Redundant communities across instances (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by bfr0@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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As a new reddit exile, I may be misunderstanding this.

In theory something like a !gaming community could crop up on multiple large instances, especially during the mass exodus while instances are getting hammered with spikes in volume.

If that's the case, we'll have fragmented communities across instances. Is there any way besides subscribing to each of them to combine them into a sort of multi-reddit type aggregation? Or is this considered a temporary (albeit important to adoption) problem during the crazy stages?

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[-] CannaVet@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

It's not pointless, it's just......not Reddit. Decentralization offers a different approach than they do. All the Reddit exiles come seeking a central authority but lemmy exists explicitly to remove that from the equation, that's the entire point of the project. There are people working on single server Reddit clone-ish alternatives that may be more your speed, and that's perfectly fine. Also, for the record, if you want ALL of the c/aww (or whatever) you can just follow every c/aww you come across from 6 different instances, you don't have to pick one and forsake all others.

In regards to your other point, It's also important to remember that the developers of Lemmy consider it to be in alpha IIRC, and the system is currently facing loads they wouldn't have dreamed of a few weeks ago. It's a learning curve for literally everyone involved but the smart techy people behind it all are working hard to flesh out a stable system for everybody to enjoy as they see fit with no central authority.

[-] spicytuna62@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

you can just follow every c/aww you come across from 6 different instances, you don't have to pick one and forsake all others.

That's one of the cons of decentralization. You take the good and the bad.

One of the pros, on that exact same hand, is if you don't like a particular c/aww on a particular instance, you can create your own c/aww on a separate instance and give it the rules you'd like to see in a community where people post cute pictures.

I think the mistake a lot of other newbies are making is believing that this is going to be exactly like Reddit and nothing needs changing ever if we merely build it. No, it's like Reddit, but there are key differences. And you either live with those differences and stick it out until you figure out how it works, you go find another alternative, or you go back to Reddit.

No choice is wrong. Do what works for you.

Coming back to this to say one of the major pros of federation/decentralization is the redundancy will mean you can still get content on Lemmy, even if a particular server goes down. If Reddit goes down, you have to go outside and touch grass. If a Lemmy server goes down, the grass can remain untouched. You'll get content from other instances.

[-] Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

I think one point they're trying to make is that it would be nice to have "supercommunities", for example a kind of community that is the aggregated sum of all the individual communities it subscribes to, so for example super/aww that contains c/aww@1, c/aww@2, etc.

[-] Meekajahama@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

A possible better solution might be to allow the user to create their own group (or super community if you prefer that name) where they can group multiple communities together in a way they see fit (not just necessarily clones of the same community. Examples could be a sports group that allows you to group together communities for all the teams you follow).

This would be beneficial I feel for most users, doesn't affect decentralization, doesn't require a central authority and would be only relevant to each individual user and not applied to anyone else

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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023

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