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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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[-] mountainmycelium@beehaw.org 17 points 2 years ago

I would kill to just have some help/pointers figuring out how to navigate this... Fediverse?

I've made a couple posts, on one, maybe two, um, Instances? In the communities there?

I don't know. All this change is coming at like, the WORST time in my personal/professional life and learning a whole new world is just... Daunting. (waahhhhhh 😭)

[-] g0nz0li0@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago

I'm new too, but here's what I've learned in the last week:

You're a user of and logged into @beehaw.org. This post (and the community it was posted to) exists on the @lemmy.world instance. You can see and post to it from your beehaw.org instance, because @lemmy.world also exists in the Fediverse.

My instance is @lemmy.world, so this community/post is "local" to my instance, but in practice that's not super important. All that tells you is where I enter the fediverse, from there we're able to see and post in communities from across instances. For example, I can see communities/posts from @beehaw.org, where you are. I am subbed to a few communities there.

It's possible that a community like /c/games exists on @beehaw.org and on @lemmy.world. You would see them as games@beehaw.org and games@lemmy.world, and they are separate communities (despite having the same community name) so you can sub to one or both. OP is basically suggesting a feature to group (for example) games@beehaw.org and games@lemmy.world so that it just looks like one big community.

More experienced Lemmy and Fediversers, please correct any errors I may have made it this post!

[-] nickpeirson@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago

My instance is @lemmy.world, so this community/post is "local" to my instance, but in practice that's not super important.

I think that's generally true, however it's worth noting that what you can see from other (non-local) instances is dependent on the admin of your instance. They choose with other instances to federate (exchange data, e.g. communities, posts, comments, etc) with. If they choose not to federate with a specific instance, you won't see content from that instance.

There are already examples of this, but I don't know the details well enough to be confident in expanding on it.

[-] g0nz0li0@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Excellent point!

[-] nickpeirson@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

And as if to illustrate my point, Beehaw is no longer federated with Lemmy.world, so @mountainmycelium@beehaw.org won't be getting updates to this thread any more.

[-] g0nz0li0@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah I just read that news and thought of this comment trail! My description did not age well.

Hopefully this is just due to sudden and rapid uptake of users to the fediverse and not something that happens regular once things have settled down a little.

[-] nickpeirson@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, it's not immediately obvious what the implications of an account on a particular instance are. I think over time it should become more obvious, for example meta data about instances on lemmy instance directory sites, so users know what they're signing up for. I also think things will settle down as communities find an instance that works for them, and tools improve for more granular control over federation.

[-] XanXic@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

What do you need to know? (As I was typing this g0nz0li0 posted a reply, I'll try to mention different things)

At a low level it's not too bad, if you've gotten this far I think you've gotten through the worst of it. Things get a bit messy when you follow a link or leave your instance though. (Link replacement seems to be the #1 complaint and is extremely easy to fix though. I'd expect it to come quickly)

But for the most part just browsing the various front page at Beehaw should do you. If you're interested in communities going to https://beehaw.org/search and changing it to all will help you find them. Just be wary because they open links that aren't made for Beehaw lol. But you can hit subscribe there and then see them under communities > Subscribed and your front page will populate with them if you goto beehaw's front page (Beehaw.org) and click subscribed instead of local or all. (Which local is communities that were made ON beehaw but anyone can see those if they search for them, and All is posts from every server on the fediverse. So they could be from anything (NSFW seems to be going crazy right now so that's most of my all feed)) There's also a bug right now that new posts get added to the top so the front page experience is a bit frustrating right now.