I understand that a user on any instance can subscribe to any community in the fediverse, but I have been a bit confused when searching for communities to join. Sometimes there are communities on different instances, with the exact same name.
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Do these communities talk to each other at all, or are they completely separate, with a different host, posts, mods, subscribers etc.
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Should I just join the largest (and presumably, most active) one?
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Is there anything in place to discourage communities of same name, but different instances, from “competing”?
Eh. Most people will just see posts from the more popular one in their feed and subscribe from there. Or search for something and they’ll pick the top result which is going to be the larger one.
It’s not really much more confusing than say /r/Tech vs /r/Technology. Or /r/offmychest vs /r/trueoffmychest etc
One will get big, the other will die. Give it time
I think the opportunity is more interesting though for apps to provide a federated multi-community experience seamlessly. E.g. a/technology shows me an intermingled feed of all the c/technology communities that my home instance federated with
And what happens when you go to make a post?
Plus that would lead to you seeing many identical or near identical discussions
Ideally it would post to whichever instance you’re logged into, but show up on all federated instances.
But I don’t have a c/technology on my instance - and I don’t need one.
A much more interesting thing about the fediverse is that [email protected] and [email protected] are both about “trees”, but one is about getting high and the other is about therapeutic uses of trees and shrooms.
I wouldn’t what a “I didn’t tidy my room - because I got high” in a community about treating mental illness with plants
Disallow posts when viewing a custom feed like this. Force users to click/tap in to the community they want to post in before they’re allowed to start a post. Might be a little wonky at first, but I feel like you’d get that muscle memory eventually.