Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
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I don't disagree with you, but I think it would be cool if communities could federate too. If I'm subscribed to [email protected], it would be neat if baseball served up posts from all communities that they choose to associate with. Otherwise I would never know that there's a sports-only instance out there that also has a huge baseball following.
It would be nice if a moderator could set a community/magazine's to also display threads from other trusted communities on different instances
This is exactly what I mean. Decentralization requires better tools to bring content to the users. Having to manually search is not going to help lemmy get the critical mass it needs.
Honestly, some of this can be kludged by mods working together, or at least not guarding their turf too jealously. Simply putting the other communities in the sidebar could be a start. We don't HAVE to wait for an algorithm to share knowledge, or let the lack of perfect tools be the enemy of good
ones.
Are you saying that if you are subscribed to a Baseball community, Lemmy should sub you to all the baseball related communities whether you consented to it or not? Is that really a good idea? And kinda sounds like you want an "algorithm" to make decisions for you.
And if you search for a "baseball" community you should see the all relevant major communities across federated instances come up anyways, so I don't think there is a problem there.
Tbh I do want an algorithm to make decisions for me. It’s something I’m missing a ton from Reddit/Twitter.
Discoverability is shit on this site. It’s like that because there’s no other option in the current system, but I fully believe federation won’t ever take off mainstream because it’s decentralized.
100% agree discoverability can be improved but I think algorithms are basically the antithesis of the Fediverse.
And it's totally okay if Lemmy or other Fediverse apps never takes the "mainstream". I'm totally onboard with it not going down the road of Reddit.
This wouldn't be an algorithm. This would be the moderators of 'tadpoles' on someinstance.social deciding they would also like to display content from 'tadpoles' on someotherinstance.xyz
I'm speaking for myself but I'm not sure if I want moderators making that decision. What you are suggesting is moderators will decide if you as an user should see content from another community, whether you asked to or not.
I mean if I want to see both subs I would just sub to both. I would not want moderators or algorithms making that decision for me, at all.
Then provide an ability to consent.
My point is that there could be a nearly identical community elsewhere that I would never know about unless the community I'm subscribed to straight up tells me it exists.
Early Lemmy adopters seem to think that being hard to use is a good thing. The algorithm boogeyman isn't going to get you if there's a way to subscribe to baseball@* with a blacklist.
If it's nearly identical then why does it matter which one you sub to?
Being hard to use isn't a good thing but also isn't always a "bug". Some of the Fediverse behaviors are by design as an antithesis to bigcorp centralization like Reddit - the point IS to have that level of autonomy and separation (instances and individualized communities).
I get that what you described isn't exactly an argument FOR centralization but my point is it's not as big as an issue and it will probably shake itself out. You might argue that it's a huge blocker for Lemmy to go mainstream, but that's not the point.
If you're looking at pictures of cats, it's not a big deal. If you're asking for support with a niche operating system, it's nice to know that what you're looking at is the entirety of Lemmy's resources without having to manually check that a new community popped up or federated in. Which is something that's happening a lot as Lemmy gets more popular.
It's sounds like we disagree on the benefits of decentralized communities. And I do understand your thoughts, I just think that the tools for finding content should be more automated to get the full benefit.
Have a good one
100% agree content discover should be better, no doubt.