Hello everyone,

Opening this thread as a kind of follow-up on my thread yesterday about the drop in monthly active users on !fediverse@lemmy.ml.

As I pointed in the thread, I personally think that having some consolidated core communities would be a better solution for content discovery, information being posted only once, and overall community activity.

One of the examples of the issue of having two (or more) exactly similar Fediverse communities (!fediverse@lemmy.world and !fediverse@lemmy.ml ) is that is leads to

  • people having to subscribe to both to see the content
  • posters having to crosspost to both
  • comment being spread across the crossposts instead of having all of the discussion and reactions happening in the same place.

I am very well aware of the decentralized aspect of Lemmy being one of its core features, but it seems that it can be detrimental when the co-existing communities are exactly the same.

We are talking about different news seen from the US or Europe, or a piece of news discussed in places with different political orientations.

The two Fediverse communities look identical, there is no specific editorial line. The difference in the audience is due to the federation decisions of the instances, but that’s pretty much it, and as the topic of the community is the Fediverse itself, the community should probably be the one accessible from most of the Fediverse users.

What do you think?

Also, as a reminder, please be respectful in the comments, it’s either one of the rules of the community or the instance. Disagreeing is fine, but no need to be disrespectful.

  • BlazeOP
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    1 year ago

    Maybe there should be a dedicated Fediverse discussion instance, federated with everyone, as a kind of United Nations of the Fediverse?

    Moderation could be tricky, but I guess a few people could give a hand.

    • Lucia [she/her]@eviltoast.org
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      1 year ago

      How can we force this instance to federate with everyone though? If we centralize the discussion in a single place, we would put a lot of trust into maintainers of said instance. We can build “backup” instances for that purpose, but that would destroy the initial goal - to have a single discussion place.

      • BlazeOP
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        1 year ago

        It’s interesting, because it can be compared to real politics where you have nations that are neutral and can serve as hosts for events where countries with completely different views and sometimes even high tensions can meet.

        The League of Nations (that preceded the United Nations) used to be hosted in Switzerland, which is usually seen as a neutral ground.

        Maybe we could try to have something similar? Or we can even imagine a large list of admins, all from different instances, so that everyone watches what is happening with the instance, so that no one could hijack it?

        • Chariotwheel@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          In the end, it would still be on someone’s server. And people would need to trust the owner of that server to pay, maintain and not interfere unnecessarily.

          • BlazeOP
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            1 year ago

            Every server is someone’s server, your point is also valid for lemmy.ml and lemmy.world as they currently exist.

            • Chariotwheel@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Yes, but you wanted a neutral ground, and my point was that it’s hard to have something like, because in the end it would just be another server. I am not saying we don’t need a solution, I just pointing out a flaw in your proposed solution.

              • BlazeOP
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                1 year ago

                That’s fair, and this is why I said having an admin team composed of people from different instances would be a way to mitigate that.

                Regarding costs, as it would be a content instance with only a few communities (you want everyone to be able to access the communities on that server, but without any users, this server would not have to replicate any of the other communities) the cost should be kept quite low.

                Donations could come from other instances as a way to show their good faith about an open fediverse space.

                I’m questioning now how the United Nations is funded, but it’s probably based on member countries donations.

        • Lucia [she/her]@eviltoast.org
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          1 year ago

          I’m also curious about users. If this instance basically federates with every instance, even the most bigoted one, wouldn’t it become a host for users with maligned interests? And communities on that instance would be a very dangerous and noisy space too for the same reason.

          • BlazeOP
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            1 year ago

            The instance would only hosts a few communities (!fediverse, and maybe a few others).

            Users would not be allowed to register there. Moderation would indeed need to be heavy, you can imagine only moderators being able to create posts, while users would be allowed to comment (you would have to ask a moderator to open a topic. Cumbersome, but at least you prevent topic spamming).

            • Lucia [she/her]@eviltoast.org
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              1 year ago

              you can imagine only moderators being able to create posts, while users would be allowed to comment

              I don’t really think this is viable. Most posts on c/fediverse, c/lemmy, c/plugins, etc. are made by users, and these are quite active communities, I doubt mods will be able to deal with the load.

              • BlazeOP
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                1 year ago

                That’s a fair point.

                Interestingly enough, !plugins@sh.itjust.works is a good case of a single community where no other community exists on that topic, and it seems to be doing well.

                • Lucia [she/her]@eviltoast.org
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                  1 year ago

                  True, but it also means Beehaw users can’t really reach new plugins/themes announcements. And I’m not sure how many other instances defederated from sh.itjust.works tbh.

                  • BlazeOP
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                    1 year ago

                    That’s also a very good point. I assume current Beehaw users who want to access that community use alts.

                    I actually saw a complaint the other day about !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works not being accessible from Beehaw.

    • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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      1 year ago

      No, please. Most of the defederations are for a good reason. In !fediverse@whatever I want to read about fediverse, not racist bullshit and spam.

      • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        That’s not actually how defederation works. You would still not be able to see those your instance has defederated from.

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean, that’s exactly what I want? Defederating from the spammy and racist instnaces means I will not interact with them at all, which is what I want - I don’t want to read their racist bullshit and spam. I don’t see where I misunderstood how defederation works.

            • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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              1 year ago

              If there were no defederations, yeah, I would. I’ve seen racist and homophobic bullshit in a community for my instance news before I defederated.

      • BlazeOP
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        1 year ago

        That’s an interesting question.

        I just had a look at lemmy.ml block list, and EH are blocked.

        I guess at some point you just have to block the bigots.

    • Kayn@dormi.zone
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      1 year ago

      An instance dedicated to the Fediverse would be the ideal solution.

      Lemmy in general could use a lot more instances centered around specific topics.