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 @[email protected], @[email protected], and @[email protected]
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 @[email protected]'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:
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 [email protected]. 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 [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) active moderator @[email protected]
Would you be open to consolidating this community with one on another instance, perhaps [[email protected]](/c/[email protected])?
Also paging active contributor @[email protected] for their thoughts.
[[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) moderator @[email protected] is inactive.
Paging admin @[email protected]. Would you be open to consolidating this community with one on another instance, perhaps [[email protected]](/c/[email protected])?
Paging [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) moderator @[email protected]
How 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
[[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) by checking "Only moderators can post to this community"
- Create one final post on
[[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) announcing the consolidation to [[email protected]](/c/[email protected])
- Rename the community to "[Dormant] moved to
[[email protected]](/c/[email protected])"
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-1 communities 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 :)
Good guide. I would like to point out that you may get some political infighting around instance policies that are not very productive.
Reached out to [email protected] (low activity, no mod, but 5K subs) to consolidate with [email protected] (much more engagement, albeit mostly me posting, 1.3K subs). I made sure to take a neutral and non judgemental tone, but I still got lectured about irrelevant things like LW admin policies and so on. You can take a look at the [email protected] modlog and see that there are no issues.
Haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if hardware ML still doesn't have a mod.
Let's hope we can hit 100 K MAU by the end of the year. This will help both organic consolidation and even organic differentiation. I don't mind different communities, but they need to have their own spin on a topic (subfocus, regional focus etc.).
The !hardware situation is not great when considering political leaning of instances and user base and the fact that both will avoid each other.
Personally I avoid both .ml (tankies) and .world (performance issues, libs). I don’t think hardware is that much of a niche so maybe it’d make sense to start over on a medium sized and neutral instance? Maybe not lemm.ee because that one runs at risk of becoming like .world. I’ll move over wherever.
[email protected], maybe?
Edit: [email protected] seems nice, too
This one looks perfect for me because there’s no gadget news (which I grew bored of). I’m going to post there but I think it’s best that there’s a separate more gadget’y community too.
There is a whole instance for hardware news and reviews.
This is a very good initiative that I want to see succeed! My immediate feedback is that I avoid instances and communities without clearly defined rules so that’s something to consider.
I would also prefer to avoid a situation where we had shows & movies dedicated instance that turned out to be too much for the admin and went poof and so I need to know I can put my trust in a new dedicated instance. I understand it’s a bit of a chicken & egg problem but we need things to be stable during migration waves.
As the main contributor to lemm.ee communities, don't worry, you still have to scroll quite a bit to see the first Lemm.ee community on https://lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active
Lemm.ee now has a large user base and hosts some big entertainment communities so my gut tells me it’s already getting too big and we need to diversify before it grows into another Lemmy.world. Ideally the problem is addressed before that actually happens ;)
LW still being at 18562 monthly active users when lemm.ee is at 7180, there's still a lot of margin.
Also, by definition there can only be one largest instance, lemm.ee could jump to 10k tomorrow, they would still only be the second.
Hopefully lemmy.zip can grow too, it's a very nice instance well managed
lemm.ee could even jump by 10k tomorrow, and still be in 2nd place :)
The top 10 instances by MAU have ~80% of the total user base, and LW and lemm.ee alone have 50% of the Lemmy MAU.
An oligopoly of 2 instances (or 3 or 5) is not that much better than a monopoly. If you really want to talk about decentralization, we shouldn't have user numbers dropping exponentially this early in the distribution curve.
I would go lower and have a look at the top 20
Seems like a good distribution. Feddit.uk and Jlailu will always have a more difficult time attracting new joiners than non-countries specific instances
This has more to do with LW being so high. You could split LW in two, both of the halves would still be higher than lemm.ee
Also lemm.ee is now the default instance for Photon and Voyager, which is good to allow new joiners to register with a default instance.
Sorry, it's not. FediDB lists 415 active servers for Lemmy. A good rule of thumb to think as something sufficiently decentralized is when 80% of the users are spread around the top 20% of the servers. This would mean that we need to get at least 82 servers amassing the users that are now on 10 only.
huh? lemm.ee alone has 14% of the userbase. 1/7th of the people on Lemmy are there. You are making a huge effort to avoid seeing it, but if you really care about avoid decentralization, lemm.ee should also be avoided just like LW.
I filtered by ascending MAU on https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list and found 300 servers with 0 or 1 monthly active user, showing that those are abandoned or single user instances.
Removing those, we have around 115 active servers, so with the 20 active servers I screenshotted, that seems reasonable.
What you are doing is called "massaging the data".
If a server is active it is counted whether it has only one user or someone that is using so sporadically that they get counted only every 3 months.
There is also a hardware community on programming.dev, which would fit the bill.
My first Lemmy account was on ML which I made by mistake. I have a personal issue with tankies (I am Ukrainian, living in Ukraine) so I immediately switched, LW seemed like a solid choice.
Contributing to the ML variant of HW was not an option and it was pretty dead in terms of engagement.
I looked up if there were other HW communities and found a dead one on LW. Asked for mod rights and started contributing.
The hardware subreddit has 3 million members, so I wouldn't really call it niche.
I wouldn't mind merging into the programming.dev instance if it could be programmatically done and in a graceful manner. Alas, it will likely be a long time before we see such functionality.
I personally don't think concerns about LW or lemm.ee are relevant for a social network with a mere 55K MAUs. IMO, at this point focus should be on growth. With growth we will see organic consolidation and differentiation.
By the way, I see you posted on [email protected] , but I'm trying to revive [email protected]
Uplifting news seems to be doing ok but I’m still worried about removing the training wheels. I’ll keep on posting there until it gets more crowded because we really need all the good news we can take.
What about posting a meta post to [email protected] ? Just to show people that that community also exists
It’s not mine, I’m just a human firehose of posts.
It doesn't have to be yours for you to post a meta post 😄