If I understand Lemmy correctly, you can create duplicate communities on different instances. Isn’t this kinda counter productive because this may lead to less user interaction in those communities, because the user base gets split up between competing communities.
Is there a way to fight this division of the (small) userbase or is this effect even desired because it leads to more tight knit communities on the different instances?
I think this is desired. Lemme give my case. I think r/historymemes is absolutely flooded with racism, tankies and neo-nazis, and perhaps more than the rest, colonial apologia. Reddit being centralised, I can’t create another r/historymemes.
Say we have a c/historymemes in some instance. The same racism and shit happens. No problem, I can look for a new c/historymemes on some other instance that is better moderated in regards to those problems.
Lemme give my case.
I see what you did there.
Didn’t intend to do that, but hey…
Stop asking this. Reddit has this kind of problem as well but people ultimately sort it out.
‘Stop asking this’ is not a really helpful thing to say. We have a lot of new users, including myself, and everybody is figuring out how Lemmy works. Redundant questions will occur and lets answer those in a respectful manner.
Why fight it? If they want 3 different asklemmy instances, let them. Eventually users will flock to the most active one, or there will be parallel ones. Then it’s on you to either join all or stick to whichever one you feel most welcome at.
I’d rather have multiple small communities than monolithic ones in most cases personally, that and it avoids the reddit problem of being forced to use a subreddit despite bad/creepy mods cause you can just make your own version in another instance
There were duplicate communities all over Reddit too, as long as he didn’t have exactly the same name there were lots and lots of subs that had more or less the same content with overlaps of subscribers. Whenever those duplicates eventually one will pull ahead and most people will be active there.
Users who are looking for larger communities can just dogpile whatever is popular and users who aren’t will find something that fits them better just as they always have. I think some people do struggle with not having the massive fire hose they are used to though but everything starts somewhere; it never was going to be everything to everyone all at once. I’m personally finding not being lost in a sea of noise to be more engaging.
