I still have no idea how Lemmy really works, and I had to sign up for this instance - I don’t know, I don’t see a platform growing on that. But maybe that’s the point. I’m trying to engage though! The Voyager app’s “import sub” feature from Reddit is brilliant.
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Fedigrow
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To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks
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- https://lemmy-federate.com/ to federate your community to a lot of instances
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- !reddit@lemmy.world to keep tabs on where new users might come from :)
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This was already touched on earlier, but I wanted to add on a bit:
The idea comes from how Reddit handles it (MultiReddits) but from my experience it's a feature not many people made use of, and it sounds like a pain to have to constantly create and manage new multi-communities to group together duplicate communities. This shouldn't be a task that users have to manually do.
This is a pretty bad or maybe just naive take that IMO doesn't sum things in a productive way upon Multi-Reddits. That is-- 1) it arguably doesn't matter a bit how many people make use of it, as each person's MR is going to be a custom affair, and it works at the individual user level anyway, 2) on the contrary, it's no trouble at all to build your MR's either quickly or painstakingly, and you can spread that effort across weeks, months and even years. In the end, I find MR's fantastically useful as super-custom feeds that you can use to stay focused on a tight range of topics.
Unfortunately, these kinds of half-baked conclusions tend to suggest to me that OP doesn't have a whole lot of familiarity with either platform at this time. That said, there's a lot of interesting ideas in the article, it's just a little disappointing in various places.
IDK, man. It's not that hard to just check a few of the communities and see which ones are active, and then post to those ones. And the benefit you get, for asking people to take literally a couple of minutes of effort to sort out how to get involved with some particular topic, is pretty significant.
I'm not trying to say not to make good solutions to it, but also, trying to make everything maximally easy carries a significant down side, in that it attracts people who want to put minimal effort into everything (including their posts and their interactions with others once they've arrived on the network.)
There are only so many of us posting here.
The day we get 10 different people posting about quite popular topics like movies, then sure. But having the current split while there are 5 people posting for the entire platform seems counterproductive.
Another example I have is !privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !privacy@programming.dev. Both communities have similar rules, instances are similar, everything is similar.
There is one poster there that seems to prefer the programming.dev one, so I have to crosspost everything they post to the dbzer0 one so that people subbed to that one don't miiss anything.
!movies@lemmy.world is a bit similar. It's mostly a one-person show (rough estimation, 80% of the posts are one person), but they wouldn't move to !movies@lemm.ee, while we have discussion posts, active mods, everything.
So sure, it's not that hard, but it doesn't mean that people will do it.
It sounds like community pruning is the better solution here. Users don't need to find dead remote communities in their search results. If there are multiple active communities, that's not an issue, and there's no real reason to homogenize them behind lizard brain FOMO. If there's one active community and 6 dead ones, there's no reason for users to find any of the dead ones.
Forcibly merging communities that exist on completely different websites just because they run the same, or even just similar, software continues to scream "I want centralization".
Forcibly merging communities that exist on completely different websites just because they run the same, or even just similar, software continues to scream “I want centralization
No, it's just consolidation of activity to a sustainable level.
Consolidation happened in the past
Those communities have no active counterpart, are they a threat to decentralization?
Those communities have no active counterpart, are they a threat to decentralization?
Yes, they are. The case of the last one is exemplar: there was a similar community elsewhere, which had grown organically from people recreating the same name Reddit sub in the manner it was over 10 years ago (memes, people talking about their real life, news); it was by far the most followed of several similar communities. Then mods/admins of a more recent instance infiltrated the successful community and convinced existing mods to shut the main community down and move to the one on that new instance. Now all that is left is selected news and orientated propaganda. The modus operandi is to bring or recreate all communities in this language to their own instance, so that they can apply their own rules on them, whereas they had zero power over the other ones. If an outside community is in zombie state, they have no interest into reviving it (it would just requires posting to generate a regular trafic, and after a while waking up a sleeping mod or request its replacement), but they are going to create the equivalent on their instance, it will probably go zombie too after un short moment since they have no interest in the subject, they just want to exert control.
There is a reason why on Usenet, parallel hierarchies (typically alt.*) came up to life beside the more successful big 8 and national hierarchies. Even in BBS time, BBSs often subscribed to 2 or 3 networks offering conferences on duplicate subjects, one was more popular than the other, but so what? There is a need for several communities on the same subject, even if one is more popular than the others; it allows people who are banned (or simply harassed or shunned) from community A to go to B and those who are banned or feeling unwelcome on B to go to A. It is the same with regular Web forums: when you get pissed at people or the mod/admin has it in for you on server A, you make an account on server B. With web forums, I have witnessed a special case and its consequences: a clique of the same 2 or 3 persons managed to infiltrate moderation on both existing large forums on the subject, and therefore could silence any other opinion than theirs. That's the same issue as with concentration/centralisation, whether you call it consolidation or another name. It is better to keep several communities alive: even if their trafic is very scarce, there are always lurkers already present, and it is easier to revive/vivify them that way than starting from scratch as a 1-man effort, often with no way to advertise it, while the main community still lives.
Yes, they are. The case of the last one is exemplar: there was a similar community elsewhere, which had grown organically from people recreating the same name Reddit sub in the manner it was over 10 years ago (memes, people talking about their real life, news); it was by far the most followed of several similar communities. Then mods/admins of a more recent instance infiltrated the successful community and convinced existing mods to shut the main community down and move to the one on that new instance. Now all that is left is selected news and orientated propaganda.
Hey,
It seemed familiar but I had to check. We redirected from !france@lemmy.world to !france@jlai.lu as Lemmy.world was having a lot of technical trouble at the time, and also because it was nicer to have an instance in French.
The memes still exist on !rance@jlai.lu or !actu_memes@jlai.lu. Discussions moved to !forumlibre@jlai.lu
There is !jeuxvideo@jlai.lu , !musique@jlai.lu even !artsdufil@jlai.lu or !interessant@jlai.lu
There are other France communities around, the most active one recently being !france@sh.itjust.works. There is also !neofrance@lemmy.world and !actualite@lemmy.world but you said you found news boring.
What prevents you from creating !france@lemm.ee and use it to grow your own version of the community?
Edit: I was also the second mod of !france@lemmy.world. There was no infiltration.
Then mods/admins of a more recent instance infiltrated the successful community and convinced existing mods to shut the main community down and move to the one on that new instance. Now all that is left is selected news and orientated propaganda.
There's something I don't get in this scenario: why didn't anyone ask the mods of the old community to reopen it, to act as an alternative to the new community?
Another case in hand is the 196 story
- !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone mods wanted to move the community to !196@lemmy.world without asking the community first
- A bunch of members organized and created !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone. They posted about it on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and other meta communities, allowing people to join on the new community while avoiding potential censorship from the original mods
!onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone is now by far the most of the three communities. It showed that having the option to reorganize elsewhere is good, but also that usually people will just consolidate on one community.
What prevented a similar reaction in your scenario?
It sounds like community pruning is the better solution here.
This I absolutely would agree with. An option to hide communities that haven't gotten at least X amount of activity recently, so you can find them if you want to, but there's some kind of indication whether it's programming@super.active.place or programming@crickets x5 that you want to access, sounds great.
https://lemmy.world/c/moviesandtv@lemmy.film still gets posted to while the instance has been gone for around 2 years
I think I just see the problem as a little different than "how can we make things easy for people." A lot of modern web design is "make it as easy as possible," but I don't think that actually always leads to the best experience. I really liked the take that the video I posted has on it.
If I had to describe the underlying problems with Lemmy, they would include things like "How do we stop anonymous accounts from being obnoxious" or "How can we put more of the control of people's experience in their own hands, instead of having moderators being able to 'override' a consenting communication between two people who want to have it." Both of those, I feel like, may actually involve making things harder for the average user to come onboard and figure out what's going on, or navigate the system effectively. But then if they're able to overcome that (honestly, pretty modest) obstacle, the end result is better. In my view that is ok. There's other stuff than just making it easy.
That's another improvement area indeed, but not thar related to choice paralysis linked to parallel similar communities existing
I quite agree with the issue described and I 100% agree it's a critical one but, because none of the proposed solution seem to be ideal, I'm also wondering if this doesn't end up saying the right model, right in the sense that it will work with/feel much more simpler to most users, is a centralized system and not a federated one?
is a centralized system
So... Reddit? With the cancelled third-party apps, the visible ads, the ads hiding as posts, the powertripping mods (but unpaid as well), the algorithm trying to get the most "engagement" by showing hateful content?
So… Reddit?
I don't know, I just shared agut feeling while reading the OP. And I'm not saying it's what we should thrive for, just sharing that gut feeling about what, like I said, I consider a critical issue on Lemmy.
With the cancelled third-party apps, the visible ads, the ads hiding as posts, the powertripping mods (but unpaid as well), the algorithm trying to get the most “engagement” by showing hateful content?
That's a whole other discussion imho. But if you want to discuss about that:
- I only talked about a centralized system (aka, a unified one) and, once again, I did not say it was the solution only that it felt like that while I was reading the post. As far as I know, centralization does not imply the obligation to rely on algorithm (and ads, paywalls, or nothing dirty like that).
- As far as mods abusing their power is an issue (it is), I think we do have a few on Lemmy too. Isn't there a community dedicated to that issue?
- Ditto for the 'hateful content' (and I would add the extremely low effort posts too), it was a pain on Reddit, it's a pain on Lemmy too there is just of it on Lemmy because there are less of us posting ;)
I consider the Reddit default home page an insult to any half-working brain but I would not be much more sympathetic to Lemmy's default feed either. I remember we briefly discussed that already: I'd rather see an empty feed by default, with only a short-ish selection of very broad categories the user would pick from to start seeing content that they're interested in. And only that content, not all the crap. They would then be able to start fine tuning their selection. Something like that. - Reducing Reddit to what you listed here would be... unfair to the great content and great discussion one can easily find over there. As an ex-Reddit user, after an adaptation time (learning how to get rid of the default crap feed and how to remove the crap ads, learning what subs were better ignored) I had a great time using Reddit (and that is despite its poor UI). I did not quit using it because of the flow of hate or the flow of moronic content, nor because of abusive mods (quite the opposite, I appreciated their work... thx to fine selection of the few subs I was subscribed to). I did not quit reddit for that, no more than I would quit Lemmy for those flaws either. I left because I hated how Reddit, the corporation, took hold of our content and started restricting access to our content in order to negotiate deals with partners. And started talking about paywalling some of it. I briefly explained it as a last post on my Reddit profile and I close the door behind me.
But I do miss those interesting discussions I had, and I miss a few subs too (r/Simpleliving, would be the first one I would mention).
If I was not admitting I miss that I would be a liar. - I also find it difficult to motivate/encourage more people to join and participate here on Lemmy because I'm myself constantly faced with the 'messy' aspects of Lemmy. I'm stubborn and I decided I could live with them (happily) but I also know many people are not ok with that and it's unlikely they ever will.
Hence me agreeing with the OP: Lemmy being as fragmented as it is is a critical issue.
Hence, the second part of my comment: it feels to me that the only easy/obvious solution is to rely on a centralized system. I'm not saying it's what should be done (I would not be part of the fediverse if I had no desire to see an alternative to that centralization). I may be wrong in that, most probably I'm (I have no technical expertise) but it still is what I felt while reading the post. Nothing more.
And for the rest, let the downvoters enjoy their very own moment of power ;)
. I left because I hated how Reddit, the corporation, took hold of our content and started restricting access to our content in order to negotiate deals with partners.
But how do you prevent this from happening if the content is centralized?
Let's imagine there's only one lemmy.net
Once we reach a big enough population (not a given, Discuit is still doing 210 weekly active users) , a company comes in, makes the owners an offer they can't refuse, and they do what you criticize in your previous comment
But how do you prevent this from happening if the content is centralized?
I have no idea and like (I think) I said, I'm not even sure that's an option we should consider. It's just it feels likes there is this path circling back to centralization and that makes me wonder.
Once we reach a big enough population (not a given, Discuit is still doing 210 weekly active users) , a company comes in, makes the owners an offer they can’t refuse, and they do what you criticize in your previous comment
That's why I (want to) believe in the fediverse. If something like that were to happen and that's also why I'm not sure centralization is a solution.
Multicommunities are/grouping communities is being discussed in this issue atm:
Duplicates are a minor issue. That said, solution #2 (multi-comms) is considerably better than #3 (comms following comms).
The problems with #3 are:
- Topics are almost never as discrete as the author pretends them to be. Often they overlap, but only partially.
- Different comms have different rules, and in this situation rule enforcement becomes a mess.
There's no good solution for that. On the other hand, the problems the author associates with #2 are easy to solve, if users are allowed to share their multi-comms with each other as links:
- a new user might not know which comms to follow, but they can simply copy a multi-comm from someone who does
- good multi-comms are organically shared by users back and forth
Additionally, multi-comms address the root issue. The root issue is not that you got duplicate communities; it's that communities in general, even without duplicates, are hard to discover. Also note that the root issue is not exclusive to federated platforms, it pops up in Reddit too; it's a consequence of users being able to create comms by themselves.
About #1 (merging communities): to a certain extent users already do this. Nothing stops you from locking [!pancakes@a.com](/c/pancakes@a.com) with a pinned thread like "go to [!pancakes@b.com](/c/pancakes@b.com)".
This is a minor part of the text, but I feel in the mood to address it:
I post once to gauge interest then never post again because I got choice paralysis
The same users who get "choice paralysis" from deciding where to post are, typically, the ones who: can't be arsed to check rules before posting, can't be arsed to understand what someone else said before screeching, comment idiotic single-liners that add nothing but noise, whine "wah, TL;DR!" at anything with 100+ chars... because all those things backtrack to the same mindset: "thinking is too hard lol. I'm entitled to speak my empty mind, without thinking if I'm contributing or not lmao."
Is this really the sort of new user that we old users want to welcome here? Growth is important, but unrestricted growth regardless of cost is cancer.
The same users who get “choice paralysis” from deciding where to post are, typically, the ones who
I'm not so sure. I sometimes have choice paralysis again on a topic I'm not familiar with, and I'm sure quite a lot of other people do as well
I'm sure plenty exceptions exist - that's why I said "typically", it's that sort of generalisation that applies less to real individuals and more to an abstract "typical user".
@threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works , which is quite active as well, has a similar experience: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39248886/17090166
To me, choice paralysis happens to most of people, whatever their familiarity level with the platform. I would actually be worried if someone knew exactly where to post for any topic, because it would mean they probably just default to their home instance
I've personally developed my system as:
- If there are multiple communities, which is the most popular?
- If the most popular community is on a problematic instance, skip to the next most popular that is also on a good instance.
That takes away the paralysis, at least for me.
What do you do when there are two similarly active communities?
Hm, I can't recall encountering that yet, but I can see how that would be a harder one to decide. I suppose I might cycle between them.
!android@lemmy.world and !android@lemdro.id comes to mind
I try to avoid posting to .world if there's a viable alternative, personally, so I'd opt for lemdro.id consistantly. I do the same with the videos communities, where I've been trying to boost !videos@sopuli.xyz instead of posting to videos at .world.
But if it wasn't .world, the situation wouldn't be ideal, and I'd support combining the communities if the mods were down for it.
I've raised the issue to the LW mods a few months ago, they told me they were not interested in merging. The active mods being on the LW staff, it make sense.
That's unfortunate :(
Post on the one with the most recent post.
Fully agree with solution three, federated communities is the way. Solution two is just dumb and is basically just the subbed feed
I still think multi-communities would be a good feature, even if not for this particular problem. (For example, to a have a dedicated "music" feed that includes several communities for different music styles you are interested in.)
But if you sub to all of them then there is zero need for such a feed. It adds extra work of making the feed and having to select the feed. There is barely enough content for viewing subscribed my new, why split a post or two a day into a separate feed?
i literally just want it to work like it does on matrix: a room (community in this instance) is an independent thing that exists on all servers with users participating in it, and then each server can also assign aliases to the rooms (communities) like how we assign domain names to IP addresses, of which the room (community) admins can set one to be the main alias which is generally displayed in UIs.
so a community called "bagels stacked on dogs" could have aliases like #bagelsondogs:lemmy.chat, #bageldogs:lemmy.chat, #bagelsondogs:discuss.dogchat.com, #bagelson:dogs.net, etc etc and the community admins would of course want to set #bagelson:dogs.net to be the main way to reference the community.
How would modding work on that? I'm not sure I fully understand.
it works exactly like it does now, afaik
So it’s essentially federated communities?
i'm pretty sure communities are federated right now, it's just that they only have a single ID which can never change. I think the way acitivitypub works it's basically just posting to different "topics" under the hood?
Thank you @popcar2@programming.dev
Oh hey, it's been a while since I've written this. Thanks for sharing it again. When I posted it last year to the fediverse community, people were not ready for it.
How hard would it be to set up some default community "pools"? More or less like multireddits I guess.
Piefed, man
Piefed is better
It would be nice if they took what piefed built out. It's a pretty nice system!
If communities are similar, why not consolidate?
!football@lemmy.world even used a script to ping everyone
Because that defeats the purpose of Federation. If one of the communities becomes infiltrated with nazis or whatever they can be defederated and removed from the the base "pool".
Say you have a base pool of communities for all "motorcycle" related content. Anything from MotoGP stuff to general dirtbike stuff, who knows. Of course there are going to be some communities about Harleys in there and of course one of those is going to inevitably skew towards white nationalist nonsense. Well there ya go that's out of the pool with that BS and everyone else gets to go about their day.
If they want to create their own motorcycle pool of communities then so be it but they don't need to infect the rest of the of us.
But in your scenario, all the communities have different niches: GP, dirtbike, Harley
In the article, the scenario is taken about identical communities, like !movies@lemmy.world and !movies@lemm.ee
Of course if at some point nazis invade people should migrate, but that doesn't mean you should keep both active at the same time (also, nazis could invade both in parallel, not sure how that solves the issue here)
I think the community subscription model in the article fixes this (imperfectly). Pancakepurists@a.com can have strict rules while pancakeparty@b.com could subscribe to it and pancakepurists could subscribe back with the understanding that the rules are slightly different there. Pancakechaos@nazi.assholes could similarly link to both those without either having to be mutually interactive.
I think the problem comes from some increased moderation loads by allowing a community to follow another. If I were to put on my paranoid hat it could be used to monitor and brigade a community. I think the solution for that is moderation tools. Banning instances, federation etc. I'm not a mod anywhere so I don't know what is possible.
I was actually thinking of something similar a few days ago. The conclusion I came to is "comms as users."
Communities being able to follow other communities is part of that. I think it'd be great.