Say what you will about reddit, at least an established subreddit was the place to gather on the topic, ie r/technology etc.
With Lemmy, doesn’t it follow that similar communities on different instances will simply dilute the userbase, for example !technology@lemmy.ml and !technology@beehaw.org. How do we best use lemmy as a (small c) community when a topic can be split amongst many (large C) Communities?
This is an earnest question, in no way am I suggesting lemmy is inferior to reddit. I’m quite enjoying myself here.
I think changing the default view for content and communities would help. Branching off is one thing and there may be a valid reason for the split. However, I wonder how many current duplicates are accidental. The current setup for Lemmy is to view Local communities by default. An intentional creation of a separate community for a reason is one thing.
Fragmentation of the communities will probably end up happening with time but I don’t know that it’s best to have things fragment early on when communities and those identities are still, in some cases, in the early stages of development.