Yeah that makes sense, like a “Split discussions” checkbox :)

That’s a great idea! I’ve often wondered about it myself. The main question is about UX and how to enable to filter/post comments by communities. Slightly exaggerated example: if there’s an article published on a conservative instance on a topic that could be of interest to a community around here, i think it makes sense to enable to merge discussions, but i think per-community discussions still make sense.

This raises the question of how to deal with this in the UI when crossposting/commenting/viewing.

That’s a very good point! If we can help in any way (beyond lemmy.ml instance) let us know.

I’m sorry what CAPTCHA? If that’s a registration time CAPTCHA you could probably run your own lemmy server, disable registrations and let admins create accounts manually for users? (since you appear to have an existing community where you could request accounts)