idea for discussion: federation of individual communities across instance

I was thinking about how there are similar communities on different instances. In some cases that is desirable/ok but maybe it would be cool to have another option.

Say there are 3 separate communities on different instances for amateur cobbling (DIY shoes). None are big enough to really get going. Interested users trickle in here and there but there isn't enough to engage them. People try cross posting but that just breaks up discussion and leads to a "spam" feeling for those subbed to all of them. Everyone likes one another and they basically want one unified forum.

Would it be possible to automatically duplicate content posted to each instance to the other 2 instances? Including comments, mentions, etc.

Not like a multi reddit because would also share sidebar, mods, posting rules, other aspects. More like a mirror? or a repost bot?

But I don't know if it would mean

  • 1 of the communities is the "main"
  • the other 2 are copies under a different name
  • they function as symlinks when mentioned or when traffic requested at them --- it all goes to "main"

or

  • they are all equal to one another
  • any post you make to one instance, a post is automatically made on your behalf on the other instances
  • likewise any comments or other interactions

or

  • a post you make to one instance "lives" on that instance, but the 2 other instances will show it in their feed.
  • when viewed on another instance's community, you will see that it is on the original one.

of course this raises questions such as

  • what happens if the groups decide to split up after some time?
    -instance have different codes of conduct?
  • what if host instances de-federated from each other?
  • could it be used to undermine instance autonomy? evade spam bans etc?

Anybody thought of this kind of thing? I doubt it would be on the agenda for next week but interesting to think about.

trynn,
@trynn@kbin.social avatar

I don't think this is a good idea. Keep in mind that different instances have different policies, moderators, and users. This leads to different rule enforcement, culture, and federation status. Even if a magazine/community has the same name and the same discussion topics does not mean it's the same group of people reading those posts (some might be, due to cross-instance federation, but not all will be). In short, they are different groups and cannot be treated as the same without pissing off people.

The proper solution is to let each community just evolve until one naturally emerges over time as the go-to community or they all differentiate themselves enough to be considered different (albeit with similar names). Adding a bot to cross-post content just slows that process down and makes the problem persist for longer. If a topic is truly small enough that getting enough people for critical mass is difficult (like your DIY cobbling example), then it shouldn't be hard to start a discussion in each of the separate communities to suggest assigning one as the "main" one and then just stop using the others. This is something that should be driven by the communities, not the software.

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