Fedigrow

I previously posted this topic on the main Star Wars community, but it was removed for being too meta. Which is fair enough but it does leave is in a Catch 22 situation as you can't exactly get a SW instance started if you can't discuss starting one. Fortunately, @[email protected] was kind enough to suggest this instance would be a good venue for such discussions, so here we are.

So here's the original post with additional thoughts arising from the discussion or subsequent pondering:

__

In a Fediverse, far far away...

I have been involved in a few discussions about how to help the Fediverse grow and diversify and one thing I feel is key is to have more specific instances rather than large general purposes ones. It helps people when they are signing up and can help give communities a home. I know because I signed up with feddit.uk, helped grow the place and am now part of the Admin team.

Or, to cut a long story short, should there be a Star Wars Lemmy instance? Today seems the perfect time to open the discussion.

After all, there are other focused instances like:

• startrek.website
• sffa.community
• literature.cafe
• ttrpg.network
• adultswim.fan
• dormi.zone
• futurology.today
• lemmy.radio
• hobbit.world

Could move across existing communities:

[edit: see more comprehensive list below]

And there are a lot of potential others:

• A community per film and show
• SW Books - with potential to spin-off popular and long-running series
• SW Comics
• SW Board Games
• SW Video Games
• SW Cosplay
• SW Helmets
• SW Lightsabers
• SW Galaxy of Heroes
• The Empire Did Nothing Wrong

Possible names? A lot of obvious ones will have been scooped up or you risk copyright infringement, but how about:

• Fediverse's Edge

[edit: I found a discussion on the old place, about starting a Star Wars Mastodon instance and you could share resources and expertise by Hosting them on the same server. Which led me to suggest Fediverse's Edge as the umbrella domain with the Mastodon instance at Tootooine and thr Lemmy one at something like Lemmandalore). If you were doing this then you could also include an instance of BookWyrm, Galactic Library?, that would bring the Star Wars novels and comics front and centre. It could be a good example for others thinking of setting up instances for transmedia franchises like this - a Marvel part of the Fediverse, for example. It would really help people sign up to a chunk of the Fediverse as it is either all in one place or you could direct people elsewhere, to, say, a Pixelfed instance dedicated to toy photography.

Other name suggestions:

• tattooine.social
• dagobah.space
• hoth.books
• coruscant.forum
• bespin.io
• thesenate.domain
• thesenate.im
• unknownregion ]

May the FOSS be with you.

__

Those who contributed to that previous thread are: @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

And some who have been engaged in Star Wars instance discussion since (why I am bumping this post up my to-do list: @[email protected] @[email protected] ]

I also had a second post removed that listed all the Star Wars communities and it was relevant for this discussion to show the breadth of existing Star Wars discussion on here:

__

As a lot haven't federated over to my instance I went digging, so you may as well have the list:

Star Wars:

• [email protected] - you are here
• [email protected] [edit: this has since been locked]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Misc:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

TV and film:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Games:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

[edit: I've since started [email protected] ]

NSFW:

• [email protected] - in case you are unsure, it's definitely NSFW

__

Those who contributed to this thread: @[email protected]

Edit: Update: community is created, [email protected] !

Edit: Update: posted to [email protected] for their feedback: https://reddthat.com/post/20241853

Hello everyone,

The most current active community is [email protected].

Due to all the discussions that are now happening on [email protected] about moving away from lemmy.ml due to their abuse moderation practices (https://feddit.nl/post/16246531), should we consider creating an alternative.

[email protected] exists but seems unmanaged and I would rather avoid another LW community.

Maybe we could contact mander.xyz at [email protected] to see what they think?

[email protected] has been locked down in favor of [email protected]

[email protected] was locked down today in favor of [email protected]

Are there other communities we should try to consolidate?

We had a few AMA in the past, the most recent one being by a director/actor on [email protected] : https://lemm.ee/post/31335226?scrollToComments=true

Those seems like a good opportunity to promote the platform.

Who do you think would be a good candidate that we could reach out to?

Link to the graphs: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

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, I think 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.

Example: I am open to being wrong, but I don't currently see a need for five distinct Harry Potter sublemmies with (nearly) identical names:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

There are also some other miscellaneous HP related communities:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected] (ew, but you do you, I suppose)
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

I suspect that many of these were created during the 2023 Rexxit, when instances were less stable, and there was a temporary period of massive growth.

Now that Lemmy is more stable, would the moderators of the above communities consider some form of cooperative consolidation? If not, what distinct purpose do the separate communities serve?

A couple arguments in favour of consolidation: (credits to @[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://sh.itjust.works/post/18388026

I like this because people showing up to those communities might think that topic doesn’t have activity on Lemmy, when it actually does.

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.

The next question is, of course "Which instance should we consolidate to?"

• [email protected] is currently the largest sub, but also the largest instance, and moving off of the largest instance would be good for the Fediverse as a whole.
• [email protected] seems appropriate, given that Harry Potter is, well, a book. Large sub on a small instance.
• [email protected] is a small sub on a large instance.
• [email protected] is very small, but European. (Might feddit.uk be an option?)
• [email protected] is also an option, but risky given the fragility of the instance. Could blue_berry provide some assurances that the instance will be stable for the foreseeable future, and perhaps improve the bus factor of the instance?

My hunch is that a stable, medium-sized instance would be best. What are your thoughts? Is consolidation worth a try?

If nothing else, the experiment could serve as a test for whether or not consolidation is effective in boosting engagement and discussion.

A few ideas from the top of my head

• Flairs that can be allowed to filter content in a community
• Major online communites (can be subreddits, or other communities) moving to Lemmy
• Reddit removing old.reddit
• Reddit banning people using VPNs (already happening, see [email protected] )
• Lemmy becoming the reference source of knowledge for a certain domain

Second point is probably crucial, but I don't see any major subreddit wanting to move here. StarTrek is the exception more that the rule.

Perhaps after some amount of time having announced themselves over in [email protected] and [email protected], or...I don't know if there are communities for instances (the fediverse communities, presumably?), but likewise for them?

The combination of a promotional space and discussion for helping grow communities/instances could help ensure there's always some activity keeping this community visible to those seeking help.

I’ve searched for older Lemmy posts on Google just to see if they are getting indexed and I don’t think most are? Can anyone else confirm. I think if Lemmy showed up in more google searches like Reddit it would bring new users

I noticed the new betas have the ability to upload video clips. I think this has been a huge missing feature that Reddit and other social media platforms have

I'm not gonna lie, sometimes it feels a bit lonely. I try to post on a few generic communities

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Sometimes I can be the only poster for a few weeks. Makes me requestion the relevance of posting at all. I started posting to [email protected] recently just because at least my posts are widely seen, and other people post there as well.

Small post to ping a few people who might have interesting insight on the questions discussed in this community.

Probably a very polarizing question.

On the one hand, having most of the users and communities on LW causes technical issues (see this post), and also gives the LW staff too much power over Lemmy as a whole.

On the other hand, with 18k MAU on LW out of 47k (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/), every community listed there has a much higher chance of visibility compared to an alternative hosted on another instance

History of LW controversial decisions

• when they promoted Discord as an official communication channel (https://lemmy.world/post/3478399 - since then they created a Matrix chat)
• when they blocked the piracy communities (https://lemmy.world/post/13320356 )
• when they announced they might move from Lemmy to Sublinks (some comments from LW admins were quite controversial: https://lemmy.world/post/13899357 )
• when they forced the media bias fact checker bot and discarded user feedback (https://lemmy.world/post/18775630 - to be fair, they since then removed it from [email protected] , it's still in [email protected] )
• when they realized centralization of communities on LW was impacting the ability of other instances to stay up to date (https://lemmy.world/post/13967373 )
• when they updated their rules following a power trip overtake of a community (https://feddit.org/post/2308651 )

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:

• technology: [email protected]
• gaming: [email protected]
• chat: [email protected]
• etc.

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?

I'm mostly thinking about LW communities where nobody posts but which have active counterparts on other instances