If everyone was spread out onto different instances, and communities were based all over the fediverse, the decisions of one instance would be less impactful.
If everyone was spread out onto different instances, and communities were based all over the fediverse, the decisions of one instance would be less impactful.
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The Fediverse requires federated thinking as well as federated technology. Critical thinking can be hard when its been so easy to just consume what you've been fed without question since you were born.
Lemmy is not meaningfully federated You can't click /c/book and see the fediverse whole discussion space about books. It is a UI problem, Lemmy simply is not a federated application, it only has federation tacked on.
Is this a problem? I like that there's not just one c/book. I like that any instance that wants to can create a book community, and interested people can subscribe to any or all of them, if they so choose.
I also see it as a good thing, why? Because you have instance moderators, and community moderators. If we join all communities together like that, were going to be essentially forcing these disparate community moderators to work together. This will never work, as people have different ideas of what should and shouldn't be allowed, and how to handle different issues (or even wether something is an issue in the first place)
Also there's the idea that if you don't like one community in one instance, you can move or create one in another instance, and everyone is happy - you could say that in this case redundancy is good, in case one falls into shit.
Thank you for understanding me! I feel like everyone is caught up in the idea that One Forum to Rule them All is a net positive, but my experience has been quite contrary. I think it's especially apparent to people who fall somewhere outside the norm. There were "official" communities on reddit based on interests of mine that I wouldn't join simply because they were fairly unwelcoming to me as a gay man. (r/residentevil is the first that comes to mind due to its moderation style, but there were others.) I really love the idea that there's really no such thing here. Sure, there are some that are significantly larger than others, but often I find myself gravitating to the smaller ones simply because it's a more relaxed, cozy experience for me. (memes@sopuli.xyz vs. memes@lemmy.ml, just for example.) But other times, I like the larger, busier discussion.
I honestly hope the fediverse helps us put away the notion of centralizing everything. Sure, there are certain communities where people like lead devs of a piece of software or guide are actually present, but even these would do well to have alternatives that are more community driven.
I see it as part of creating a more open, equitable space online where, as you said, everyone is happy.
Is it a problem that people with a common interest, cannot find common ground ? Yes, it is a fatal flaw for a social network.
Sure, and client viewer can activate a "local posts only". It's easy to exclude everything else.
But you can't undelete what never existed. If there is no common space there is no community.
The best compromise Lemmy has is "the one big community" that drowns out everything and sucks the air out.
It doesn't mean not finding a common ground, though. If anything, it's healthy to have smaller, more fragmented groups. Otherwise, you end up with a reddit or 4chan situation, and that only benefits those who fit the status quo.
What you call a weakness is the thing I like best about the fediverse. There are no "official" or centralized forums, nor should there be.
Care to explain why you think it's bad?
I think so, especially as users can't have multiple subscription lists. The post sorting algorithms use activity as a key metric, so lots of fragmented communities will get buried under posts from (for example) memes@lemmysworld.
I guess you and I must interact with the fediverse in completely different ways. I tend to sort by all > new when I just want to browse random content (and I'm ok with that being meme-heavy).
When I want to communicate with a specific community, I will visit the individual community itself. For instance (ha!), I like that there's a Firefox@lemmy.ml and a Firefox@fedia.io that have different users and different content.
I also feel like it's time to abandon the idea of one centralized "official" community for things. That has never ended well.
That's why I don't understand things like the former r/gamingcirclejerk mod being upset that someone created a gamingcirclejerk@lemmy.world. Like just -- create your own?
I don't use All. It's completely devoid of interesting things for me. I tend to use Top Day Subscribed so I'm looking for stories that have some traction and a conversation going on. Doing that with a large number of subscriptions means the most popular topics overwhelm the less popular topics. All I'll see is Memes, but never my sub about scuba diving. If the scuba diving community is split across 7 channels, but memes is just one big channel, that just gets worse.
I was a big user of multireddits. That allowed me to group subs together for more niche topics, and see what was top in that area. I think Lemmy isn't going to cultivate smaller channels without having a way to get them appear regularly to users.
I browse by all frequently, and I don't have this problem. I also check in on smaller instances, as one does.
Skill issue.