How is Lemmy dealing with multiple communities on the same topic?

I come from Reddit and been enjoying Lemmy so far. How is Lemmy dealing with multiple communities on the same topic? To me:

  • If the communities are all active, then I shall subscribe to all of them, but end up having lots of duplicate/similar posts on my feed
  • If there is one community that is dominating, then what is the point of federation?

I was subscribed to [email protected], and just because I actively went into it, I saw a post that the community was frozen and they decided to use another android community on a different server, to avoid fragmentation.

teolan,
@teolan@lemmy.world avatar

Sign up to all of them, and post to the most popular/the one that feels to be the best.

GrayBackgroundMusic,

I love how this question gets asked again and again and there really isn’t an elegant answer.

ohlaph,

That’s probably what makes it harder for people to seamlessly join.

jtk,
@jtk@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

What topic only has a single site where the community exists? I followed lots of stuff on Reddit but there were always tons of other related sites I frequented, and there still are.

Landmammals,

Sign up for as many of those communities as you want. Unsubscribe from the ones you don’t like.

hamsteronvase,

Not just that, but if I have a question about, say, Linux scripts, then I have to search fifty fucking communities names c/Linux in fifty fucking instances to find a solution.

Just because an instance has the biggest community doesn’t mean it will have an answer. So I do have to look at fifty fucking instances.

I haven’t seen a single viable argument that justifies this irritating and inconvenient situation except i LiKe fEdErAtIoN.

And for the federation fetishists, yes you can have federation AND one single c/Linux across instances.

If you don’t want to read Linux tips from lemmy.naziLinuxUsers.com then just block that instance like you would block a nazi individual on reddit.

This problem is so ridiculously easy, but for some reason the mediocre status quo always has its ardent defenders.

mtcerio,

Well said, I agree with this too.

davetapley,

I think, I hope that search engines could solve this?

dmention7,

Follow this train of thought… Would the web as a whole be better if there were one single website for Linux topics?

I haven’t seen a single viable argument that justifies this irritating and inconvenient situation

What is there to justify, and to whom? Nobody is forcing there to be multiple communities on the same topic, and if Linux users prefer a single community, nothing is stopping them from coalescing around the best one.

I get the discomfort some people might face dealing with seemingly duplicated communities, but the whole thing is such a non-issue, and is pretty much the way the democratic web has has been intended to work since forever.

Especially compared to the alternative… Some central authority who gets to shut down c/LinuxDevelopers because there is too much overlap with c/LinuxEnthusiasts? Why should there be one single Linux community and what do you propose to do if someone makes a their own slightly different flavor of Linux community?

stooovie,

I think this could be “solved” on client side. On Reddit you could (can? Idk) merge various subs to a single view, maybe clients like Memmy could do the same.

mtcerio,

Merging multiple communities like in a Reddit multisub would not solve the issue of duplicated posts in one’s feed.

lastunusedusername2,

Nothing solved that problem on Reddit either =]

mtcerio,

The way I use multis in Reddit is to create bigger topics, and I rarely see duplicated posts. For example, in Reddit I do not have a multi for subs /r/android1, /r/android2, /r/android3. However, I have a multi for mobile OSs, grouping /r/android and /r/iOS. Rarely do I see duplication.

dmention7,

Honest question: How do you currently deal with multiple news outlets reporting on the same story?

mtcerio,

That’s precisely why Reddit and Lemmy exist, they are content aggregators and people sort out the best content and comments by voting. If you are trying to make the point that I should deal with multiple duplicates posts on Lemmy in the same way I deal with multiple news outlets, then your point is equivalent to say that Lemmy is useless.

dmention7,

people sort out the best content and comments by voting

Which is exactly what will happen with “duplicate” communities.

If you are trying to make the point that I should deal with multiple duplicates posts on Lemmy in the same way I deal with multiple news outlets, then your point is equivalent to say that Lemmy is useless.

Lmao hyperbole much? My point is that you presumably don’t go complaining to the aether about the fact that your news feed is cluttered by CNN, WaPo, Vox, CNBC, etc all reporting on the Crimean bridge being blown up. You read multiple articles for perspective, or focus on the outlet you feel is more valuable and filter out the rest.

Lemmy is a platform for people to create and join communities freely, not a too-down service to actively collate and condense topics. If that makes it useless to you, then maybe you’re looking for a different platform honestly.

mtcerio,

I get your points. Thanks.

Monkeyhog,

I dont think you understand the point of Lemmy. Lack of centralization is key! And not just of instances, but communities too. Fragmentation is kind of the point.

mtcerio,

I think I do understand it. One of my points above is one community decided to merge into the other to prevent fragmentation. Not my own words, sticky post on [email protected].

Kichae,

The mods decided to merge. Don't conflate the mods with the community. Plenty of members weren't interested in migrating and merging, and they shouldn't have to participate.

There's no reason they can't stay in the old community.

mtcerio,

The “old” community was frozen.

lemmy.world/post/1117612

“Our feeling, and our decision, is that while having multiple communities for the same topic is a key strength of the fediverse, we’re keen to avoid unnecessary fragmentation for existing members and confusion for any newcomers.”

hamsteronvase,

It’s kind of the symptom of bad design.

BURN,

They haven’t. I’ve given up on finding new communities at this point since it’s a ton of work to figure out which ones are active and which ones are worth subscribing to.

It’s one of the biggest problems with the platform, despite it also being one of the biggest selling points.

HeartyBeast,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

Sounds like you might find this useful https://lemmyverse.net/communities

BURN,

While that’s useful, I’m not a fan of needing to subscribe to individual communities. I like keeping my subscribed feed to a few subs that I interact with regularly. I’m an outlier of a use case for sure, but it was the same on Reddit. Only ever subscribed to 8-10 communities, the rest were from the front pages.

kobra,

It’s a feature not a bug. Your frustration is with the fediverse and decentralization itself.

Up to you to decide if this is more or less frustrating than a CEO like spez 🤷‍♂️

hamsteronvase,

False choice fallacy. Those are not the only two choices. We can look for ways for lemmy itself to help resolve the issue.

AFKBRBChocolate,

I disagree, I haven’t found it much of an issue. I do two things:

  • Every once in a while I use Lemmy Explorer to look at what’s available and how active.
  • Sort by “All” and one of the short “Tops” or, more often, “New” to see where things I’m interested in are being posted, then subscribed to those.

I’m not sure why the duplicates are a big deal. What problems do they cause?

BURN,

Confusion and activity.

If there’s 4 different communities for my already niche community, none of the 4 are going to have decent levels of participation.

I don’t like being subscribed to a large number of communities. It gets hard to sort and read. I prefer to have my subscribed list being small and focused and then just searching for anything else, which doesn’t really work.

I hated having to discover subreddits too, so it’s nothing new for me

wjrii,
@wjrii@kbin.social avatar

I think the happy medium will be front-end functionality that allows users to collate subs into "multireddits" and have easy access to their multis. The act of subscribing to new communities is not that hard, and interacting with them is more or less seamless on a full feed. The only time I find it gets tedious is if I just want a feed of niche content. It may indeed resolve itself over time, but for now it's a bit annoying to track down my subs to 5 different woodworking communities across 4 different instances. The good thing about handling it optionally and on the front-end is that there's no need to rethink ActivityPub at all and the feature would remain useful even if certain communities become the go-to for a given topic.

JGWentworth,

This is Lemmy’s greatest weakness, in my opinion. It’s too decentralized. I want one place (Lemmy) to go to for everything about my topics of interest. Everyone keeps explaining it as “lemmy.world is like Reddit and lemmy.ml is like Twitter.” No. No it’s not. It’s all Lemmy. It’s just that there are multiple Lemmys, each with their own separate sections for each topic, and anyone can make a new Lemmy at any time. That’s a problem. I don’t want to become part of a community, no matter how big and popular it becomes, only to find out that there is a better one on a different Lemmy server and I’ve been wasting my time this whole time. This just means that if Lemmy were set up properly then that better community would have been the one that I would have found because it is easy to find and the website design lends itself to finding relevant topics of interest. Right now Lemmy is so frustrating to use. It looks worse than Old Reddit and is less user friendly than New Reddit. Lemmy will never see the popularity or usefulness that Reddit has had if it stays decentralized like this. Imagine asking your friend where on Twitter they found an interesting post and they reply, “No, no, it’s not on Twitter 35, it’s on Twitter 83.” That’s dumb as hell. We don’t need multiple Reddits, multiple Twitters, or multiple Lemmys.

habanhero,

I think you are missing the point of Lemmy if you think it’s “too decentralized”. Too many Reddit refugees are eager to bend Lemmy into some kind of Reddit-shaped clone and failed to realize the differences are mostly intentional.

I actually think that multiple communities about the same topic isn’t as big of an issue as most people make it out to be. If two “competing” communities grows to be large enough you will eventually get the similar content and it doesn’t really matter which one you sub to, unless of course if one is “toxic” then the choice is clear. And you can always sub to both.

hutchmcnugget,

I don’t disagree with you, but I think it would be cool if communities could federate too. If I’m subscribed to [email protected], it would be neat if baseball served up posts from all communities that they choose to associate with. Otherwise I would never know that there’s a sports-only instance out there that also has a huge baseball following.

habanhero,

Are you saying that if you are subscribed to a Baseball community, Lemmy should sub you to all the baseball related communities whether you consented to it or not? Is that really a good idea? And kinda sounds like you want an “algorithm” to make decisions for you.

And if you search for a “baseball” community you should see the all relevant major communities across federated instances come up anyways, so I don’t think there is a problem there.

BURN,

Tbh I do want an algorithm to make decisions for me. It’s something I’m missing a ton from Reddit/Twitter.

Discoverability is shit on this site. It’s like that because there’s no other option in the current system, but I fully believe federation won’t ever take off mainstream because it’s decentralized.

habanhero,

100% agree discoverability can be improved but I think algorithms are basically the antithesis of the Fediverse.

And it’s totally okay if Lemmy or other Fediverse apps never takes the “mainstream”. I’m totally onboard with it not going down the road of Reddit.

hutchmcnugget,

Then provide an ability to consent.

My point is that there could be a nearly identical community elsewhere that I would never know about unless the community I’m subscribed to straight up tells me it exists.

Early Lemmy adopters seem to think that being hard to use is a good thing. The algorithm boogeyman isn’t going to get you if there’s a way to subscribe to baseball@* with a blacklist.

habanhero,

If it’s nearly identical then why does it matter which one you sub to?

Being hard to use isn’t a good thing but also isn’t always a “bug”. Some of the Fediverse behaviors are by design as an antithesis to bigcorp centralization like Reddit - the point IS to have that level of autonomy and separation (instances and individualized communities).

I get that what you described isn’t exactly an argument FOR centralization but my point is it’s not as big as an issue and it will probably shake itself out. You might argue that it’s a huge blocker for Lemmy to go mainstream, but that’s not the point.

hutchmcnugget,

If you’re looking at pictures of cats, it’s not a big deal. If you’re asking for support with a niche operating system, it’s nice to know that what you’re looking at is the entirety of Lemmy’s resources without having to manually check that a new community popped up or federated in. Which is something that’s happening a lot as Lemmy gets more popular.

It’s sounds like we disagree on the benefits of decentralized communities. And I do understand your thoughts, I just think that the tools for finding content should be more automated to get the full benefit.

Have a good one

Lith,

Reddit also had this exact same issue. For every r/flashlight you’d have a r/flashlights, r/realflashlight, r/flashlight2, r/torches, r/handbright, etc. Then you’d even have niche subsubreddits like r/flashlightslightingupdarkrooms. I never really considered this a problem because I like having different options available to me. I never really see the same thing posted enough times for it to be a problem, so usually it’s just twice as much content to subscribe to both, which I’m happy with. I wouldn’t really consider communities to be competing with each other, and the redundancy is actually really nice as a user. You’re free to only subscribe to the community you like more if you really want to limit your subscriptions for some reason.

HipPriest,

Whenever someone brings this up, which seems to be daily, I just think of the amount of different subs I was on Reddit for for the same or similar things and think well it's not really that different. There were always several for reading, history etc and the same is true here so...

You can just do a quick check to see the most active group and join that one if you really just want the one which I sometimes do. Or just join loads and see which ones are best which I also sometimes do... It's all part of the fun for me but it really seems to bug some people

JGWentworth,

Wow, there was a whole conversation beneath my comment and neither lemmy.world nor the Jerboa app gave me any kind of indication that someone had replied to me. God, Lemmy fucking sucks.

habanhero,

Ouch, not even Inbox notification?

Voyager works quite well even though there is no Push.

spicycape,

Try connect for lemmy, you can enable notifications

DannyMac,
@DannyMac@lemmy.world avatar

For me, I subscribe to all the multiple ones of the same topic and let time sort out their popularity.

circuitfarmer,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I think this is ultimately the intention, and it should all work itself out. If it makes sense to have everyone eventually migrate to one community, that will happen. If not, it won’t. This is one we can actually let the Invisible Hand take care of.

Izzy,
@Izzy@lemmy.world avatar

It’s not dealt with. You subscribe to one or many of them and then your home feed will show what it shows. People should not be cross posting unless you are actively involved in multiple similar communities and intend to participate in multiple identical discussions.

If you are just posting a link, provide no thoughts of your own and then do the same in multiple other places then your post is close to worthless and is more like an ad.

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