Say what you will about reddit, at least an established subreddit was the place to gather on the topic, ie r/technology etc.

With Lemmy, doesn’t it follow that similar communities on different instances will simply dilute the userbase, for example !technology@lemmy.ml and !technology@beehaw.org. How do we best use lemmy as a (small c) community when a topic can be split amongst many (large C) Communities?

This is an earnest question, in no way am I suggesting lemmy is inferior to reddit. I’m quite enjoying myself here.

  • Barbarian@lemmy.reckless.devEnglish
    20·
    2 years ago

    I hear you man. I went from active contributor to mostly lurking on Reddit, and it wasn’t even a conscious choice. Gradually, everything became very mechanistic. I knew what the top few comments would be before going to the comments. The churn became cyclic in nature.

    After just a few days here, it was actually a little disconcerting how antagonistic and hostile people there are in the comments section. That’s just how people communicate, on a hair-trigger from flamewar.

    I recognize your username, I saw what you wrote about SQL scaling. Can you imagine recognizing a username in a major subreddit in the reddit of today?

    The dichotomy between the big communities which people subscribe to from all over Lemmy and the small meta/announcement/server issue communities for each individual instance is gonna be interesting to see develop as the userbase increases. Kinda like the difference between seeing people from your street everyday, then many more less familiar people in the city center.

    • nickajeglin@lemmy.oneEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      I agree with what both of you are saying about the antagonism of the community writ large, but I am going to miss the small subs. There are dozens of them I subbed that have 500 or 1k users and are really tightly focused communities. They still have that feel from 2010ish reddit.

      I’m ready to close the book on reddit as a whole, but I really will miss r/heavyseas and r/obscuremedia and r/theocho and r/desirepath etc.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 years ago

      Can you imagine recognizing a username in a major subreddit in the reddit of today?

      I have noticed this recognition on large posts on modern reddit, but it’s usually for not good reasons, because the poster is just karma whoring.

    • gnoop@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      It depends on the subreddit as well. There are some where discussion is expected. /r/nbadiscussion versus /r/nba, for example. The former will get into some good discussions if there’s a player looking to be traded. On /r/nba, you’ll get a bit of that but you’ll also get a few dozen, “He gone,” comments.

      I appreciate both at various times. I go into /r/nba specifically for the funny takes and will go to /r/nbadiscussion when I’m feeling like reading something more. That said, even /r/nba can get into some pretty impressive posts with stats, diagrams, and excellent breakdowns. It just depends on the day.

      I think the funnier times are where you expect one thing and get another. I can go into /r/guitarcirclejerk expecting some light hearted shitposting and end up with a great discussion on one thing or another.