Hello everyone,

The former mods of c/playstation have graciously decided to pass over the lead mod position to me so that we can continue to build a great place for PlayStation here on Lemmy.

I have posted a discussion post to the c/playstation community members which you can find here: https://lemmy.world/post/5350313

I am proposing a few questions to subscribers of Playstation and PS5:

  • Should c/playstation and c/ps5 join forces? Lemmy as a whole is still very small, and I believe having subscribers divided across two largely similar communities is doing us a disservice. A larger community means more discussions, more comments, more everything.

  • Should we remain separate? I know many of you likely joined c/playstation and c/ps5 for different reasons. Merging the communities might not be what you all want.

  • Do you have different ideas from those above? Please let us know below!

The point of this post is to hear from all of you and gather feedback and ideas before any decision is made. Currently, I plan to release a survey to formalize the options and opinions of the community before we do anything. For now, this post is to inform you all of what is happening and see what you all think.

Many of you are also aware that we previously migrated from lemmy.ml to lemmy.world. I did that migration unilaterally because I felt the community was being threatened. I do NOT intend to merge or migrate this community again without direct feedback and direction from c/PS5 subscribers as I do not want the community to lose faith in our leadership. Please let me know your thoughts below.

  • @[email protected]English
    8•9 months ago

    Combining communities is a good idea

    They can always be split up in the future, if the need arises

    • @slimerancherMEnglish
      1•9 months ago

      Yeah, if the userbase becomes big enough, and we start to have enough content that it becomes overwhelming in one community, we can always split it later on.

  • @[email protected]
    6•9 months ago

    I think the current discussions on c/ps5 is about PlayStation in general instead of just console exclusive already, I don’t think keeping it separate from c/Playstation would foster any diverging discussion environments, and as the communities here are still small-scale, conglomeration would generate much livelier climate and new discussions. So, in favor of joining forces

  • @Cuzscience
    3•9 months ago

    Thanks for shepherding all this. Combining them seems to make sense as it builds a potentially stronger centralized user-base and should save a little on resources (your time and sanity).

    • CosmicSploogeDrizzleOPMEnglish
      3•9 months ago

      Lmao, sanity is definitely a limited resource 🤣. When we migrated from Lemmy.ml to world, I didn’t think we’d be considering a merge down the line. But the overwhelming opinion appears to be for a merge.

      Just to be clear, if we do “merge” it would just mean that my posting effort would shift to c/PlayStation. C/PS5 will stay open for the community to use if they wish, and I will remain a mod. But weekly threads and regular posts from me would shift from ps5 to PlayStation. So the community should “merge” there in order to stay up to date.

  • Baron Von J
    2•9 months ago

    Appreciate your thoughtful long-term approach here, CosmicSpoogeDrizzle.

    • CosmicSploogeDrizzleOPMEnglish
      1•9 months ago

      Thanks! Just to be clear on your opinion. Are you in favor of a merge?

      • Baron Von J
        3•9 months ago

        Looking at each community, I think there’s enough subscribers to each for them to have separate communities. But looking at the posts, how many here are truly PS5 specific? So mostly I’d think it comes down to how much moderation do you want to do. Would you lock the [email protected] until some threshold percentage of [email protected] community posts are truly PS5-specific? Would you keep it open and rigidly delete posts for not being PS5-specific? As a community member, I really don’t browse Lemmy by going to each community individually, and I subscribe to all related communities where people are posting. So I will still see all posts from both communities regardless, and I’d just try and be mindful of the posting rules when I have something to share. So I’m not going to notice much either way.

        • CosmicSploogeDrizzleOPMEnglish
          3•9 months ago

          It’s more about focusing my posting effort and communicating with the community about where I will be focusing my effort. I post 99 percent of all content to c/ps5 currently and we are growing steadily. I hope this is not the case forever, and building a larger community is an important step toward a self sufficient community.

          Whereas c/PlayStation has stagnant growth and no regular content. Keeping c/PlayStation to only PS4 and backwards content is not really a good thing IMHO. And double posting in both PlayStation and PS5 to keep both alive is just going to double my work load and make confusion. I would leave c/ps5 open and moderate it accordingly but efforts would be focused on only one community due to personal bandwidth.

          Essentially, instead of PlayStation, PS4, PS3, PS2, etc all being defunct communities and only PS5 being actively developed. I would just be making PlayStation the main effort, and the console specific communities would be left to the community to develop if they wish.

          C/PlayStation would be for all things PlayStation, since PS5 is the current gen, naturally there will be more PS5 content. Activity on lemmy as a whole shows me that currently there isn’t enough demand for the older consoles to drive large engagement in breakout communities (c/PS5 being the exception to the rule)

          • Baron Von J
            2•9 months ago

            Whereas c/PlayStation has stagnant growth and no regular content. Keeping c/PlayStation to only PS4 and backwards content is not really a good thing IMHO.

            Agreed

            Essentially, instead of PlayStation, PS4, PS3, PS2, etc all being defunct communities and only PS5 being actively developed. I would just be making PlayStation the main effort, and the console specific communities would be left to the community to develop if they wish.

            Sounds reasonable. Moderator burnout hurts the whole community, so I think you’ve presented solid arguments for consolidating. And like I said I subscribe to all the communities that affect me (as I imagine most members do), so we won’t really be left wondering where all the [email protected] content has suddenly gone. As you enforce the moderation rules moving forward, people will just start posting in the right community.

            So that’s a thumbs-up from me for your proposal to consolidate!

            • CosmicSploogeDrizzleOPMEnglish
              3•9 months ago

              Awesome! And I do the same thing regarding subscribing to all relevant communities. So that’s good reassurance that this potential “merge” won’t really be all that disruptive for many.