I think maybe not all apps show the automated cross-post link - I’m not seeing it right now on Jerboa. But yeah I think basically your instance checks the link against all other links it has (both local communities and federated) then it just adds cross-post links for each one, as well as a link to the new post in the old posts.
I enjoy a lot of communities on lemmy.world, but I’d recommend against moving a community into it. Centralizing more communities there doesn’t feel productive, and I don’t think it would help with user numbers.
If you do want to move, slrpnk is cool and I think this community could succeed there. Personally, I think the best solution would be to promote this community around the Fediverse regardless of if you stay on this instance or move to another one. Places like !communityPromo and the other ones listed here: lemmy.ca/post/5581032.
Thanks for thinking about these things and for working on the community!
That would be the different email providers in the analogy. Each instance has its own set of communities (subreddits). But if the instances are federated with yours, then you can see the communities of those other instances
An ejabberd instance can handle 2 million concurrent users. The free software XMPP server is used by the likes of League of Legends, Fortnite, Zoom. If it’s a good enough for them, it would easily handle your community, big or small.
Yeah. It’s been discussed a fair bit. There are/were a few different projects doing this, with the intent of “jumpstarting” or “kickstarting” communities on Lemmy. Some of the larger instances defederated from them. I don’t feel like it’s a solid theory either.
For some types of posts that's fine - the capybara community, for instance, is a steady stream of capybaras from reddit (I think) and that's not the type of post that needs interaction with OP or comments. Posts from say, tech support, very inappropriate to copy to Lemmy imo without a link back and an explanation as it might get a conversation going but it also confuses people who think their response might be seen by the OP.
As I watch The Internet look like it’s starting to adopt a new phase (let’s call it federation writ large), I’m watching for signs of both success and struggle. I have some strong opinions of features and functionality lacking in the current suite of UIs that might help adoption, but thing I’ve been thinking about more...
Ha, this is me. I did exactly that (with a community for the TV show Andor) and am guilty of the behaviour you describe.
I’ve probably been thinking along the same lines as you and OP though, 'cos I deleted the community a couple of days ago. I realized that if I had something more to say about that show, it doesn’t belong in it’s own niche community, or ‘Star Wars TV’, or ‘Star Wars’, or even ‘Television’. Perhaps a ‘Movies&TV’ comm, although - at this rate - maybe even ‘entertainment’ would be best.
I’m starting to think that instances that limit community creation to admins have the right idea (e.g. Beehaw, or - to use a non-federated example - tildes).
Some instances have started ‘Community Teams’, but I sense that anytime they discover a dead community, their instinct is to find ways to promote it, get new mods, drive engagement etc, whereas I’m more of the opinion that they should be nuked and consolidated (along the lines of what the ‘cooking’ communities have tried to do, I suppose).
They come and go. They’re random clutter. We only need a few big instances that hosts a majority of the communities and that’s it. Why do we need so many smaller ones?
Small instances don’t prevent Lemmy from being centralized, people don’t mind if their instance defederates from an instance with 5 people. Medium-sized instances (e.g. dbzer0) prevent wrongful defederation, because people will suddenly miss a few communities / users.
There is no monopoly if you have a dozen big instances. But if you have 1000 instances? What is the point. Can’t start a community there without it going poof the next week.
I think you’ve correctly identified a problem, but misidentified the solution.
It’s true that there are many redundant communities of which everyone would be better served if there were an easy way to group them together. The solution, however, is not to reduce the number of instances, but rather to provide more tools for instances to group communities together. You want communities to be spread across many instances because this maximizes user control - it’s kind of the entire point? But of course, the lack of grouping makes it very difficult to try to centralize discussion, which is important for the community to grow. This service is still a work in progress, so these kinds of things - I hope - will come in time, as both the technology and culture develops.
tl;dr: centralized control bad, centralized discussion good, the current system does a bad job of reconciling these two positions
The core issue here is instances disappearing, and That goes into the discussion of the structure of the fediverse right now vs. the fediverse in the future
A dozen big instances feel better now, and I personally wouldn’t make a community on a smaller instance unless I know it is likely to stay up. If it was run by an existing organization for example.
Long term though, I trust existing organizations to set up stable instances that won’t be shut down easily. If a government, school, game company etc. makes an instance it’s not likely to go down. Having lots of instances will look more normal then.
Ultimately we don’t need to do anything differently, I recommend new people join a big instance and then make a new account once they know what instance they like.
note to everyone: please don’t downvote good faith questions
OP asked a pretty reasonable open ended question. There are other people who may be thinking the same, and reading the discussions here might change their minds. Save downvoting for rule breaking / content that’s bad for the community
I’m a minuscule instance. That’s fine. I like that I have control over it, how it’s maintained and updated. If I want to convert it to Mbin because I like it more, I can. I know for sure it’s going to live at least as long as I’m interested in the fediverse. Nobody can take it away from me.
Big instances are expensive to run, and in a way, they’re not exactly immune to shutting down and big instances shutting down have a much bigger impact than a small one with few communities when they go poof.
Seems like what a lot of people want is a hybrid of Usenet and Reddit, but what we have is more like a bunch of reddits that are willing to talk to each other. Certainly better for governance and redundancy and as a kind of organic load balancing in a cash-poor ecosystem, but the "killer app" would be (optional?) persistence of communities outside of instances.
1: Even big instances start out small.
2: Also having other instances besides the big ones helps prevent a monopoly over the fediverse.
3: Bigger isn't always better. Nothing wrong with a small Cozy community.
Beehaw does the same. I’m not sure if that’s been the case in our instance. I don’t inherently disagree, but I’m not 100% sold either.
If there’s a clearly bad/misinformed/rude take, they simply don’t get voted on. They rarely have more than the single 1 vote of their terrible opinion/sharing.
It’s common to see +10 to +30 on a positive comment, with the comment it’s responding to at 1.
I don’t disagree that it could be a bad thing, but I think it’s about the community and its practice surrounding it as well. So far in my experience on the instance I participate in I’ve seen it be effective.
Also I’m not sure if this is a thing on Lemmy but on reddit there were downvote farmers. Downvoting could also actually encourage people to perform these terrible comments to accumulate as many downvotes as they can. Downvoting disabled removed this problem in its entirety. Reddit has this issue long before some of its other problems and it has only grown since, up til I left. I don’t know what the state of it is now, and I’m not sure how big of an issue it even is on Lemmy. It comes down to finding the line between what is preferable.
All in all, I think there are good and bad things about not having a downvote. I do think downvote disabled helps some aspects (engagement, active/trending posts) but it could also negatively influence federated content (spam, bad actors). I don’t think a comment being at -30 is any more telling than the same comment at 1 when it’s surrounded by +30 upvoted comments. However, if someone actively sought out getting downvoted, that can no longer exist.
IMO trading having bad comments be visibly negative in order to prevent the downvote farmers is a reasonable exchange
It’s also something I’ve pointed out in the past that netted me bans on other instances (not just the community but the whole instance)
My instance has down votes disabled as well and it’s something that has made me want to switch instances at times. Not to mention the admin really wanting to federate with Hexbear which is absolutely not popular with the users on the instance.
lemmynsfw has implemented (or intends to) an interesting compromise, in that you can only downvote posts on that instance’s communities that you’re already subscribed to. Ideally, this means that downvotes are for the quality of the individual post, rather than as a reaction to the type of content.
Yeah how each instance and community handles moderation is a little different, both a benefit and curse of the federated model. Lemmy.world is most “Reddit-like” in communities and moderation philosophy.
Be sure to read the community sidebar rules and instance rules you post to if you aren’t sure. Then again, people who break the written or unwritten rules tend to have the stuff removed, warned and then banned only if they don’t knock it off.
So don’t take it too hard on yourself, especially since it seems you understand their reasoning.
As a general tip, when you do actions on other servers using your lemmy.ca account, you stay on lemmy.ca and attach things at the end e.g. lemmy.ca/c/memes@sopuli.xyz or lemmy.ca/u/admin@beehaw.org. That’s how you maintain your identity without giving away your username/password directly to the other sites.
You should still be able to message the mods of the community even if they’re on another instance. You just can’t reply to the message because it would go straight to the bot and never be seen by anyone.
I’ve recently aquired the hardware to build a home server/NAS. I’d love to know some community-guided advice on tools I should consider, and what best practices are?...
Waiting (lemmy.world)
China is flooding Taiwan with fake news and disinformation ahead of a major election. Here’s how it’s fighting back (feddit.de)
Cross-posted from: feddit.de/post/6763982
Discussion on moving to another instance
I’ve been kicking around the idea for a while of moving to another instance for a while for two reasons:...
we're still trying to figure out if they go to the same floor or not. (lemmy.eco.br)
venture capitalism goes brrr (feddit.de)
I bet Rockstar is thinking twice about *checks notes* making a normal looking female character. (lemmy.world)
Does anyone else resent the links to Reddit?
I keep seeing communities which seem to consist of nothing but a bot that reposts stuff from Reddit....
[Long post] Do more or fewer communities lead to increased engagement?
As I watch The Internet look like it’s starting to adopt a new phase (let’s call it federation writ large), I’m watching for signs of both success and struggle. I have some strong opinions of features and functionality lacking in the current suite of UIs that might help adoption, but thing I’ve been thinking about more...
What is the point of small instances?
They come and go. They’re random clutter. We only need a few big instances that hosts a majority of the communities and that’s it. Why do we need so many smaller ones?
Imagine only being allowed to upvote something? (sh.itjust.works)
This post was made by Fediverse gang.
Is Sh!tposting still anything goes? Had a Classic Art meme joke deleted as the moderator thought it was anti-abortion? It was much more about a joke and a shitty one at that. (lemmy.ca)
As the title states. I am unable to message the moderator that deleted the Post as I am not on the same fed.
What guides, wikis, or megathreads are available for those new to archiving and storing data?
I’ve recently aquired the hardware to build a home server/NAS. I’d love to know some community-guided advice on tools I should consider, and what best practices are?...