Consolidation of electric vehicle communities on Lemmy?
Consolidation of electric vehicle communities on Lemmy?
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 a new community!" (with or without blackjack and hookers)
However, this is also 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: (credits to @[email protected], @[email protected], and @[email protected])
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.
Consolidating electric vehicle communities
Applying these principles to the EV communities on Lemmy, let's take an overview of what currently exists:
General-purpose:
- [email protected] (active)
- [email protected] (active)
- [email protected] (active)
- [email protected] (inactive)
- [email protected] (inactive)
- [email protected] (active)
- [email protected] (inactive)
- [email protected] (inactive)
- [email protected] (inactive)
Location-specific:
- [email protected] (active) (UK-specific, European welcome)
- [email protected] (inactive) (Ireland-specific)
- [email protected] (inactive) (US-specific)
Other:
- [email protected] (active)
Do all of these communities serve a distinct purpose? If not, could we consolidate some of them?
While Lemmy does not currently have a built-in way of moving or merging communities, @[email protected] has had some success with pinning an explanation post directing users to the new community and locking the old one. Is this something which could be applied to the EV communities on Lemmy?
The next question is, of course "Which communities should we consolidate to?"
Given the general sentiment to move off of ML (for ideological reasons) and off of World (to avoid centralization of instances), my proposal would be [email protected]. I think the SolarPunk instance is a nice match for an EV community, but I am interested to hear what others think.
Looks [email protected] is 3rd place in subscriber count!
Definitely encouraging! Although I think active users/week and users/month is a more meaningful metric than total subscribers. Many of the subscribers on the larger instances are remnants of the 2023 APIcalypse, and not active accounts.
True we're at 2.1k/6.3k. Thats 33.33% of the mau over 6 months.
Great initiative, thank you for this
That's a ton of EV communities. Considering the threadiverse has a mere ~50K MAU, that's definitely going to be detrimental to growth.
Yeah, I think community fragmentation can stifle growth, especially if the different communities don't have any clear distinctions.
Just join them all.
Do all of these communities serve a distinct purpose?
They serve the purpose of redundancy. Power-tripping moderators and administrators are less able to silence reasonable dissent when dissenters can just run to other instances. When various instances fail, the others pick up automatically.
Just join them all.
The stats show that the majority of users don't do that. And even if they did, it still wouldn't solve the problem that multiple communities on the same topic fragments the userbase, leading to very sparsely populated communities. When all the discussion occurs in a single community, the discussion is much more vibrant, instead of users shouting into a bunch of separate voids.
Having too many communities prevent potential posters from knowing where to post. They usually are not going to crosspost their content to a dozen different communities, and will just not post at all.
Power tripping mods can be reported on [email protected]
Having too many communities prevent potential posters from knowing where to post.
Post in any of them, or any combination of them.
When I find a good community, I tend to join the communities they recommend. I would suggest Sidebar links to related communities for others to join.
Power tripping mods can be reported
What is the purpose of such a report? Seems like pointless drama in a decentralized environment.
The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
I'm in favor of your idea, both for the reasons you stated, and for an additional one.
Due to some instances defederating from each other, the choice of instance for a community becomes more important if its to become a one stop shop for everyone. As an example, Beehaw, which is quite an active community, cannot access any .world communities, making .world a poor choice just on grounds of overall reach alone.
[email protected] as the core community is a good choice, as it is only defederated from a small handful of extreme instances, so its reach should be pretty decent.
I have been considering moving mealtimevideos and documentaries away from .world for similar reasons, as it sucks that all of the content I post there isn't available to beehaw users.
[email protected] as the core community is a good choice, as it is only defederated from a small handful of extreme instances, so its reach should be pretty decent
This is a good point I had not addressed. Thanks for making it.
Paging moderators, admins, and prolific EV contributors for their input:
Moderator @[email protected] made a single post and disappeared. Contributor @[email protected] is active. Paging admin @[email protected].
Moderator @[email protected] moved to kbin (@[email protected]), which has shut down. Maybe @[email protected] is the same person?
Could these be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with [email protected]? Seems like this might be more appropriate instance.
Moderator @[email protected] is inactive. Former contributer @[email protected] is active. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with a more active one (perhaps [email protected]), or is keeping the US focus important?
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is active.
Would you welcome the types of posts which were on [email protected]?
Yes, happy to expand it to Ireland. I'm not excluding general European content anyway, so it will fit nicely here.
Looks like an @[email protected] project. You do you. Any thoughts you'd like to add?
It's well known that I'd rather have communities separated from users, so I'm biased to have all car-related communities on an instance like gearhead.town.
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is active.
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
@[email protected], you seem to be one of the most prolific contributors who is not also a mod. What are your thoughts?
I like supporting [email protected]. If others want to start posting there that would be great. We seem to finally have about three consistent posters now there.
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is active.
How would you feel about a potential influx of posters and commenters from other instances?
Moderator @[email protected] is inactive. Maybe @[email protected] is the same person? Former contributer @MrPhibb@reddthat is active. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
Moderator @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Moderator and contributor @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?
I locked the community and pinned an explanatory post. Best of luck to the slrpnk community!
As an aside, these situations always make me a little nervous that I'm going to step on a user's toes. The mod account having no visible post/comment/vote activity does not confirm that they are truly gone from Lemmy. They may have become a lurker.
Moderator @[email protected] is inactive. Paging admin @[email protected].
Could this be merged with another instance, perhaps [email protected]?