I posted early on in that sub about merging/coordinating with this one and the mod replied they weren't closing the sub and removed my post. Note there is (or at least was at the time) nothing in the community or instance rules prohibiting discussion of other communities. And also... like... 90% of Lemmy is new users finding new communities (including that mod, whose account was like 4d old at the time). Prohibiting discussion of other communities is just... wildly against the spirit of what's happening right now. Neither mod group seems to acknowledge the other in at-mentions either.

Anyway, it's a small data point but my somewhat speculative take is the mod over there is power tripping and I've avoided it since.

While this one seems more active, the other one has more members (strangely).

The sub numbers can be confusing to read. I believe when viewing the sub count of a remote community, you see only subscribers from your instance... But when viewing a local community you see all subscribers. At any rate, if you look at each community on its home server you see:

• This sub has ~3k subscribers: https://lemmy.ml/c/formula1
• The other has like ~1.5k: https://lemmy.world/c/formula1

It seems to have more people commenting though. At least a lot of different profiles.