I think the main point of decentralization is to spread the burden of hosting around so that no individual has control of the system. I think having themed servers like what you're suggesting would aid in discoverability of different communities, but the downside is that that would mean individual servers would have monopolies on certain subjects.
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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Exactly. Also, people might not want their handle being associated with a specific niche hobby they have, though they might be there a lot/all the time (e.g. I don't want to be "ewe@hentainsfw", but I sure as shit am going to be spending a lot of time there).
I kind of feel like it would be best if we had some "user" instances that are nice and always up and most of the communities lived on "community" instances either grouped or just spread out. That way if any single community gets too big on an instance, it doesn't necessarily bog a bunch of users down as well (e.g. all the users on lemmy.ml that are hamstrung by being on the overloaded hardware on that instance).
@_finger_
We can have both generic instances and instances around a particular topic.
We already have a few lemmy dedicated to a particular community like latte.isnot.coffee and startrek.website
Hopping between instances would have to be simplified significantly.
I don't understand what you mean. Isn't the point of federation that one account on one instance is as good as an account on every instance? I've never felt the need to hop between instances.
OP's post is about having specialized instances, making hopping around necessary. It's not convenient enough as it is.
Making specialized instances does not in any way make hopping around necessary. If you join a specialized instance that doesn't already sub to the communities you want, you just add them.
Example: I join a Star Trek themed instance that has a bunch of locally created star trek communities. I want to sub to all those, but i ALSO want to sub to the homelab community on beehaw. I just subscribe to !homelab@beehaw.org FROM the star trek instance I am a member of. That star trek instance will then start syncing the homelab content from beehaw and you can read and reply from the star trek instance.
Conversely, if someone has an account on beehaw.org and they want to read a star trek community based on that star trek instance, they just need to sub to it FROM beehaw.org.
By hopping around, do you mean changing your account to one on another instance, or viewing a list of communities on an instance, or something else?
I don't feel that changing accounts is necessary because of the magic of federation. But I don't know how to view a list of communities in an instance without leaving your home instance. That would be a cool feature, but is only really important when you're initially picking all your subscriptions.
Exactly, it's really inconvenient right now. And it's really important for the usability of what OP suggested.
If I simply link to a cool community I found, like https://beehaw.org/c/programming, you can't follow that link conveniently if you're from another instance.
You can definitely sub to external communities from a separate instance, I have a bunch from Lemmy.ml show up in my world feed
While I agree it can be made easier, all you have to do if youβre from another instance is copy the url and paste it into your search bar to open it via your local instance.
Agreed, what needs to happen is an option that allows users to follow links from foreign instances in their home instance seamlessly. I have to imagine with the ramped up amount of development in lemmy that some of the devs must be working on it.
If I simply link to a cool community I found, like https://beehaw.org/c/programming, you canβt follow that link conveniently if youβre from another instance.
Then use the fediverse version: programming@beehaw.org
No, that's not right You can follow any community from any instance with your account, doesn't matter where you registered your account. I just subscribed to https://beehaw.org/c/programming from lemmy.pt user account
this is buggy. Pardon the nsfw, but it doesn't work for gonewild@lemmynsfw .com
I donβt know how to view a list of communities in an instance without leaving your home instance.
On lemmy:
- Click 'Communities' (top left menu)
- Search using the search box (top right)
- Select 'Communities' from the drop down (top left)
- Make sure to toggle 'All' (*not *'Subscribed' or 'Local').
This will show you communities matching your search term from all instances*.
You can then subscribe to communities regardless on which instance they live and use them seemlessly, regardless of wether they are local or not.
*) It will show you communities matching your search term from all instances, if your instance has already discovered that community.
If it has not, it shows 'No Results'. You can force it by some exclamation mark shenanigans which I haven't understood well enough to explain. After that, your instance knows about that community in the other instance and will show it in future search results. I think as soon as one person from your instance force-discovers a community from another instance, that community becomes searchable for everyone on your instance.
I'm currently working on a Lemmy mobile client and have implemented multi-accounts until it's easier to do this. Basically you can make multiple accounts on different instances and aggregate the data from them all into a single feed. It doesn't currently prioritize posting from specific accounts (you just select a primary)--I'm trying to figure out a good way to go about doing it so you can section things off π
Having the ability to link your account to different instances might be a way to solve that, or you have the ability to keep accounts separate depending on the instance. Right now we can link specific communities from other instances to another instance which is great, but being able to switch instances easily from one master account would be pretty great
I don't agree. If I like LOTR and giraffes I don't want to create an account on both "instance groups". I want to do like today and create a single account, then subscribe to the communities I am interested in wherever they are.
To me it sounds like you are sort of mixing up community location and community discovery. This is sort of the case right now because instances have a list of local communities but I think that it is best that they are separated. For example on Reddit I don't generally find new communities by scanning the entire list of communities. I usually find them when someone mentions a related community in a comment of a community that I am already in. Or when I stumble across a community when searching the web. When you discover and subscribe to communities this way it doesn't really matter where they are hosted or if they are grouped. You can organically discover things that interest you over time (although I agree that it can be a bit slow to start).
If I like LOTR and giraffes I donβt want to create an account on both βinstance groupsβ.
But you don't have to create accounts on multiple instances. You can subscribe, post, and mod communities on other federated servers.
But then what's the point of separating them into instances in the first place?
The full list of federated communities is getting too big to just scroll and find things, especially since I can't sort by name. I may not know what community name to search for. There's a lemmy.studio instance that someone started for music production topics. I can go list communities in that instance to see what I didn't realize I wanted to. It's all six of one, half a dozen of the other. We have general purpose and focused instances now, so everybody is free to choose which they want.
If I want to keep things separated i need to create multiple accounts. Why would I join an instance about LOTR and then subscribe to communities that have nothing to do with LOTR?
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I agree that this seems to be the intent behind Lemmy. But, I also think that, right now, there is such a big influx of people that need accounts that we need to route them into as many instances as possible to keep server stress down. And that means that a lot of communities will be generalized by the new users.
I agree with other comment that this will likely happen organically over time. After things stabilize I think we'll see communities begin to merge with identical or similar communities on other instances. And at that point server admins can start to take a bit more of a firm hand with their instances to try and do exactly what you're describing, if that's what they really wanted.
I guess it's the point of the fediverse as far as I understand. Kind of like being members of a bunch of old school forums. Unfortunately for me it's not really what I'm looking for, and I like the unified aspect of reddit.
unified is nice, but if i've learnt anything over the past 9-10 years as a redditor, it means you're at the mercy of admins and power mods. And because it's become the go-to forum, it's gotten so much attention from stealth marketers and bots (it's hard not to unsee such posts once you learn to identify them), and karma whores trying to get the first witty remark in so it'll get boosted up into the first top-level comment.
I kinda like the idea of a fediverse - it's like a bunch of forums, but connected in a way that makes it so much easier to browse and read all of them, and doesn't have the "centralisation of power" problem reddit has.
Unified is bad, always. If you need examples look at Windows, Android, iOS, Facebook, Amazon. Having a large selection roughly equal options promotes improvement AND cooperation. For example the Linux ecosystem is made up of hundreds of distributions that make a number of major choices about their systems but still allow the user to run the same software.
There's nothing stopping you as a user from subbing to different communities on all of those instances to get a feed exactly how you like it.
The only difference would be that mods would belong to an instance themed around their interest with a like-minded admin for it. Also, you could pick more niche topics than you can now. Let's say I'm into tech, but I don't care about AI. I could go to the Tech themed instance, pick the news and linux communities from there, sub to those and get them in my feed while ignoring the ai related communities.
This is good but at the moment the user base isn't big enough to support splitting interests like that.
AI and machine learning tech instance over here looking for members. ran themed communities BEFORE reddit and slashdot, doing it again.
Currently users of Lemmy are "power users". The fact that power users can't even work out how to use Lemmy 'properly' is sign of its future
It's arguably a sign that there is need for refinement, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, jeez. Every platforms' early days were much like this. Reddit was pretty shit at first. YouTube was pretty shit at first. And so on.
Nothing comes to life without teething pains. We're literally on day two for most users, it's bizarre to be saying anything about Lemmy's future this early.
Idk, I got here and I'm sort of an idjit
Would be nice if it was "divided" by user types too. Imagine a post about a new Marvel movie and you could view a shared comment thread but also filter to remove "marvel-fans", or see only "cineasts", without leaving the thread. Could lead to more bubbles, but could also make it really easy to see what other bubbles are thinking.
My thoughts are what if the instance admins or mods are pricks? What if the instance shuts down?
I think the power of the fediverse is that there is redundancy with the communities on different instances. I feel like it's a very human need to have everything neatly organized and in its place, but the internet is all about redundancy to ensure no single points of failure.
The fediverse mimics that by creating a web of small related communities, spread out over multiple instances, ran by different people, rather than a giant single community for one thing, on one instance, run by one person.
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There is already a couple like this. lemmy.dbzer0.com for example is a piracy themed instance, and all communities hosted on it are piracy-related.
Yaargh, matey, I be not aware of that plunderin' spot at all, arr! Thank ye kindly for sharin'. Ahoy, raise the masts and set sail on the high seas!
I think it will more of less follow that path naturally in the years to come, if it ever catches on. You can already see this happening with some instances (ie lemmy.ca mostly devoted to canadian topics, etc)
You have to remember that the amount of lemmy servers exploded in the past week or so. We're pretty much figuring this out collectively
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I agree with what you're saying. I've been contemplating back and forth about whether I should create a board game instant where you gather various board game discussions in the same instant.
I saw the scramble exodus from twitter to fedi, specifcally mastodon, when elon took over, give it time, when it first happened the Main instance Mastodon.social was swarmed aswell as the instances listed in mastodons Website at the time, over time more instances popped up with themes, im aware of lemmy-php which uses phpbb What doomed lemmy migration is how short the Protest is, over the 3 month Period with twitter fediverse microblogging adapted, just as reddit Corp will ride the wave so will lemmy with minor change, what needs to happen is the suggested "indefinite Protest" it will make lemmy instances pop up with themes, and smaller instances contributing to federation Themed instances already include lemmygrad.ml
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I don't really think we need a rule to it. And honestly, what about when themes overlap? Do we get dividing communities just because?
Also, it would just promote an echo chamber like Twitter.
Communities does what you want already. In time, some will pop off and become the popular ones. Maybe some will be split because of users not agreeing with something, but that already happened on Reddit as well.
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