this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2023
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Is it possible to merge two existing communities on different federated servers? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by g7s@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I believe more and more people will escape to lemmy sooner or later, and I already see 3 different communities for the same thing (selfhosted) here on lemmy. Time will tell which one will be the most active, but lets assume all of them will be equally active and the desire emerges to combine the two communities about the same thing, is that something possible or intended to be possible with federated services?

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[–] SafetyGoggles@feddit.de 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think this is currently one of the biggest problem of Lemmy on the UX department. Non technical users from Reddit will only expect one "subreddit" for a theme, but if they search on Lemmy, they'll find more than one community with the same topic, and it'll confuse them and make them less likely to come back.

But that's the way how Fediverse work, so I don't think combining two communities should be done from the Fediverse side, but rather each Lemmy instance can curate a "playlist" or "multireddit" that has some of the biggest communities from the users' server and other federated servers about the same topic, and users can subscribe to the "playlist" rather than individual community.

[–] DudePluto@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh, reddit really isn't much better in this department. It's not uncommon for multiple subs to exist for the same userbase (r/memes vs r/dankmemes, r/christian vs r/truechristian). Over time users figure out which is which, which is the main one, and which is for them

[–] SafetyGoggles@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

True, but they are all with different names, and they are not completely the same (as in different rules, more specific topic vs general topic, etc). But on Lemmy there is a possibility that two communities having the same exact topic and name for example !technology@beehaw.org and !technology@lemmy.ml, they are both discussing technology (and not any specific difference between them).

[–] Ada@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@SafetyGoggles The difference between those two is the moderation policies of the instance. Beehaw doesn't federate with the same instances that lemmy.ml does, and has an explicitly more inclusive and less generalist approach. They both cover the same ground, but you couldn't just merge them.

Having said that, it would be nice to see a user level feature that lets end users combine communities in to one "virtual" community in their interface.

@g7s @DudePluto

[–] wesley_cook@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The down side of that would probably be duplicated content. Like if some major news happens for a topic reposts can already be really annoying and usually need moderator action to combine threads. Then there'd be that times however many communities exist for that same topic.

[–] CHOPSTEEQ@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

As another pointed out, that already happens. It’s even preferable, to some. For example, I had a programming multi reddit with JavaScript and several more focused JS related subs in it. Seeing the same link or topic in multiple subs often let me get more viewpoints to consider. Outside of the web, journalism outfits all publish Associated Press articles. If you follow multiple news outlets you’ll see the same story that way as well.

To me, it’s just natural.

[–] EnronHubbard@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 year ago

We deal with that in Reddit too though. I see your point but if people are subscribing based on user count then eventually the best community will win I guess?

[–] SafetyGoggles@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Yep, that's exactly what I mean. Coverung the same ground, but they are different communities with different moderation, so it can't be merged, but it make sense to group them together and view it as a "playlist". Just like Whitney Houston and ABBA don't collaborate to make albums, but it make sense for their songs to exist together in a playlist called "Songs from the 80s".

[–] g7s@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The "multireddit" aspect also makes sense to me. Thank you for elaborating an alternative approach to what I had in mind. I don't know if such a feature is yet implemented, but for the time being, one could just subscribe to all the communities and it will be fine.

[–] blob42@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What would be nice is to have a system of tags or keywords that can be defined for a community. It would be trivial then to build a sort of multireddit where multiple communities can be aggregated by the tags they belong to.

[–] Ada@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@blob42 kbin has the ability to aggregate content in to a community by hashtag (in a distinct tab) and it's incredibly useful. I think lemmy could really benefit from something similar

@g7s @SafetyGoggles

[–] blob42@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks I didn't know kbin before. With the recent influx of users it's only a matter of time until these features are built.

[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

That would be cool

[–] Krusty@feddit.it 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This would be cool and useful

[–] g7s@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, totally. Maybe, If it's not yet possible, one could submit a feature request. However, I am totally new to the fediverse principle and don't even know If it's supposed to work at all.

[–] narF@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know how Lemmy or Kbin work internally, but I believe merging 2 communities could be similar to a user migrating to another server. Account migration on the Fediverse works by having the old account being setup as a pointer to the new account, effectively merging the old one into the new one. Followers of the old account will automatically follow the new account.

Since Lemmy and Kbin's communities are, behind the scene, like user accounts boosting messages posted in them, you can see how a community could be marked as "migrating" into the new one.

Another option would be for a community A to automatically boost/repost all posts from a community B, effectively bringing all messages of B into A.

Note that these are pure speculation on my part. I don't know if any of this is possible πŸ˜…

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I don't know anything about the actual ActivityPub protocol, but having communities point to each other seems like a way of not only combining communities, but also letting sub-communities within them merge and fork as they see fit.

[–] lFenix@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

This would be a very useful feature. Hopefully it will be added at some point!