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 your own community!” (with or without blackjack and hookers)
However, this is 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: (click to expand)
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.
Credits to @Ashyr@sh.itjust.works, @otter@lemmy.ca, and @Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone
How consolidate communities?
While consolidating communities can counteract userbase fragmentation, it is not an easy process for users to do, and so I thought I’d write up and share this guide.
Taking inspiration from @popcar2@programming.dev’s excellent blogpost, let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario where the pancake userbase on Lemmy is heavily fragmented, could benefit from consolidation.
Step 1: Identify duplicates
Search lemmyverse.net/communities for ‘pancakes’, as well as common synonyms (hotcake, griddlecake, flapjack). In our hypothetical scenario, we get the following search results:
!pancakes@lemmya.net(active)!pancakes@lemmyb.net(inactive)!pancakes@lemmy.food(active)!flapjacks@lemmya.net(inactive)
Open each community on its home instance, note the frequency of posts, and check whether the moderators are active. From this, you will often get a hunch for what might be the best community to consolidate to, but you should still keep an open mind as you proceed to the next step.
Edit1: To avoid centralization on large instances, I typically prefer consolidating towards smaller instances, provided that they are well managed.
Step 2: Solicit input
Create a post on !fedigrow@lemm.ee. The post should contain the following:
- A brief reminder on the detriments of userbase fragmentation and the advantages of consolidation.
- The list of duplicate communities you’ve identified for a given topic.
- An invitation for discussion and, optionally, your recommendation of a community to consolidate to.
Example post here (electric vehicles).
Once you have posted, create a top-level comment for each community in which you reach out to the moderators, administrators, and contributors for their opinions.
Example comments: (click to expand)
Paging
!pancakes@lemmya.netactive moderator@buckwheat_forever@lemmya.netWould you be open to consolidating this community with one on another instance, perhaps
!pancakes@lemmy.food?Also paging active contributor
@maple_syrup_or_die@lemmy.cafor their thoughts.
!pancakes@b.netmoderator@spez_ruins_pancakes@lemmyb.netis inactive.Paging admin
@the_boss@lemmyb.net. Would you be open to consolidating this community with one on another instance, perhaps!pancakes@lemmy.food?
Paging
!pancakes@lemmy.foodmoderator@cast_iron_queen@lemmy.foodHow would you feel about a potential influx of posters and commenters from other instances? Would you be open to adding additional moderators, perhaps those who were active contributors or moderators in pancake communities on other instances?
These comments will hopefully spark discussion among the pancake enthusiasts on Lemmy.
Edit2: There will often be users advocating for consolidation to whichever community currently has the most subscribers/activity. When this community is on of the larger instances, feel free to gently remind people of the risks of centralization.
If any two communities agree to consolidate, you can move onto step 3.
Step 3: Consolidate communities
When a decision is reached between any two communities, one community can then be closed, and redirect users to the other. You should recommend that the moderator take the following actions:
Example comment: (click to expand)
Would you be able to do the following?
- Lock
!pancakes@b.netby checking “Only moderators can post to this community”- Create one final post on
!pancakes@b.netannouncing the consolidation to!pancakes@lemmy.food- Rename the community to “[Dormant] moved to
!pancakes@lemmy.food”
Changing the community display name is particularly helpful for users when they are searching for communities.
When to NOT consolidate communities?
If there exist two active communities on the same topic, and they have a different significant difference in geographical focus, political leanings, or moderation style, these communities should not be consolidated. This would be an example of the advantages of parallel communities in the Fediverse.
TL;DR:
- Find all the communities on a given topic (easy)
- Convince people that consolidation is a good idea (medium)
- Get people, many of whom may be reluctant to see a community on their home instance locked, to decide on a which community to switch to (challenging)
- Contact the moderators (or the admins, if the mods are inactive) of each of the
n-1communities and get them to lock each community, with appropriate links to the decided upon community (simple, but tedious)
It can be a bit of a pain-in-the-ass to do properly, and I’ve seen many more failures than successes, but given the potential benefit for the Fediverse as a whole, I thought I’d write up and share this guide. Feedback is welcome :)
If I feed the communities with mirrors from Reddit, people complain that they are being spammed. If I don’t, you complain that is empty.
If I say that I am running these instances on my own, people say that is a risk. If I offer them to be put under a consortium of admins, you say that “I just want others to bear the costs”.
There is no point in arguing anymore.
It’s empty because you cannot sustain posting organically to all those communities by yourself.
People aren’t posting to those communities and instances because there are more established communities on more established instances.
My point was more that you don’t seem to be able to find other admins who want to join in your project of those 20 instances.
Every admin team here manages one instance. You’re the only admin wanting to manage 20 at once.
I already asked you many times to not shield your opinions by arguing about what “other people do”.
There is nothing stopping you to say “I don’t want to centralize things around the big instances, so I rather post on the topic specific ones”. And you seem perfectly fine making the effort to push consolidation around lemm.ee and even lemmy.film, but flat out refuse to extend any help to the topic-instances that I run.
It’s fine that you don’t want to support anything I am proposing because you want to keep this free from “commercial ventures”. It’s fine if you are a hater. But at least do me a favor and stop pretending you aren’t.
Operations-wise, managing one, two or 20 instances is the same thing if you have enough automation.
Also, if the instances are not open for users, the real work is not on the operations side but on moderation. This is something that can be done by others that are not admins.
(and before you come back with “modding a remote community is hard”, I would be okay with opening user accounts for moderators on the instances)
And you keep ignoring the fact that it’s still the reality. Nobody posts on !television@metacritics.zone , but it’s not against you, nobody posts on !Netflix@sopuli.xyz either.
You keep ignoring that, and trying to scapegoat me as the cause of that, but I’m not preventing anyone posting to your communities, people just don’t, because they prefer more active communities, and active posters prefer established communities on established instances.
Yes, and you know that I’m building communities on other instances to promote decentralization
The main difference between those admins and you is that they don’t come up aggressively to me like you usually do, and are doing right now.
For people reading this: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39358768/17132379
You love to point out past discussions, but you only show half of the story. Where is the link to the post where we had more people (beyond me) saying “let’s post on soccer.forum instead of LW” and you refused? You preferred to continue on LW (even when you were basically alone posting by yourself there) and the best excuse you found was that you didn’t like the domain name. When I said “I can get a .football domain” (which I did, btw) you went then to say “oh, please don’t do that” and expressed some concern trolling about the cost of the domains.
So, forgive me if I sound “aggressive”, but all I am doing is pointing out the inconsistencies between what you say you want and what you end up doing.
At the time I was still building the community. As you pointed out, I was the only poster there.
After a while, a few other people started posting there, one became mod, and we moved it to Lemm.ee
Just because sometimes things take some time doesn’t mean I’m inconsistent.
At that time, there were more people posting on soccer.forum. This means that, if you had joined me and the others on soccer.forum, the network effects would grow in its favor.
So, yeah, you could’ve helped me and the topic instances. You could have helped with decentralization a lot more than “moving from the first to the second largest instance”. But for some personal reason you refrained from it.
And again, it’s fine if you don’t want to help, but don’t go around acting like your hands are tied.
I scrolled soccer.forum all the way to 6 months ago and only found @sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al as the other regular poster. Did I miss something?
!Football@lemm.ee is 2 months old, so 6 months seems enough in the past to see what was happening back then.
The best is the enemy if the good. Lemm.ee is a well managed instance, and still their first community in the most active ranking is 52th: https://lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active
Every once in a while I try and create activity over there, but it’s not getting any traction. Part of that is because !main@soccer.forum just doesn’t work conceptually. Especially with how communities federate out using the name as hashtags.
There are also some other people posting highlights via Mastodon.
But it doesn’t matter if it was one or two people. One or two people are already more than the zero you had at LW.
Please, stop trying to rationalize your behavior. Your actions have already proven where your values and interests are, and where they are not.
I’m not expecting to change your mind and I’m not expecting any form of cooperation from you anymore. All I’m asking of you now is to be honest and outright state that you simply are opposed to what anything I do, build or propose.