Are communities server-specific? i.e, is the "Gaming" community on lemmy.ml different from the one on, say, beehaw.org?
I have a question about communities. Are communities server-specific, for example, is the "Gaming" community on lemmy.ml different from the one on, say, beehaw.org and will I need to join both?
That's right. !Gaming@lemmy.ml is different from !Gaming@beehaw.org
Note that you can use your same account to subscribe to both of them, as one may be more active than the other. Feel free to pick one or both it doesn't really matter. Different websites/servers have slightly different rules and different culture, so the posts and comments will be slightly different community to community.
Its different from centralized services, and better. Rather than there being a single universal gaming community, people can make their own, with their own rules. If one gaming community has bad mods, or one server has bad admins, you can move to a different one.