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Beehaw's number of communities, and why it makes sense

When you look at https://beehaw.org/communities, you can see that there are only a few communities, but they are diverse enough to cover most of the topics you would have to discuss on the Internet.

I sometimes think that could be a model we could try to replicate across several instances:

It would allow to aggregate people around a few core communities and avoid dispersion and fragmentation. Of course, it would need some agreements in the community, and some people would probably want to keep their community as "the main one" opposed to the other, but that could still be valuable.

What do you think?

BrikoX , (edited )
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Isn't Beehaw approach the opposite of what Fediverse stands for? Many fragmented communities, but still interconnected. Lemmy specifically needs a way for individual users to group all these similar communities (and there are many proposals for that) as opposed to more centralization.

I shared my thoughts on Beehaw approach in more detail here: https://lemmy.zip/comment/2570691

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I wouldn't say they are the opposite, they are still federated with a lots of instance, just not LW and SJW.

About the grouping of communities, that would be an improvement, but at the same time, wouldn't that be strange for new joiners to have to group a few communities on the same topic while they only want to follow it?

I know it's a balance between centralization and decentralization, but sometimes I feel we went a step too far in the latter.

For instance, if !databreaches became the one reference community on data breaches, that would be nice, we probably don't need a community on this topic on 4 other instances

BrikoX ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

Success of grouping entirely depends on the technical implementation. And new user experience is something that Fediverse sucks at as a whole. On Lemmy, introducing new users to groups could be as simple as suggesting pre-created groups on identically named communities, they can follow with a single click. Which would cover 95% of people coming from Reddit. And for the rest 5% that want more tailored experience could create custom groups.

If !databreaches became the reference community, then it's subject to all the federation/defederation of lemmy.zip, rules of lemmy.zip and laws of lemmy.zip host server and applying it to the whole Fediverse.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Agree with your first paragraph.

If !databreaches became the reference community, then it’s subject to all the federation/defederation of lemmy.zip, rules of lemmy.zip and laws of lemmy.zip host server and applying it to the whole Fediverse.

Indeed. I found Lemmy.zip governance to be very transparent and responsible, so I wouldn't mind.

BrikoX ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

But not every instance has the same governance as lemmy.zip. Would you also be fine with some community becoming de facto reference on beehaw.org or hexbear.net or lemmy.world? Each of them have the rules that contradict each other, which prevents certain communities from being able to be created on those instances. If we make any community of theirs reference one, their rules, federation/defederation and governing laws become effectively global instead of only applying to that instance.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

But not every instance has the same governance as lemmy.zip.

Agreed

Would you also be fine with some community becoming de facto reference on beehaw.org or hexbear.net or lemmy.world?

No, and that's why I listed SJW and lemm.ee in my OP (to be honest, I should probably change LW to lemmy.zip)

Beehaw is too deferated indeed.

Hexbear comes with their own specific stance.

LW, I feel like they are okay for now. The major issue I see with them is the federation with Threads, but that can always change (and probably will if we get millions of trolls at once)

I guess my idea would be to have a subset of instances that are compatible, rules and federation wise (lemmy.zip, lemm.ee, SJW, Reddthat.com), and spread communities among them, with one reference community on one single instance.

LW centralization is an issue on its own, but that's the subject of another thread already.

BrikoX ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

My issue generally boils down to it being optional and something instance admins and mods would have to opt in and maintain, because if it were a technical solution, it wouldn't be able to exclude instances someone has an issue with. It would also negatively impact the content variety due to different instance rules AND community approach.

E.g. there are several gaming related communities, but they all differ. Some allow bots, others doesn't. Some allow memes, others' doesn't. Some limit posts, others doesn't. And all of them are on different instances that have different rules and moderators.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I think it also depends how popular the topic is.

Gaming, as you said, exists on several platforms, with different mods and teams because it's a quite popular topic.

On the other hand, I also regularly browse !android and !android, and they seem pretty similar to me (be it rules or content wise), they are also lacking some activity, so they would probably benefit from being merged, and having one as the reference.

BrikoX ,
@BrikoX@lemmy.zip avatar

lemdro.id is a specialized instance, not a general one. !android was also created and popularized by the lemdro.id team, but when they decided to move to a dedicated instance, LW admins just installed their own moderators to that community. Also, there are more: !android, !android

Basically any community on LW will have an equivalent community somewhere else. Because even if people don't plan long term to stay on LW, they will use it as a cheat code to grow and then move somewhere else. And then LW admins just takes over the old communities.

I'm not sure how either side would agree to "merge", since wanting self-governance was the reason the split happened in the first place.

Blaze OP ,
@Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I see where they come from, but from a new user perspective, it's quite confusing to see too similar-looking communities, more or less similarly active, with more or less the same type of content, and not know where to post

!android is more software development oriented, and !android has the typical lemmy.ml spin to it.

I’m not sure how either side would agree to “merge”, since wanting self-governance was the reason the split happened in the first place.

Indeed, but on that point I'm not sure how the LW is currently moderated. The moderators don't seem that active (it's a trend I've noticed among a few LW communities). If I have some time in the coming days, I might contact them to see if they are still interested in managing that community, or if uniting forces with lemdro.id would make more sense

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