I don’t expect the duplication to be too much more of an issue here than Reddit. The only big difference is that duplicate forums can have the same name here. I mean, how many meme subreddits were there? At least for me on beehaw, when I search for communities it shows how many subscribers there are. In this period of rapid growth, it’s certainly a bit of a crapshoot and you may need to regularly search communities to see if any take off, but I expect in the next month or so, some communities will become large and their duplicates will pretty clearly die, just like with Reddit.
That was my thought as well, or assumption. I’m new here so it will take a bit to figure out the duplication model and what floats to the top, but I’m in for the adventure. =)