Honestly, I'm fine with it. If servers go down, we have multiple fallback communities

It will work itself out. There have been splits in the past. /r/Indianapacers became /r/pacers and /r/prowrestling became /r/squaredcircle.

The real issue is having the same username on multiple instances. It's going to cause issues.

Isn’t it a bit of an annoying having repeat questions about repeat communities across various Lemmy instances?

To be honest I don’t see the issue with multiple similar communities. It’s no different to how Reddit would have many subreddits with similar themes. For example on Reddit there were dozens of Star Wars subs so people would subscribe to them all

To be fair, this often happened on Reddit as well. I was subscribed to 6 virtual reality subs, and at least that many 3d printing.

One issue I’ve found with this model is that content is being cross posted pretty heavily, meaning I’ll see the same post by the same person 5 times in the matter of a few minutes.

I’m trying to keep in mind that it’s still early, and communities are still finding their way. The ones that form an identity will have a larger base, and will become the de facto place that posts are made.

I don't think there's a problem with that. Diversity is a good thing. I sub to both in that situation. I'm subbed here and to an ask lemmy community on .world as well.

Why does it bother you?

No.

Sounds good to me. Those big default subs were always trash and prone to brigading. Not that i think there was ever a state where a general political discussion group couldn't be trash but you get what i mean

Why is it annoying? What would happen if you subscribed to both?

I’m subscribed to both and I’ve barely seen any posts from either. I’m hoping to start getting some diverse content from both of them.

"Freedom of choice,

Is what you got,

Freedom from choice,

Is what you want."

DEVO
"Freedom of Coice"
Freedom of Choice
1980

It's certainly the biggest annoyance to me so far. I like things to be streamlined and as simple as possible. Having multiple communities for the same topic is just messy.

I would rather see instances focused on topics with niche communities within them.

For example, a lemmy.POLITICS instance with communities for WORLD, US, EU, LATAM, etc

They aren't repeat instances they are very different.

Not really - as the weeks and months go by, people will gravitate... and individual groups can update their names/descriptions if they become aware of a similar instance.

I understand why it can be beneficial but it brings so many potential complications and issues that I think on balance it would be worth trying to address it somehow, maybe through codes of conduct, policy and enhanced search and validation at the point a community is created. Wouldn't be perfect by any means, and I don't think it should be a requirement to stop duplicate communities - but as an example to prevent issues with mergers and fractured user bases, with the android community being a recent instance of a disgruntled users where an established community has been shut down and moved to another instance with no way for the existing community to reclaim their space.

There are potentially issues with community name squatting, duplicate content and cross posting, users missing out on conversation from one instance if they aren't aware of it; and when large companies start to move into the space, there will be communities swallowed up potentially, and the various issues and questions and clashes it causes.

I suspect there are also going to be issues as the site grows with where servers are located and how compliant they are with GDPR and other regulations too.

Even the getting started guide for .world (and others) mention check other instances for duplicate communities first, so it is likely something that needs to be addressed in some form.

It's a really interesting subject that will be fascinating to see how it unfolds over time!