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.

  • Do these communities talk to each other at all, or are they completely separate, with a different host, posts, mods, subscribers etc.

  • Should I just join the largest (and presumably, most active) one?

  • Is there anything in place to discourage communities of same name, but different instances, from “competing”?

  • ritswd@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 years ago

    Lemmy’s decentralization is a lot like email. So, they’re as similar as a “mickeyclub2023@gmail.com” mailing list and a “mickeyclub2023@hotmail.com” mailing list. So, completely separate, since they live on different services.

    And just like public mailing lists, you can join both if you like both, join only one if you like only one, or join none if you like none. It really isn’t more complicated than that.

  • ji88aja88a@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 years ago

    My understanding is that some instances can attract particular users for particular reasons and those instances also can have particular rules. So, by that, particular communities will have filtered/moderated posts… for example, but not limited to, political leanings, other proclivities etc

  • sloonark@lemm.ee
    1·
    3 years ago

    Yeah it’s a bit of a weird situation, isn’t it? Same names but different communities. I actually think this is a bit of a barrier to new users. It’s not an intuitive situation and doesn’t immediately make sense. I think it adds to the “this is all too confusing” problem that is inherent in the fediverse.

  • julesiecoolsie@lemmy.worldBanned
    34·
    3 years ago

    It’s not confusing at all, the names are different. Maybe just come up with something original for a domain name