Why consolidate communities?

One of the advantages of a decentralized platform like Lemmy is the ability to create parallel communities on the same topic. "You don't like how a community is being moderated? Go to another instance and start a new community!" (with or without blackjack and hookers)

However, this is also a double-edged sword. The creation of multiple communities on the same (or similar) topics can also fragment the userbase, leading to very sparsely populated communities.

A few perspectives in favour of consolidation: (credits to @Ashyr@sh.itjust.works, @otter@lemmy.ca, and @Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone)

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/11171955

I think until there’s some tool or system that helps collate all the information out here, fragmentation is detrimental to growth.

I’m not going to copy and paste the same comment with every mirrored post.

So sometimes commenting feels like a waste of time.

Centralizing helps ensure that there’s vibrant, consistent discussion which is what Lemmy should be about.

https://lemmy.ca/comment/8823953

I like this because people showing up to those communities might think that topic doesn’t have activity on Lemmy, when it actually does.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/8370860

I sometimes think that unmoderated communities should be closed, and just be left and locked with a pointer to the active one. In case an issue arises with the active one, they can still be unlocked and used as back up.

Consolidating electric vehicle communities

Applying these principles to the EV communities on Lemmy, let's take an overview of what currently exists:

General-purpose:

• !electric_vehicles@lemmy.ml (active)
• !electricvehicles@lemmy.ml (active)
• !evs@lemmy.world (active)
• !electricvehicles@lemmy.world (inactive)
• !electriccars@lemmy.ca (inactive)
• !electricvehicles@slrpnk.net (active)
• !electricvehicles@lemm.ee (inactive)
• !electricvehicles@reddthat.com (inactive)
• !evs@notdigg.com (inactive)

Location-specific:

• !evs@feddit.uk (active) (UK-specific, European welcome)
• !evs_ireland@lemmy.ml (inactive) (Ireland-specific)
• !electricvehicles@midwest.social (inactive) (US-specific)

Other:

• !electricvehicles@gearhead.town (active)

Do all of these communities serve a distinct purpose? If not, could we consolidate some of them?

While Lemmy does not currently have a built-in way of moving or merging communities, @Blaze@lemmy.cafe has had some success with pinning an explanation post directing users to the new community and locking the old one. Is this something which could be applied to the EV communities on Lemmy?

The next question is, of course "Which communities should we consolidate to?"

Given the general sentiment to move off of ML (for ideological reasons) and off of World (to avoid centralization of instances), my proposal would be !electricvehicles@slrpnk.net. I think the SolarPunk instance is a nice match for an EV community, but I am interested to hear what others think.