They’re separate and you should probably just join them all. There’s a ton of “gaming” communities, for example. There’s no reason for them to feel they’re competing, since people can just join them all and they can have their own separate rules. I think over time some will naturally become more popular and others will die off. Depends on the mods and how they manage it, really, plus other organic factors. But they are literally just different, unique communities. Consider the @instance to be an important part of the community name.

I imagine apps will eventually allow you to group communities under custom “topics” or something, so it seems cohesive from the users’ perspective. If you’re familiar with Apollo, you could create “Multi-Reddits” for a custom feed with any subs you put in each Multi-Reddit. It was super useful. I had one for gaming, one for news, one for cats. In this case where so many have the same name, it would be helpful to have a reminder label when you comment or post so you see exactly where you’re posting, and maybe a helpful link to the sidebar so you can double check the rules for that particular community. Maybe the Lemmy devs will even add an option for the communities to group together on their end somehow, someday, while still maintaining their decentralized independence.

The sky’s the limit for what may happen in the coming months/years, and improvements are happening fast. For now, enjoy the fact that there are many community options. I don’t see it as a problem, but a feature of decentralization.

You can always group them yourself, if you want, by creating a different account for each topic you’re interested in and only subscribing to a narrow number communities on that account. That way your home tab on one account would show all the gaming or cat pic communities you chose. Then switch back to your ”main” account for all the beans memes, etc.

Also, if you’re searching from your instance or in an app, you may not be seeing all the communities that exist if your instance hasn’t already connected to them. You also don’t see how many total users across all instances are subscribed - just the number of your local instance users that subscribed. So check out https://lemmyverse.net/communities for a better and more complete way to find and view communities and their stats - especially if you’re looking for the largest ones. Copy the full URL (starting with the !) and then paste it in your app’s search bar for a foolproof way to get to it.