Why consolidate communities?
One of the advantages of a decentralized platform like Lemmy is the ability to create parallel communities on the same topic. “You don’t like how a community is being moderated? Go to another instance and start a new community!” (with or without blackjack and hookers)
However, this is also a double-edged sword. The creation of multiple communities on the same (or similar) topics can also fragment the userbase, leading to very sparsely populated communities.
A few perspectives in favour of consolidation: (credits to @[email protected], @[email protected], and @[email protected])
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/11171955
I think until there’s some tool or system that helps collate all the information out here, fragmentation is detrimental to growth.
I’m not going to copy and paste the same comment with every mirrored post.
So sometimes commenting feels like a waste of time.
Centralizing helps ensure that there’s vibrant, consistent discussion which is what Lemmy should be about.
https://lemmy.ca/comment/8823953
I like this because people showing up to those communities might think that topic doesn’t have activity on Lemmy, when it actually does.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/8370860
I sometimes think that unmoderated communities should be closed, and just be left and locked with a pointer to the active one. In case an issue arises with the active one, they can still be unlocked and used as back up.
Consolidating electric vehicle communities
Applying these principles to the EV communities on Lemmy, let’s take an overview of what currently exists:
General-purpose:
- [email protected] (active)
- [email protected] (active)
- [email protected] (active)
- [email protected] (inactive)
- [email protected] (inactive)
- [email protected] (active)
- [email protected] (inactive)
- [email protected] (inactive)
- [email protected] (inactive)
Location-specific:
- [email protected] (active) (UK-specific, European welcome)
- [email protected] (inactive) (Ireland-specific)
- [email protected] (inactive) (US-specific)
Other:
- [email protected] (active)
Do all of these communities serve a distinct purpose? If not, could we consolidate some of them?
While Lemmy does not currently have a built-in way of moving or merging communities, @[email protected] has had some success with pinning an explanation post directing users to the new community and locking the old one. Is this something which could be applied to the EV communities on Lemmy?
The next question is, of course “Which communities should we consolidate to?”
Given the general sentiment to move off of ML (for ideological reasons) and off of World (to avoid centralization of instances), my proposal would be [email protected]. I think the SolarPunk instance is a nice match for an EV community, but I am interested to hear what others think.
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I’m in favor of your idea, both for the reasons you stated, and for an additional one.
Due to some instances defederating from each other, the choice of instance for a community becomes more important if its to become a one stop shop for everyone. As an example, Beehaw, which is quite an active community, cannot access any .world communities, making .world a poor choice just on grounds of overall reach alone.
[email protected] as the core community is a good choice, as it is only defederated from a small handful of extreme instances, so its reach should be pretty decent.
I have been considering moving mealtimevideos and documentaries away from .world for similar reasons, as it sucks that all of the content I post there isn’t available to beehaw users.
[email protected] as the core community is a good choice, as it is only defederated from a small handful of extreme instances, so its reach should be pretty decent
This is a good point I had not addressed. Thanks for making it.
That’s a ton of EV communities. Considering the threadiverse has a mere ~50K MAU, that’s definitely going to be detrimental to growth.
Yeah, I think community fragmentation can stifle growth, especially if the different communities don’t have any clear distinctions.
Great initiative, thank you for this
Paging moderators, admins, and prolific EV contributors for their input:
Moderator @[email protected] made a single post and disappeared. Contributor @[email protected] is active. Paging admin @[email protected].
Moderator @[email protected] moved to kbin (@[email protected]), which has shut down. Maybe @[email protected] is the same person?
Could these be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with [email protected]? Seems like this might be more appropriate instance.
Moderator @[email protected] is inactive. Former contributer @[email protected] is active. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with a more active one (perhaps [email protected]), or is keeping the US focus important?
It could be on another instance. I see no problem with that.
Thanks for your quick response! I think the next steps would be as follows:
- Write a short explanation post directing users to [email protected]
- Post and pin the explanation on [email protected]
- Lock (not delete) [email protected]. All existing posts stay up, but only mods can create new ones.
- Change the display name from ‘Electric Vehicles’ to ‘[Dormant] Electric Vehicles’.
Is this something you would be comfortable doing? Let me know if I can assist in any way.
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is active.
Would you welcome the types of posts which were on [email protected]?
Yes, happy to expand it to Ireland. I’m not excluding general European content anyway, so it will fit nicely here.
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is active.
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
@[email protected], you seem to be one of the most prolific contributors who is not also a mod. What are your thoughts?
I like supporting [email protected]. If others want to start posting there that would be great. We seem to finally have about three consistent posters now there.
Are there any specific reasons you prefer the world community over the slrpnk one? The general sentiment seems to be that moving communities off of the largest instances will strengthen the threadiverse overall.
The main reason is it has the most subscribers. I am worried about losing many of them if we move.
If you lock the community with a pinned post pointing to the new community, most of them will follow.
Of course you can also preemptively create a discussion thread about this potential move to see what the community thinks
I will post to the ev group people decide on. Check with the mods to see if they will combine.
I saw you indeed locked the LW community in the meantime, thank you for this!
Looks like an @[email protected] project. You do you. Any thoughts you’d like to add?
It’s well known that I’d rather have communities separated from users, so I’m biased to have all car-related communities on an instance like gearhead.town.
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is active.
How would you feel about a potential influx of posters and commenters from other instances?
More is always better. I would love to see it officially become the go-to community for EV talk in the Fediverse
How would you feel about adding additional moderators, perhaps those who were active contributors or moderators in EV communities on other instances?
I feel like additional mods could be good for redundancy, but the decision would ultimately be up to you and the slrpnk admins.
As long as they’re active, they’re welcome to join the moderation team. You’ve seen the community grow to become what it is. When I created the community it was with the goal to decentralise, so additional moderators were always going to be needed eventually.
I’m an idiot. I thought you were a moderator there already. I just added you. Anyone else you think should be a moderator?
Oh, thanks. I’d recommend adding @[email protected]. She’s the current active moderator of [email protected], and is on board with moving to [email protected].
Already done
Moderator @[email protected] is inactive. Maybe @[email protected] is the same person? Former contributer @MrPhibb@reddthat is active. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
Having a list of all alternatives in the sidebar of alternative places to find people is my recommendation. Thus if people wish to keep a backup community on Reddthat I’m sure to let them.
Not everyone reads the sidebar before posting.
How would you feel about locking (not deleting) the community until it is needed? The community would still exist as a backup, and could be reopened if the need arose.
This could be done in conjunction with a link in the sidebar or a pinned post.
Moderator @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
I locked the community and pinned an explanatory post. Best of luck to the slrpnk community!
As an aside, these situations always make me a little nervous that I’m going to step on a user’s toes. The mod account having no visible post/comment/vote activity does not confirm that they are truly gone from Lemmy. They may have become a lurker.
Thanks for your assistance!
these situations always make me a little nervous that I’m going to step on a user’s toes.
Yeah, that is a risk. I think we’ve done what we can though. We each tagged them in our respective posts/comments, and haven’t heard from them.
They may have become a lurker.
It’s possible, but my hunch is that this is not the case. They were active only between 2023-06-14 and 2023-07-25, and there is a user with the same name in The Other Place who is active in EV subs. I suspect they may be one of the people who tried out Lemmy briefly after the APIcalypse, and found that it didn’t suit them.
If they ever become active on Lemmy again, they should be welcome to reopen the community, or join the moderation team of [email protected].
Would you consider editing the display name of the community to include ‘[Dormant community]’? It would make the status clearer in apps and other tools like lemmyverse.net.
Would you consider editing the display name of the community to include ‘[Dormant community]’?
Done.
Thanks!
Moderator @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
Just join them all.
Do all of these communities serve a distinct purpose?
They serve the purpose of redundancy. Power-tripping moderators and administrators are less able to silence reasonable dissent when dissenters can just run to other instances. When various instances fail, the others pick up automatically.
Just join them all.
The stats show that the majority of users don’t do that. And even if they did, it still wouldn’t solve the problem that multiple communities on the same topic fragments the userbase, leading to very sparsely populated communities. When all the discussion occurs in a single community, the discussion is much more vibrant, instead of users shouting into a bunch of separate voids.
Having too many communities prevent potential posters from knowing where to post. They usually are not going to crosspost their content to a dozen different communities, and will just not post at all.
Power tripping mods can be reported on [email protected]
Having too many communities prevent potential posters from knowing where to post.
Post in any of them, or any combination of them.
When I find a good community, I tend to join the communities they recommend. I would suggest Sidebar links to related communities for others to join.
Power tripping mods can be reported
What is the purpose of such a report? Seems like pointless drama in a decentralized environment.
The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
Having one community helps a lot with growth; a few people posting to a few small communities vs. all of them posting to the same larger community.
Once a community has momentum (ex. world news, technology), this is less important and having multiple communities all open at once isn’t a big deal.
In this case, I think all the people from those communities want to see more content and discussion. If any of the communities listed above want to stay open for whatever reason, I’m sure people here will respect that choice too.
What is the purpose of such a report?
I don’t like the drama or fights in the comments, but I find that communities like that serve as a way to start discussion about moving. Same as on centralized platforms (reddit), if mods are power tripping or making poor decisions, posts like that help with an organized move to a new space. The same place can be used if an instance goes down, a mod disappears, etc. The advantage of the Fediverse is that it’s really easy to move to new communities if/when there are problems with a community/instance.
(posting with my alt since there are some federation issues with this post right now)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
posting with my alt since there are some federation issues with this post right now
As the post doesn’t seem to have federated with lemmy.ca, how did you find out about it? Tag in comments? Direct message?
What is the likely source of the federation issue? My instance (SJW), your instance (ca), or the community instance (lemmee)?
It was your direct message actually! I also replied to the message from my lemmy.ca account, but maybe that didn’t federate either?
We didn’t find any explanation for the federation issue just yet, but if messages aren’t going through consistently then it might be between our instances rather than lemm.ee
I’ll copy my message and send it with this acocunt
I also replied to the message from my lemmy.ca account, but maybe that didn’t federate either?
Nope, that one federated just fine, and I’ve recently replied to it. If you receive it, that would suggest that federation (or at least direct messages) are working between SJW and ca.
Post in any of them, or any combination of them.
You only seem to have two posts, is there another account where you post more?
What is the purpose of such a report? Seems like pointless drama in a decentralized environment.
Calling out power tripping mods, which allows people to switch to communities with better mods
Looks [email protected] is 3rd place in subscriber count!
Definitely encouraging! Although I think active users/week and users/month is a more meaningful metric than total subscribers. Many of the subscribers on the larger instances are remnants of the 2023 APIcalypse, and not active accounts.
True we’re at 2.1k/6.3k. Thats 33.33% of the mau over 6 months.
