Is it worthwhile to try to get mods to combine them? It just seems like a bit of a waste when trying to grow a community and its split in two.
Or is this what the fediverse is supposed to look like?
I read before somebody said that we might be able to combine similar communities at some point but don’t know if that’s true.
this gets asked a lot. Yes, the whole point of this platform is to be decentralized. Nothing stops you, or anyone, from following 5 different communities on the same topic. The advantages are many. Basically each instance will be able to mod with/apply different rules to their communities, they will attract different crowds (even if they overlap a lot) and they will have a different style. If one goes down, which is likely in these platforms, or if say an instance cannot be sustained anymore, or if one of the instances defederates your instance, or whatever- not all is lost. You still have all the other communities to follow.
there is a popular saying that goes, ‘‘don’t put all your eggs in the same basket’’.
Apologies if this is a repeat question. I’m not entirely sure if there is a way to search in Jerboa for similar posts but I don’t think there.
oh I didn’t mean it that way, no need to apologize. I just notice this question comes up a lot inside different communities, people often wonder why there are also two/three/N other communities and why don’t they all merge. It highlights a lot of people still expect things to be centralized even in a decentralized space. But, it’s good that you ask, so hopefully more people understand better why it’s good thing to avoid monopolies on topics.
The search function should function the same way as the search function on the official web interface. That means however, unless you’re searching the url of a specific community, it can only search for communities, comments and posts on instances it has cached. If it hasn’t had a member visit a community at least once, it won’t know it exists.
I recommend browse.feddit.de to search for communities, and for newly created communities, you can search through the posts in !newcommunities@lemmy.world
There are many other places to look, you can find multiple lists of communities that migrated from Reddit with a quick google search.
We need a feature to combine several communities into a group that we can follow in our subscriptions.
Then it wouldn’t matter anyway.
My suggestion on GitHub was to let instance admin create a local /g/ grouping, with the freedom in how they utilise a /g/ group.
Some people argued that they should be able to make it per account, like a multireddit, but the point was for new and general users having easier access to broader fediverse content.
The instance admin would only need to do some legwork at first, then they could add to it as they go along. The barrier of entry for new users finding which communities outside of their instance is substantial.
What would be the difference then between subscribing to, say, 10 different communities separately, or a group of 10 communities?
If there are 5 different instances with the same community, to subscribe to all of them you have to go find them all.
If kbin had a feature to combine them in groups like this, when you went to subscribe to one version of the community, it could let you subscribe to all of them at once. Without having to hunt them down.
I thought about that too, but I also can see a scenario where as the userbase grows, one instance’s community is seen as the “default”. I suppose the upside is that if something happens to one instance, there will be a backup of sorts on another instance - which in a way is sort one of the points of decentralisation.
Yes, that’s a risk, but it also gives communities the opportunity to migrate to a new server in case they get captured by hostile mods.
For example, my government will have presidential elections next year, and it’s trying very hard to preemptively co-opt the corresponding subreddit with propaganda. If the sub had joined the protests and their mods removed, today it would likely be captured by government people. That won’t stop them, for example, from trying to offer money to some mods in exchange for preferential treatment, or even mod privileges, but here the competition means they won’t control the sole community with the country name.
For me it doesn’t matter. I subscribe to all the communities that interest me, no matter which instance they are on.
