Do I understand correctly that I have to subscribe to 5 different NoStupidQuestions on 5 different instances?

RanchOnPancakes, 10 months ago

If you want them all I guess.

Its a downside but also a power.

For example, if No Stupid Questions@kbin.social tomorrow decides to add a rule “No Post about cats” there are still others you can subscribe to that won’t have that rule

snooggums, 10 months ago

And if you don't want posts about cats, you can unsubscribe from the ones that do!

You will never see everything anyway, might as well narrow down to what you are interested in.

Kodemystic, 10 months ago

Just subscribe to everything what’s the problem?

wjrii, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

The only issue of any substance is that I often like to browse a particular community. It would be nice to get some front-end interface solution that makes it reasonable to do so for multiple communities. I’m happy to set it up manually once, but it would be tedious to check in on, say, the mechanical keyboard communities on 5 different instances every day.

For my main feed, a shotgun approach is absolutely fine, and I wouldn’t want to weaken the benefits of federation by herding everyone into a single instance per “interest.”

I do think that maybe the Lemmy developers were expecting each instance to have a more distinct character than is happening so far, at least on average. Federation in the threadiverse seems to be acting more like simple distribution, load balancing, and decentralization, rather than digital tourism defaulting to open borders.

Kodemystic, 10 months ago

We should have an option to merge communities in 1 single feed or something. Or maybe a grouping function, where we could name the group, and any communities under that group would show as a single group. Then other people could like your group and also subscribe etc. But that way maybe things could get complicated. I mean for the average Joe it will already be difficult IMO to make the effort to understand the Fediverse. I mean I took my time to understand it and start using it, cause I was lazy and had Reddit. I guess there are no perfect solutions, there’s always dissadvantages. For sure 1 thing that is attactive with centralized systems is the peace of mind when it comes to understanding it, because it’s simple etc. Like starting using Crypto vs using a bank account and so on. Oh I’m rambling already.

WhipperSnapper, 10 months ago

This seems to be a pretty popular thought, both in this thread and many others discussing Lemmy. I’d put real money down that the 3rd party apps will get this going, but for actually using the website on a PC, I’m imagining it’d be up to the devs/admins of whatever Lemmy instance you’re using.

Hazdaz, 10 months ago

For real? I didn’t know this is how it worked. I don’t even know how to find those other instances. Do they just come up automagically or do you have to specifically search under those other instances?

This is bad.

smoregooseboard, 10 months ago

Not bad, different :)

C4d, 10 months ago

Just search under community: lemmy.world/search?q=nostupidquestions&type=Commu…

spacedancer, 10 months ago

Federation works a little differently. Having said that, it’s not too far from reddit either. For example on reddit, as a basketball fan, I visit r/nba often. But then there are also other subs like r/nbadiscussion, r/nbatalk, and other subs that have overlapping content as r/nba. That’s the same case here, except they are on different instances rather than subreddits. You can do the same as what you do on reddit and subscribe to the most popular instance community and that’s it. Eventually as time goes by, the most popular community will become the “default” so you won’t really miss out on content. If you really have FOMO, then subscribe to all of them; same as what you would do on reddit; but obviously you don’t do that right?

DarkThoughts, 10 months ago

You don't have to. You can. You can also only subscribe to one of them. Did you subscribe to every single subreddit covering a specific or non specific topic? Is it an issue that you get content from ~4 different communities / magazines of similar content? Why make it harder than it is?

southsamurai, 10 months ago

No, you don’t have to subscribe to any of them, much less all of them.

There’s gong to be multiples with a given name because they each exist on their own instance. Instances are mini reddits that can talk to each other, not the same site.

You want redundancy, it’s one of the biggest benefits of federation and decentralization.

Soundhole, 10 months ago

I have been subscribing to the one with the highest population. Maybe that’s a stupid approach, but I’m a stupid person, so it’s working for me atm.

FaceDeer, 10 months ago

If it's stupid and it works then maybe it's not stupid.

If there's sufficient content that you like in the one with the highest population for your tastes then problem solved.

moobythegoldensock, 10 months ago

You can, but eventually most people will likely congregate in the 1-2 most active ones.

hamsteronvase, 10 months ago

“That’s the way of the world” is usually said by Ayn Rand types who don’t care about anyone else or know how to make things better.

Also, they paint the questioner as some nutter obsessed with finding every single byte about a topic.

And, no one is “stuck” on anything, we notice a defect and want to find a solution.

So think about this. Suppose you’re making a community for, say, Ukrainians who have taken refuge in the USA.

What kind of person shrugs off their need to find each other and says “Suck it up buttercup”. Or makes fun of them for asking.

Yes, there are inconvenient and irritating ways of handling the problem. Shrugging it off just tells me what kind of person you are, but it doesn’t improve anything.

Now, what we could do - crazy, I know, hear me out - is think of a way to conglomerate all the content from diverse instances with different policies into one community where anyone can hear everyone else.

Two kinds of people in this world. The ones who start asking mocking questions, and those who put their heads together.

DarkThoughts, 10 months ago

And the ones asking bad faith questions, acting willfully obtuse over completely trivial bullshit non issues.

kobra, 10 months ago

I don’t think auto-combining similar named communities is a viable solution, except in the case of users doing it themselves (e.g. multireddits or whatever).

Different communities, even with the “same name” (technically not possible because the @domain is part of the name), will have different vibes based on who participates, who moderates, what instances they’re on, etc. Mashing all of those together would at minimum, be a bad user experience and at worst, invite tons of harassment from ‘troll’ communities.

Izzy, 10 months ago

It’s not like there is absolutely no solution. There are a lot of tools for finding Lemmy communities right now. You could go to one of these tools and search for Ukraine and get a list of communities.

Subscribing to all of them is effectively making a conglomerate of their content in your home feed. I don’t see anything wrong with this approach. Other than that things will naturally work themselves out over time as people tend towards a single community.

C4d, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

The process you are going through now is how things get “better”.

Right now there a a multitude of communities across multiple instances that all superficially appear to be the same thing; if you must have ready access to all of it in your feed then yes you will need to subscribe to all of them.

The reality is that these places are not all the same. Not everyone is going to want to join all of them and they will be subject to different moderation. There will be different levels of activity and on the whole different vibes.

Over time, some will diverge, some will diminish and some will close and direct you to post elsewhere.

If you’re comparing to Reddit - that is a place where a lot of this has already happened; for mainstream subjects one sub became dominant but it’s worth bearing in mind that for some niche subjects there would still be a handful to subscribe to for a fuller picture.

It’ll happen here too; over time things will evolve and settle into a pattern.

As for the caring part - caring comes across in how we choose to interact with each other on here; the way we do that will strongly influence the way these communities grow and change over time.

So. We can influence how things will be. No individual person or entity will ever be in complete control. So it goes.

Edit: Also, the communities search tool on Lemmy.World reveals more communities with the same name: lemmy.world/search?q=nostupidquestions&type=Commu…

aaaa, 10 months ago

I think you’ve lost some perspective here. You asked a simple question, and people explained how it works.

Do you want to group all the communities together? Take it up with the W3C Social Web Working Group, who own the standard for ActivityPub. It’s a group of people, make your concerns known and maybe they’ll agree with you and change it. I don’t think they will, because I don’t agree that this is a problem that needs to be solved, but I’m not part of that group, so I guess that doesn’t matter.

In the meantime, why are you reacting like this to the helpful people who answered your question?

Kill_joy, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

You calling me Ayn Rand for saying that we should not hand over all power to a single corporation and then in the same breath also suggesting conglomerating all instances into one is... a bit absurd in my opinion. I am also going to choose to overlook you trying to link having the option to click 'subscribe' three times to the plight of Ukrainian refugees.

I do apologize if it seems I'm "mocking" anyone. Clearly that is not my intention - especially on 'No Stupid Questions'. Try not to become so defensive here, we're just having a conversation.

You asked and I shared my response.

Best of luck.

amanneedsamaid, 10 months ago

You dont have to, but thats the most obvious thing to do if you enjoy that kind of content.

Kichae, 10 months ago

Why would you have to do that? I doubt you read every post on the Reddit subreddit, so you don't have to try to read every one here.

blazera, 10 months ago

Now you have to find every single community in every single instance if you hope to talk about your topic?

no

eldavi, 10 months ago

the whole fediverse requires a more effort on your part than reddit ever did. i hate reddit now and left permanently, but i know that the fediverse will never be able to replace reddit and reddit will continue to flourish.

TheEntity, 10 months ago

FB and Twitter were flourishing for over a decade with me never being a part of it. I'm okay with Reddit flourishing without me, I'm happy where I am right now.

eldavi, 10 months ago

i wish i could say the same about being happy here; i find myself missing the subs i use to visit and it’s only after moving away from reddit have i started to realize how ultra niche those subs are.

however i’ve been wanting to spend less time with a screen in my face and the recent reddit assholery coupled w the lack of content from the fediverse is going to force me to make that change in my life and i see it as a good thing.

TheEntity, 10 months ago

I miss some niche subreddits but in general I appreciate the digital detox it forced upon me. I can live without these niche communities. It's not like they provided me with much more than fun trivia or memes on topics I already dabble in either way.

eldavi, 10 months ago

the content from those niche subs is next to impossible to find on my own so i don’t get to dabble anymore; but i saw losing it as a digital detox too.

Soundhole, 10 months ago

I still go back and forth. I use Red Reader, a third party app that still works. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, especially if there are niche communities that are really important to you.

Honestly though, every day the content on Reddit gets worse and more repetitive and the general atmosphere gets more sour. We’ll see how things pan out, but imo the vibe on Lemmy is more pleasant atm.

eldavi, 10 months ago

i think i’m lucky in that all of my niche subs were porn adjacent, so i need them like i need another hole in my head.

still, i find myself visiting reddit too, but without the ability to log in to limit my interaction with them.

BURN, 10 months ago

100% this

I don’t want to have to curate every part of my feed. I find myself missing r/All constantly while browsing the local pages.

There’s too many responsibilities on the user, which for some people is a huge plus, but for the average consumer is a huge drawback stopping them from joining a new platform.

Im28xwa, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I’m only subscribed to the most active one, I don’t like it and I wish if it was possible to merge and migrate communities

hypna, 10 months ago

Maybe we can federate the communities on our federated instances 🤔

DarraignTheSane, 10 months ago

Everyone’s going to say No, and “just subscribe to the most active one”, but if you’re a ‘Fediverse completionist’ and want to ensure that there’s not a single thing you miss anywhere at any time, then the answer is Yes.

Hupf, 10 months ago

Fomo isn’t real, it can’t hurt you.

BrerChicken, 10 months ago

I hate to tell you this but fears can absolutely hurt us.

DarraignTheSane, 10 months ago

Correct. Ultimately it’s up to each person how much they want to extend themselves into the Fediverse. You really can’t follow everything everywhere all the time, so you need to pick what you want your feed to consist of.

I’ve subscribed to any redundant tech / IT security related communities no matter how many of them there are, because I always want to stay current on any news that could impact the network environment I manage.

On the other hand, I like seeing some memes, but memes@lemmy.ml will absolutely flood your front page if you subscribe to it, so I stick to a few smaller meme subs like starwarsmemes@lemmy.world, risa@startrek.website, and lotrmemes@midwest.social.

eroc1990, 10 months ago

Good thing I play any%.

Zarxrax, 10 months ago

I mean, are you really that concerned that you might miss some random question on one of the less popular ones?

bernieecclestoned, 10 months ago

I’m going to guess yes

314r8, 10 months ago

It’s an example. If there are multiple instances of a thing do I need to subscribe to all of them? The answer is yes. It’s different from Reddit but there are pro and cons.

dogslayeggs, 10 months ago

The answer is no. You don’t NEED to subscribe to all of them. If you want to make absolutely sure you don’t miss a single thing everyone says on that topic, then maybe you do. But if you are just interested in electric cars, you can just pick the most active one of the one with the most subscribers. Even on reddit there were both /r/electriccars and /r/electricvehicles.

WhipperSnapper, 10 months ago

While I agree with what you’re saying in terms of seeing posts, the flip side is wanting to make a post visible to as many users are possible gets tougher.

Say I have a problem with my MicroSonySonic MPZoomPod that’s driving me crazy to figure out, so I figure I’ll post on Lemmy about it and see if anyone else has had that problem and a solution. In the reddit days, I just go to /r/MPZOOMPOD, or I google for “reddit mpzoompod” and find the subreddit. I can now post there knowing I’m hitting the entire community of mpzoompod users, or at least the majority of them. To do that on Lemmy, though, I now have to wonder if instead of a single community with 120k users, I have 12 communities with 10k users. So either I post to a tiny fraction of the communty, and thus have a much lower chance of getting my question answered, or I post the same thing to 12 different communites and have 12 different threads to keep track of for replies.

Obviously this is simplified, cause more likely there will be on big community somewhere, a couple other smaller versions, and then probably a couple completely devoid of posts from when people were first migrating to Lemmy and were excited to start communities.

Anyway, that was kind of a lot, but I think it really comes down to the subject matter. I don’t need 5 versions of showerthoughts, and I don’t care if showerthoughts has 1k subscribers or 1m subscribers, but if I really wanted showerthoughts to grow in popularity, the more people using one copy the better. Alternatively,it would be rad if /c/googlepixel or whatever wasn’t fragmented so I could know I was looking at the most likely source of information.

It’s all kind of an interesting thing to think about, and I can’t decide just yet which way I’d personally prefer. I remember reddit before all the digg people piled in, and I liked how it felt more like a community back then, but I also can’t disregard how incredible reddit has been in recent times for finding answers to specific questions, or getting news, or finding fans of a particular subject just because it became the default website to look for that stuff.