cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5110168

As a moderator of a Lemmy instance, you currently have two options to take: pushing users first to your local content or content from all instances you federate with. These options come with the costs seen in the picture. The moderator of another instance has the same choice. However, in this scenario, they will both always switch to promoting the local-feed. I don’t want to say its wrong - it’s just the most sensible way to act on Lemmy currently. However, if everybody does it, it is bad for the overall discussion quality of the Threadiverse.

Its a classical prisoner’s dilemma from game theory, which sometimes happen in society, for example with supply shortage during lockdowns. A way to solve it is by making action B more positive and option A more negative. This would lead to more moderators choosing Action B over A.

Mastodon solved this with an Explore-Feed, which consolidates the Local- and All-Feed. I think this could also be a solution for Lemmy. It would result in less engagement decrease AND an overall positive effect on discussion quality.

Additionally, a general acknowledgement that instance protectionism is a problem and should be avoided could help to make A more negative. In other words: increasing the pressure by the community. This would put a negative social effect on option A. So: start talking about it with your moderators.

Do you think these two measure would do (additionally to more powerful moderation tools, which would only enable a working explore-feed in the first place)? Is this a problem on other services on the Fediverse too (at least Mastodon seems to have handled it quite well)?

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
    5·
    1 year ago

    What is the difference between one instance with an “all” feed and multiple instances with the same “all” feed?

    I don’t agree with your assessment of problems with small instances. A healthy federation is exactly what makes small instances viable, compared to non-federated small forums. Small instances are still easily discoverable by searching for their communities or getting explicit recommendations by other (human) users.

    Mixing their communities into an single “all” feed, or worse merging them in “multi-reddits” is what kills them as they loose their unique character.