When building out the database of recommended Lemmy communities, I think it makes the most sense to prioritize the communities that belong to instances focused on a specific topic over communities that are based in a “general” instance, even if currently the community is smaller in the topic-specific instance.
For example, for an user coming from reddit and signing up via a “fediversed” instance (like alien.top) it would make more sense if they see that the anime subreddits are on ani.social, the rpg/board games are on ttrpg.network, the programming communities are on programming.dev, the basketball ones are on nba.space, the NSFW communities are on lemmynsfw, etc, etc…
This will also avoid the issue that I am currently seeing where some communities have multiple entries in the recommended database due to the initial migration where each user was just trying to replicate their favorite subreddits in their own server they signed up for.
I misspoke, what I meant was that smaller instances are more likely to have issues, and almost all of the large instances are general purpose.
Also, I believe it would be healthier to federation if we had a cleaner separation between “servers that are for communities” and “servers that are home to the end people”. […] It’s also a lot easier to say “we will block instance X because of their communities” then to say “we will block instance Y because we don’t like some of the people there”, which leads to some people getting caught in a cross-fire.
I totally agree and I think the model you are describing is the natural evolution of this platform. Lemmy.myserv.one is a good example of a server that doesn’t host local content but simply hosts user accounts for browsing the wider threadiverse. Striving towards that ideal is definitely a worthwhile goal.
However, it will take a long time to build towards that type of structure, and in the meantime we have to make the most of the current, largely haphazard scattering of servers/communities. I would just emphasize that the priority should be that recommended communities are (1) active, (2) well-moderated, (3) on topic. If those three criteria are met by multiple communities, then by all means, prioritize the communities on topic-specific instances. But I would caution against prioritizing other factors above the three that I mentioned.
Striving towards that ideal is definitely a worthwhile goal.
I’m glad we share the same view. A lot of the work on communick is to do exactly this:
- communick.news is the home of users.
- topic-based instances are created as needed on the !communick_news_network@communick.news
