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Is there a way to create Super Communities? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by PotjiePig@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I've noticed in the explosion that we are getting duplicate communities in multiple instances. This is ultimately gonna hinder community growth as eventually communities like 'cats' will exist in hundreds of places all with their own micro groups, and some users will end up subscribing to duplicates in their list.

A: could we figure out a system to let our communities know about the duplicates as a sticky so that users can better find each other?

B: I think this is the best solution, could a 'super community' method be developed under which communities can join or be parented to under that umbrella and allow us to subscribe to the super community under which the smaller ones nest as subs? This would allow the communities to stay somewhat fractured across multiple instances which can in turn protect a community from going dark if a server dies, while still keeping the broader audience together withing a syndicated feed?

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[–] Spzi@lemmy.click 1 points 1 year ago

Two perspectives, Viewer and Poster. Posters create new threads, Viewers view and possibly comment.

Two access methods, direct and indirect. Direct means entering a specific community. Indirect means browsing content which is aggregated in your stream from all your subscriptions.

Viewer, indirect: It does not matter wether your cat content comes from 1 or 100 individual sources *, it gets aggregated anyways. **Super communities can not help with this use case.

Viewer, direct: If a Viewer visits communities directly then yes, fragmentation is an issue. Super communities can help with this use case.

Poster, direct: The only access method for Posters, since they cannot create content indirectly but have to decide where to create it, and wether only in one, or in multiple communities **. Posters have to make that decision regardless wether the communities are grouped to a super community or not. **Super communities can not help with this use case.

In conclusion, community grouping can improve the experience for direct Viewers, but has no effect on indirect Viewers or Posters. We can also differentiate between server-side grouping (which seems to be the proposal) and user-side grouping (aking to multi-subreddits: users compile arbitrary lists of subscriptions into one, new feed).

*) Depends on how exactly aggregation is implemented. It could be that posts in small communities with less absolute traction have a lesser chance to be streamed. Or it could be the relative size of the community is accounted for. How to know?

**) Multiposts in similar communities can create another, related issue for Viewers indirectly browsing content, as they now see duplicates in their stream.