how cross-moderation works. If one side becomes unmanageable, the other side can cut the line and split the community again.
Genuinely sounds like a solid idea to me. There are some lingering questions - both technical and non-technical - but they’re fairly small. Such as:
My opinion to those questions is what I think is the “right” way to do it, but I also suspect my opinions to 2-4 are the easiest to implement.
That seems like a terrible idea, mostly anyways.
Just crosspost if you feel it fits your community.