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Addressing the Exponential Growth of Communities (lemmynsfw.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by OptimusPrime@lemmynsfw.com to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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Over the past few days, I've witnessed a remarkable surge in the number of communities on browse.feddit.de. What started with 2k communities quickly grew to 4k, and now it has reached an astonishing 8k. While this exponential growth signifies a thriving platform, it also brings forth challenges such as increased fragmentation and the emergence of echo chambers. To tackle these issues, I propose the implementation of a Cross-Instance Automatic Multireddit feature within Lemmy. This feature aims to consolidate posts from communities with similar topics across all federated instances into a centralized location. By doing so, we can mitigate community fragmentation, counter the formation of echo chambers, and ultimately foster stronger community engagement. I welcome any insights or recommendations regarding the optimal implementation of this feature to ensure its effectiveness and success.

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[-] not_Justin@sh.itjust.works 49 points 2 years ago

Why not make this purely client-side? Give me the option to merge what I see as like-minded feeds into one feed. Label it and be able to scroll it as one feed. All without the need for admins or instances to do more work?

[-] OptimusPrime@lemmynsfw.com 12 points 2 years ago

Why don't you read the issue? It's in lemmy-ui, so it's clearly client-side. So just because you want to waste your time going through hundreds of instances to find similar communities, do we have to force everyone else to do the same?

[-] carpark@lemmy.world 36 points 2 years ago

Oh woah, dial it back, friend

[-] hydrospanner@vlemmy.net 22 points 2 years ago

Maybe don't take disagreement so personally?

I too would like to do this myself and not have AI or anyone else decide for me what content gets lumped together.

I predict that this is also an issue that will slowly resolve itself over time, as critical masses of users gradually coalesce around one community, or more...but only if the extras are distinct in some way...which would very specifically be made more difficult by the sort of programming you're proposing.

I'm not saying there's no merit in your suggestion, only that it may not be the one-size-fits-all solution that you seem to think it is

[-] OptimusPrime@lemmynsfw.com 9 points 2 years ago

Not taking it personally.

I would also appreciate the ability to customize, but it would be helpful to begin with a curated list of instances for each topic.

[-] Serahph@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

But who gets to curate that? How who has to sift through all of the 8000 instances and figures out the topic of each of likely thiusands of communities?

Automated sounds as though it's purely based off of the community name? How does it figure out the difference between table top gaming or video gaming or even slots/gambling?

What about football? American or the rest of the world?

What about politics? Is it left wing or right wing?

Seems like a cool idea at first, but when you get into the weeds it becomes a pretty complicated issue.