In my opinion the only good thing it does is to create copies of already existing communities, so basically people tend to follow one community or the other and it divides the people who could be active.
If you want to create a community that’s similar to one and for some reason you don’t want to be a part of it, find another name, if you can’t find another name, create your own instance. So if Lemmy is federating now we could have /c/worldnews, /c/world_news, and the same applies to every other instance that decides to do the same. In my opinion this only segregates people.
The same applies to uppercase letters, which Reddit uses but luckily Lemmy does not, imagine how many copies of a community could be created if you use both.
It can be useful as a word seperator. If its a copy, instance admins can remove it if necessary. Also, it seems inconsistent to allow _ in community names, but not in usernames (if thats what you’re suggesting).
That precisely is one of the things I found it irrelevant for, what do you want to use a word separator for? It makes sense in names because there can be a million users, but with communities it’s not the same, we don’t need 5 communities with similar names.
Imagine this: /c/league_of_legends /c/leageof_legends /c/league_oflegends /c/leagueoflegends I just don’t see the point and I don’t think it makes it so much easier to read, since anyway most of the time you will be reading the display name, not the address.
You can open an issue for this if you want.
Sure, I’ll open one if anyone (specially you and Dessalines) think it makes sense, so if you think it’s worth continuing the discussion there I’ll do it.
I’m not sure… I’m pretty sure sometimes and in some languages, separating two words can really change the meaning of a title, don’t you think ?
Example?
Absurd example, but there is a city named “Chicken” (It actually exist !) A community about cooking chicken : eatin_chicken A community about places to eat in the city of Chicken : eat_in_chicken
I mean… I think there are a couple of valid examples, I think it would make more sense to create a community named /c/chickencity and there you’d ask for places to eat, though. But let’s say it’s a valid example, in my opinion the pros are more than the cons. How many copies of communities can be created by adding the _ and how many communities will need to phrase their address in a different way because of it?
I don’t know tbh. You can make two copies of essentially the same community around the same interests/subjects with different names, underscore or no underscore. I think “mechanically” solving a problem like that is not a great idea, and that defining if two community should be merge fall into the hands of admins and administrators, not developers. If you are a mod of a community, or admin of an instance, chances are you know that such “clones” exist, and you either think you should merge and do it, or think you have a valid reason to stay apart and are free to do so.
Of course you can make similar copies, the thing is that with this issue people create them without realizing it and it super common, whereas having to find a similar name it’s done on purpose.
Actually I tend to agree with @PP44@lemmy.ml. Maybe the problem you are describing could be better solved by having admins review new communities.
Fair enough.
super_bowl
superb__owl
I think I agree. Even just for simplicity’s sake.
True, too.
You would have to ban more than just the hyphen, so might as well leave it as is
That’s the only character allowed, so everything else is already banned. If you try to create a community it says “lowercase, underscores and no spaces”.
In that case, why not keep the only special character allowed
In that case, why keep the only special character allowed?
There must have been a reason – let’s ask the person who decided this
I think the ones without a word separator should be gone, because it’s harder to read
