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How do we deal with similar communities on different Lemmy instances? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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

With Lemmy, doesn't it follow that similar communities on different instances will simply dilute the userbase, for example [email protected] and [email protected]. How do we best use lemmy as a (small c) community when a topic can be split amongst many (large C) Communities?

This is an earnest question, in no way am I suggesting lemmy is inferior to reddit. I'm quite enjoying myself here.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

In my opinion, it makes most sense that they get treated like the same community.

If you subscribe to "c/memes", you will see the posts from any communities on any instances that's name is "memes".

And if any individual one is causing issue, you or your instance can ban the problem instances' version.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's one scenario where that idea doesn't work. I was subscribed to /r/pax on Reddit. Occasionally, people would wander through and post about their vapes or ecigs or whatever, not noticing that every post in the subreddit was about the Penny Arcade Expo and not about the ecig/vape brand. (Sorry. I don't know the difference between a vape and an e-cigarette, if there even is one. 😅)

All that to set up this question: what happens when a community is created on one Lemmy instance called "pax" referring to the Penny Arcade Expo while, on another instance, the first mover on "pax" is an e-cig/vape enthusiast? I subscribe for updates on the Penny Arcade Expo, and now, instead of an occasional misguided individual coming through posting about their nicotine enthusiasm, half or more of my posts on "pax" are about that?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah that's fair.

I think the best situation is that as a general guideline short abbreviations like that are avoided, and in the case of unavoidable name collisions one or both communities would have to further specify the name to avoid conflict.

So the pros are easier user accessibility, a fix of duplicate communities, and the cons is name collisions and potential abuse from communities on different instances.