What I think could make Lemmy superior to Reddit is the ability to create themed-instances that are all linked together which feels like the entire point. I’ve noticed that a lot of instances are trying to be a catch-all Reddit replacement by imitating specific subs which is understandable given the circumstances but seems like it’s not taking advantage of the full power that Lemmy could have.
Imagine for a moment that instances were more focus-based. Instead of having communities that are all mostly unrelated we had entire instances that are focused on one specific area of expertise or interest. Imagine a LOTR instance that had many sub-communities (in this case “communities” would be the wrong way to look at it, it would be more like categories) that dealt with different subjects in the LOTR universe: books, movies, lore, gaming, art, etc all in the same instance.
Imagine the types of instances that could be created with more granular categories within to better guide conversations: Baseball, Cars, Comics, Movies, Tech etc.
A tech instance could have dedicated communities for news, programming, dev, IT, Microsoft, Apple, iOS, linux. Or you could make it even more granular by having a dedicated instance for each of those because there’s so many categories that could be applied to each.
What are your thoughts?
This is good but at the moment the user base isn’t big enough to support splitting interests like that.
@_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
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.
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 don’t want to create an account on both “instance groups”.
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?
You can subscribe and post on different instances. But, I don’t think all pertinent communities should be on one CENTRALIZED instance since that defeats the point of the Fediverse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And I highly disagree with only being important at the start. It’s a big hurdle that stifles growth right now and in the future.
Yes you can subscribe to and read/reply to that community from any lemmy instance. You just need to add it if the instance doesn’t already federate with it.
Go to ‘Communities’ at the top of your instance homepage then in the search bar put the url of the community you want to add. (example: https://beehaw.org/c/programming)
This next part is undocumented, and might just be a bug. But this is the magic part.
On the next page, change the top search dropdown from Communities to All.
You will see the community you want to sub to in the results. It will say something like.
Programming@beehaw.org - 0 subscribersClick it, then on the top right pane click “Subscribe”
Done
Jesus Christ. I’m well aware of how you can subscribe to other instances. This is about convenience, with problems arising from situations like I described above.
Having some additional messaging about how communities work, and how to subscribe to them would help. I’m sorry that I assumed you didn’t know how to do that. I meant no offense but there’s no harm in providing free information that you (or someone else reading this post) might not know about.
There’s no way for an instance to know that you have an account on some other instance so the subscribe button assumes you are a local user. Maybe that could be addressed in the future, I don’t know what the plans are.
At a minimum I would think the subscribe button could have some logic that can detect whether you are logged in or not and then give you some options. Like, log into your account if you have one on this instance, or if you don’t here are instructions for adding this community to YOUR instance.
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 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.
AI and machine learning tech instance over here looking for members. ran themed communities BEFORE reddit and slashdot, doing it again.
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
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
You really need to use better grammar and punctuation, my dude… That was a rough read.
Sorry for no reply but I do not really know english grammar
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
It’s not like it’s a finished product. It’s a Work in Progress. I’m watching the progress of the project for some time, and it seems for me that the first priority was to get the UX on one instance right (which IMHO makes totally sense). Basic federation support came more recently and will get better, I’m sure of it. Once that is a more smooth experience I think it will organically get more diverse.
