this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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How (and when) to consolidate communities? (A guide) (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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:

  1. A brief reminder on the detriments of userbase fragmentation and the advantages of consolidation.
  2. The list of duplicate communities you've identified for a given topic.
  3. 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?

  1. Lock [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) by checking "Only moderators can post to this community"
  2. Create one final post on [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) announcing the consolidation to [[email protected]](/c/[email protected])
  3. 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 :)

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

You keep conflating the topic-based instances with the subscriptions to the accounts on Communick, even when I made pretty clear that the topic-based instances were meant to be kept open, without monetization and there was no plan to charge for anything there.

And how are you going to cover the ~4000€/year to operate the topic based instances?

Centralization continues to happen around the bigger instances, because the donation-based system is not enough to support the handful of admins that are willing to operate servers as a hobby.

How? Centralization was happening on Reddit when it was privately owned (/r/soccer vs /r/football), network effect is not related to donations.

The Fediverse continues to struggle with growth and attracting mainstream appeal.

This is true but text based forums are in decline in the general population, and Reddit is still benefitting from the network effect. There's a reason why there's no Bluesky for Reddit: the userbase and growth potential is too small.

As a side note, monetization of a forumli or social media is always going to be reluctant. See this recent thread on Discuit: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/ofdJxMA_

The vast majority of people were against a 5$ one time fee.

Couldn’t that apply to lemmy.film as well? Why were you then okay with posting there, but not on soccer.forum or metacritics.zone?

Lemmy.film went down in October 2023: https://lemmy.world/post/7206971?scrollToComments=true

Metacritics first post is from that timeframe: https://metacritics.zone/?dataType=Post&listingType=Local&sort=Old

Did you expect me to go to another single admin instance just after having lost a previous one?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

And how are you going to cover the ~4000€/year to operate the topic based instances?

The cost to operate the instances are already sunk with the rest of the infrastructure that I have to operate the rest of Communick.

Centralization was happening on Reddit

This is an apples to oranges comparison. No financial resources are needed to run a subreddit.

monetization of a forumli or social media is always going to be reluctant. (...) The vast majority of people were against a 5$ one time fee.

Again you and your argumentum ad "other people"...

Why is so hard for you to say "I don't want to pay for it?" Why is it so hard to plainly state that you don't think that the work of admins is not worth anything?

Did you expect me to go to another single admin instance just after having lost a previous one?

Ah, my bad. I thought lemmy.film going down was a recent event. In any case, how much longer will my instances have to stick around for you to accept that they are not going anywhere?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The cost to operate the instances are already sunk with the rest of the infrastructure that I have to operate the rest of Communick.

Is this new? This seems different from

Instead of calling sour grapes, just face reality: this ecosystem is doomed to failure and stunted growth unless people start showing up with real cash to support it.

Two weeks ago: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39358768/17128846

This is an apples to oranges comparison. No financial resources are needed to run a subreddit.

People on Reddit still wanted their posts to be seen, and so would post on the most active communities.

Why is so hard for you to say “I don’t want to pay for it?” Why is it so hard to plainly state that you don’t think that the work of admins is not worth anything?

I pay for my instances, but not 30€ per year, nor do I expect anyone else to do. On top of that, I thought that the Lemmy infrastructure was now sunk with the rest of Communick?

Again you and your argumentum ad “other people”…

I am providing relevant data, that choose to discard. Another relevant data is that out of all of the people in this community, only me and SaberW4ke are replying to you, and none of us are convinced with your way of handling things.

In any case, how much longer will my instances have to stick around for you to accept that they are not going anywhere?

How much longer are you going to tell people to "put their money where their mouth is"? (See first paragraph)

Also, just to clarify,how much money do you need from the Lemmy community. Because at the moment there are two different messages

  • the Lemmy instances costs is covered by the rest of Communick
  • you still want people to put money into the platform

So here's the question: how much money should people pay for your 20 instances (as you said that the 30€ Communick Lemmy accounts are different from the 20 instances)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

This seems different from (...)

Because they are. You are taking two statements from two completely different contexts and mixing them together.

When I say "people need to put their money where their mouths are", I mean that the ecosystem will only mature and reach mainstream if the people that want to make it grow provide material support that goes beyond "paying for the cost of servers". They need to realize that if they want to get rid of Venture Capitalists, they themselves need to start showing to support and invest into the alternatives.

There are not enough admins out there who are willing to maintain the servers more than a few thousand users without being paid. For some of them, it might be a hobby. For everyone else, this is real work and it should be appropriately compensated. Until the people here start to show that they value the work being done by admins and developers to the point where people can make a proper living out of the service provided, we will be stuck in amaterurish, niche state of affairs. No matter how much people here are "against capitalism", this will only grow if people invest in it.

This has nothing to do with Communick, how much it costs me to operate it or how much I charge for the services. When I say "put your money where your mouth is", it can be by running your own instance from your home computer. Or contributing to the developers of a project that you like. Or running a crowdfunding campaign to get some Youtuber out of Youtube and into PeerTube. Or getting a $10/month server from elest.io with half of dozen of your friends and splitting the bill. Anything, as long as it more than "just the cost of the servers". Anything, as long as it shows a significant investment.

I pay for my instances

You cover the costs of the hardware. It's better than most, but far from enough to be considered an investment into the system. You are still relying on free labor from admins and developers.

So here’s the question: how much money should people pay for your 20 instances

Nothing. I am not expecting people to pay nothing there. Whatever it costs me to keep those instances running should be seen as an investment into the ecosystem. The more the ecosystem grows, the bigger the TAM and the more potential revenue my business can make.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I'm going to suggest another perspective to what you just said: what about the people making the platform alive?

The community we're in is make of these people. Every week, everyone who's busy shouting into the void for their community share their experience, how to make communities grow (like this guide).

There are dozens of Reddit alternatives on /r/RedditAlternatives, Lemmy Mbin and Piefed are the only ones with a chance of succeeding. Because people believe in the project, and are okay to spend their time and energy to make the platform alive. Without them, Lemmy would be just another empty Reddit clone.

On a corporate social network, content creator would be paid by the platform, as they attract people to it. But here, nobody expects that, and everybody does it for free.

You mentioned in another comment struggling to find people to organically post to your football community. It's because there are only so many of us. Devs, sysadmins, posters, mods, everyone gives their time (and I say time, as I think indeed hardware costs should be covered) to the platform, for free.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

No. You tried that line of argument already and I am not convinced. When I am posting here I am not investing into the platform. When I make an edit on a Wikipedia page I am not expecting any form of validation or reward. It feels like "work" to you right now because you want to have someone to talk to. Once the network reaches a critical mass, you'd be able to just kick back and become just another participant like any other.

On a corporate social network, content creator would be paid by the platform

Not true. Who was getting paid by Reddit to write content there and ignore Digg? Who is getting paid by Bluesky to get people out of Twitter?

Switching social networks is a big cost and the overwhelming majority of people will not do it unless there is a very strong reason to do so. When it does happen, we see that those people will take on (re)bootstraping their communities and republishing the collective wealth of content they have found.

The Reddit Exodus didn't fail in 2023 because of lack of content. It failed because the overall system was not able to handle the influx of people. It failed because our systems are so precarious that an instance with less than 20k users can bring the whole network to a halt. These things will not fix themselves. They need actual resources, time and money.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

You tried that line of argument already and I am not convinced.

Then let's agree to disagree.

When I am posting here I am not investing into the platform. When I make an edit on a Wikipedia page I am not expecting any form of validation or reward. It feels like “work” to you right now because you want to have someone to talk to.

I didn't say it felt like work, I said it takes time and energy. Volunteering takes time and energy, doesn't make it like work.

Not true. Who was getting paid by Reddit to write content there and ignore Digg? Who is getting paid by Bluesky to get people out of Twitter?

I was thinking more about YouTube and TikTok. Reddit used a different approach with bots accounts, as it's easier for text submissions than videos.

99% of early submissions were fabricated.

https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/reddit-faked-its-first-users-resurfaced-video-shows-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-admitting-99-of-early-submissions-were-fabricated/articleshow/119263428.cms

Bluesky isn't there yet. You follow football, how many top footballers have a Bluesky account?

It failed because our systems are so precarious that an instance with less than 20k users can bring the whole network to a halt. These things will not fix themselves. They need actual resources, time and money.

Feel free to advocate for more money. You could even try a Kickstarter like the Pixelfed owner. As I said, I'm the only one answering to you, so I'm not sure how popular your message is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Volunteering takes time and energy, doesn’t make it like work.

But running an online service and keeping it functional is work. The fact that some people do it pro bono does not make it any less valuable. When it is not pro bono, people still need/should/want to be compensated for what they do. Same thing with software development.

I’m the only one answering to you

You are not. My question to you is "why do you think that admins and developers do not deserve to be compensated for their work?" and you keep evading the answer. ;)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

We disagree on software development and system administration being work or volunteering.

and you keep evading the answer. ;)

I'm not. It's been several times in this discussion that you use bad faith in our conversation. Don't be surprised when I don't want to post to your communities.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

We disagree on software development and system administration being work or volunteering.

I'm having trouble parsing this. How exactly do we disagree? You think being an admin is not work? I don't get it.

If you think I am being dishonest, then please let's make it straightforward. Please respond to the following statements with "agree" or "disagree":

  • Free Software Developers deserve to be paid for their work, regardless of the "price tag" or license fees.
  • People working in free software should treat their craft as a hobby.
  • The work of system administrators (setting up the systems, ensuring it is secure, managing backups, keeping it up to date, implementing improvements, etc) is valuable and should be properly compensated.
  • If someone is offering to run and manage a server without asking a priori for any form of payment, then this means that all their work is altruistic and they should not be compensated for it.
  • One Individual using a platform and actively promoting it is as important as one developer of the platform.
  • One individual using a platform and actively promoting it is as important as the admin of one server running the platform.
  • If there were no "volunteer run" instances, I would run my own and bear all the costs to operate it.
  • People that are still using the traditional social media networks should know better. If they haven't left yet, they deserve everything bad that happens to them there.
  • It's perfectly acceptable and ethical for any company that provides an utility (water, heating, electricity, phone, internet) to expect a profit.
  • It's perfectly acceptable and ethical for a indie game developer to charge a monthly fee from the users while they are working on it.
  • In a world where the big social media companies (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook) were provably serving the interests of the users and not its investors (no data exploitation, no promotion of corporate agenda, using and promoting open standards for interoperation, no forced walled garden and artificial scarcity) and changed their business model to a siple monthly subscription fee, I would still not use them.
  • In a world where the big social media companies were provably serving the interests of the users and not its investors, I would only use it if I did not have to pay and they relied on other forms of revenue to run their service, e.g, non-invasive advertisements.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I’m having trouble parsing this. How exactly do we disagree? You think being an admin is not work? I don’t get it.

Nothing. I am not expecting people to pay nothing there. Whatever it costs me to keep those instances running should be seen as an investment into the ecosystem. The more the ecosystem grows, the bigger the TAM and the more potential revenue my business can make.

You want to run a business.

Other admins are giving their time and energy without expecting to be paid.

The fact that some people do it pro bono does not make it any less valuable. When it is not pro bono, people still need/should/want to be compensated for what they do. Same thing with software development.

That's what I meant with the disagreement. Are you managing your instances pro bono or not? It seems like you are not, and you're the only admin who wants to create a business out of instances.

I don't think I'm going to answer the list of questions now because they require longer answers. Maybe later if I have some time.

Also, we've had that conversation many times. I see the local volunteers run library, or the hiking club, you want to make the system profitable so that admins and developers can make a living out of it.

I’m one self-funded developer who is stubborn enough to run this at a loss for almost 5 years now, and my greatest ambition here would be to maybe get 10-15k customers to pay me $30/year to be able to live with minimal comfort, provide for my family

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/27053532/13176946