How do we deal with similar communities on different Lemmy instances?

Say what you will about reddit, at least an established subreddit was the place to gather on the topic, ie r/technology etc.

This premise on which your question is based isn't actually true though. There's /r/technology and also /r/tech. There's /r/DnD and also /r/dndnext. As of recently, for some reason there are like 35 nearly identical amitheasshole subreddits with different names.

I feel like what you're observing is just that reddit communities are mature, people have had time to gravitate to whichever community is more active or has better quality moderation and so there is generally a "winner" sub with more participation because... unless there's a major problem with the bigger sub it tends to be more interesting than a less well-trafficked sub.

Lemmy, in contrast, is still fairly wild-west. Most communities are not very active and have only a few subscribers. If a competing community with an overlapping topic appears, folks are willing to subscribe to it just in case it takes off. If Lemmy continues to retain a healthy number of users, I expect in most cases that consolidation would set in unless there were major differences in moderation policy or something else that splits the community into factions that align across server or community boundaries... and over time you'll see a similar layout of one or two dominant communities and a long tail of tiny ones that few pay attention to.

I think people, including u/spez, are not remembering how fluid a lot of subs were on reddit. The large subs grew to where they were by luck and good moderation, they weren't/aren't immune to upset, and reddit maintains/ed several smaller competing communities for every main one (games, gaming, truegaming). The same will happen here eventually but we need time to see who's actually running the best communities, not whoever got to the name technology on the largest instance first.

Edit: sorry for necroing this thread, I didn't notice how old it was.

Maybe that's a good idea. Going to /C/technology shows a view of all /c/technology sub's that the instance is aware of :)

Posting to /C/technology would just post to your instances /c/technology

Or maybe differentiate between communities and topics? /t/technology aggregates all the communities around technology? That would be cool IMO

This is a great idea but I see problems with it. Someone has to define the topics but this can be done by name matching. The bigger problem is the decentralized nature of Lemmy. Every server has to scan every other server for the communities to create a topic. Now let’s say we have 10 servers and each of them will have to fetch from the other 9 servers the communities list. This would already be 90 requests sent global. Now scale this up to 1000 and a single server will have to send 999 requests and respond to 999.

Edit: Currently we have over 1426 servers

I don't think people know (how end-users will cope with the distributed choices of Lemmy). Reddit 2023 is nothing at all like Lemmy. One could be considered a household name for regular users of the Internet, the other a return to something more like FidoNet.

I come from the BBS days of the early 1980's and even social media radio before that. I come from IRL user group meetings, held at public library and after-hours company meeting rooms. It has always bothered me that current-day subreddits have mostly no identity to the moderators and that moderation is often behind the scenes.

I guess it's like "corporate experience" that people expect this day in society... that you can walk into a generic franchise chain bar and grill and not really care who the owner/operator and bouncers are of your hangout. Anyone can start a topic/ conversation and there is just some anonymous janitorial crew who is supposed to clean up the overflowing mess if (non-venue) spam or hate messages enter into the space.

The mechanisms of who pays for the venue and the moderators also was a topic most people never bothered to think about. Like it was some taxpayer-funded city park and perhaps the admin police might spot check if anyone was causing a tragedy in that there commons. But reality is that it was a profit-seeking venue charging a cover charge in the form of selling copies of your contribution and changing the tone of your meeting space by controlling the jukebox that visitors hear in terms of advertising messages inserted into the conversation space.

Lemmy seems small, owner/operator focused, and you get a sense that each instance is like some small bar and grill where you can come and meet some strangers or friends to discuss some topics under house rules. Your tips help pay for the hosting and the jukebox isn't piped in memes from advertisers.

I remember when Reddit had known owners with known ideals, but that was very long ago. I've found making it big (with the associated wealth) changes people. One owner even committed suicide over his society ideals about sharing information. Ultimately I feel like a lack of topic participation by the moderators and owners alike made people thoughtless as to their own role in building a human community and people often felt like they were fighting machines and code.

sorry if this meandered off topic, but lately I've had some long-time friends ask me 'what is Reddit" since it is in the news lately, and I find it hard to explain what Reddit used to be (before new Reddit and the addition of images/video) vs. the corporate-like entity we know today that our contributions and participation helped empower over the past 17 years. I've used it mostly daily for all that time, and I have been unhappy with society's dehumanizing direction for too many years.

/ramble from a disturbed mind.