For example, if these guys are just going to nuke that content, another instance should have the opportunity to either fork it, or merge it with another community. Its mostly the same stuff as would have been in c/Politics here.

And what it does now, is it puts even more editorial power in the hands of fewer people (ones that ml probably) don't vibe with.

Classic boneheaded decision.

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

We need… something like a “transfer, merge, fork, split” for communities.

People can do it currently. I've done it a few times, for all for cases. You just make an announcement on the community, or on !newcommunities@lemmy.world if you are splitting from a power tripping mod.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I meant in a technical sense. As in, hey here is a community with a mod on a power trip. I'm going to clone it, it lives here now: !somewhere@lemmy.world

For example, we could have cloned this sub and its contents and merged it into c/politics.

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But then what prevents someone from cloning a community to 50 instances, or cloning 50 community to 1 instance? Seems like an easy abuse vector

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah idk. This was a criticism that I brought up of the fundamentals in lemmys structure early on: it selects for, effectively, clones of "whole reddits", when it should be set up to support more balkanized instances.

Basically, lemmy.ml's c/Politics is functionally redundant to .worlds c/politics; but thats by design.

What I think would be better would be adding tagging and taking federation a step further. Every post needs a 'tag'; we steal that part from mastadon. It can have many, but it needs at least one, say #politics in this example.

Then, on instances, federation happens both at the instance level but also at the community level; communities can federate with other communtiies. But all posts get #tagged on the way in the door. Communtiies can then federate or defederate at will, and if neccessary, a community can "branch"; for example, maybe they want to split off US politics from politics; then you grab all the posts with the #US.

As far as an abuse vector. Thats just hang wringing. IF your mods are that abusive for a large sub, you've got way bigger issues. Which, if it did ever happen, is something that "forking" would solve. Mod on a power trip? No problem. Fork the community.

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 months ago

What I think would be better would be adding tagging and taking federation a step further. Every post needs a ‘tag’; we steal that part from mastadon. It can have many, but it needs at least one, say #politics in this example.

Tags also bring issues from a moderation perspective. Who can decide who can use tags to label which type content? Seems another way to have everyone spamming trending tags on all type of contents without control. I think tags work better on a microblog format than community format, where you can potentially reach out everyone following that community/tag much easily than crossposting each time.

As far as an abuse vector. Thats just hang wringing. IF your mods are that abusive for a large sub, you’ve got way bigger issues. Which, if it did ever happen, is something that “forking” would solve. Mod on a power trip? No problem. Fork the community.

I was more thinking about people wanting to ruin things by importing huge communities to small instances, consuming their space and resources, and making it confusing to people to know which one is the "legit" community.

And if you limit this feature to admins, then requesting communities is already possible from admins on most of the instances, so that covers the transfer. Fork/split (what is the difference, btw), as I said, can be done manually now.

Importing a community is the one use case remaining, but I see why it's not a priority for the Lemmy devs, there is bigger fish to fry at the moment (multicommunities for instance)

[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

You just make an announcement on the community, or on !newcommunities@lemmy.world if you are splitting from a power tripping mod.

How does this work? Are you just talking about starting a new group on the same server?

[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Geez I can't believe a major group was nuked just like that. I never noticed anything about it being unmoderated but thank you for providing the explanation.

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 57 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Lemmy.ml admins making rash, sweeping decisions that are conveniently harmful to any open public discourse? I never would have guessed.

[–] Draegur@lemm.ee 26 points 3 months ago

Central planning committee knows what's best now eat your slop or it's the gulag for you /s

[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Geez even with decentralization we still have people making bone headed decisions. What is the best/strongest politics group that is not lemmy.ml nor lemmy.world?

[–] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

There are so many politics communities, but before you mentioned this I didn't realize how concentrated they are on .ml and .world. These look like the most-subscribed USA and World politics communities that aren't on .ml or .world:

!politics@hexbear.net
!politics@beehaw.org
!usa@midwest.social
!worldpolitics@lemmy.ca
!geopolitics@lemmy.run
!politics@sh.itjust.works

[Edit: Though I listed them here, the hexbear and beehaw communities are not accessible to large swaths of the Lemmy user base due to instance defederations.]

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Don't link the Hexbear community. If you think .ml is bad, they're 100x worse.

[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Thanks for the list!

I've heard bad things about hexbear and beehaw. But I looked at these other two.

!politics@sh.itjust.works -- unfortunately too many dumb restrictions.

Rule: Title must match the article headline <-- definitely a deal killer because often journalists use dumb headlines or leave the most important things out of the headline.

Rule Recent (Past 30 Days) <-- also a deal killer. Relevant is more important the recent. They are not the same things. "Recent" is only an imperfect proxy for "relevant".

usa@midwest.social -- We have a winner!

Rule: Be respectful and civil. No racism/bigotry/hateful speech. <-- perfect

I would also welcome suggestions for "news" groups outside of lemmy.world and lemmy.ml. usnews@lemy.lol is okay so far but I'm always looking for possible alternatives.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I get not wanting to interact with lemmy.ml

Whats wrong with Lemmy.World? Or are you just saying its too big?

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They have an account there, which is surprising

[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It doesn't matter where your account is. If someone kills your account you can quickly switch to another lemmy instance and resub to all your communities.

I have had content nuked first from news@lemmy.world and then from politics@lemmy.world and as a result I rarely use them to submit content. I specifically went to politics@lemmy.ml because politics@lemmy.world was censoring my content.

[–] btaf45@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Or are you just saying its too big?

It's too big. And it has dumb restrictions like no video content. But also, I had a very popular posting just completely nuked by the mod of politics@lemmy.world and the entire advanced discussion was suddenly lost, forcing me to recreate the discussion on politics@lemmy.ml. Ever since I've been posting content to lemmy.ml instead of lemmy.world. Mainly important things missing from politics@lemmy.world or that they took down.

But aside from all that, we absolutely need redundancy on lemmy for major stuff like news and politics. Mods will abuse their power because they all want to "control the experience" instead of just do the basics. I've also had content nuked for no reason on news@lemmy.world also and as a result I mostly use usnews@lemy.lol instead although I'm open for alternate news site suggestions too.

[–] Scubus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's ran by tankies, for one. Also just had a huge tankie issue in general.

[–] WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Lemmy.world?

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Beehaw has a fairly active politics comm, their moderation is more on the strict side but it's "hey be nice and dont use slurs" kind of strict and not "how dare you say Russia is bad, banned" kind of strict. Id recommend them. Otherwise it's .world.

!politics@beehaw.org

[–] Womble@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hasnt Beehaw defeded from quite a few of the larger instances, including .world who the op is on?

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 months ago

hm, they actually have blocked lemmy.world. didn't know that.

welp, walled gardens gonna walled garden. I don't have these problems from my instance

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 8 points 3 months ago

!Pleasantpolitics@slrpnk.net might interest you. It's an experimental community that employs a really interesting bot that scans users all across the lemmyverse, and prevents the most toxic people from participating. It seems to work fairly well, so far.