this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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It seems fine, with a few concerns.
The federated nature could become confusing, especially for new users. For example, I'm not sure how a new user is supposed to distinguish between: [email protected] and [email protected] This seems like a potentially worse version of reddit's games vs gaming vs truegaming.
Also the lack of filtering options. Until I build up a reasonable amount of communities I'm subscribed to, I suspect I'll be using All more, which doesn't seem to have a simple way to do things like filter out all memes or just focus on text.
It's definitely been a weird change. Reddit was comfortable, but it was because I'd figured out how to make my home there a decade ago. Lemmy isn't comfortable. I'm sure it will be fine, but it's just not what I'm used to.
It's a lot like when my favorite Mexican restaurant changed owners and everything was different. It's still a fine place (and the food might actually be better), but it isn't my comfort place anymore.
Is it possible to sync two same named communities across multiple instances?
Yes. Just like users, communities are defined by their fully qualified names. So [email protected] and [email protected] are different communities, even if the "Games" part of the community name is the same.
There's no way to like "merge" it though if that's what you mean. So it's possible you will have two "Games" communities you subscribe to for example. However, that's not dissimilar to what happens on reddit already. /r/Games was born because /r/Gaming was going in a direction some people didn't like. And then /r/TrueGaming was born because they didn't like either of those. And you have small subreddits closing to point to larger subreddits, etc. Over time that's a problem that will just naturally sort itself out, though the UI for creating/searching for communities could use improvements to help with that process too.
I expect some apps to eventually allow a user to merge like-named communities into a single "virtual" community. The Connect app already moved towards this by presenting your subscriptions grouped by community named, rather than instance. So I see all my "technology" communities listed next to each other, for example.
That's interesting! The concept of virtual communities could have some cool uses. I'd love to see that be brought into Lemmy itself so it can be a concept everywhere.
It's a matter of time in my opinion. Out of the major federated instances, if (for example, but this applies to any topic) Games@a and Games@b are too similar, one will end up becoming the 'winner'. Others will either develop their own identities or slowly fade.
Eventually it'll just be a known thing, Games@a is a little more loose and jokey while Games@b is a little more organised and on-topic, and if you're 14 and want to get in long-winded insult exchanges about the best CoD then there's also Games@c
In theory one of the communities would start to hit critical mass and everyone would go there. Initially on Reddit we saw the issue where everyone wanted their sub to he the sub on a topic but eventually that cooled off. Federated will just take a little longer.
I think one thing that would help is if people creating servers would be more themed or selective on their topics. I'm specifically on an instances based on my physical location. I can subscribe to sports or tech or whatever on other servers so i wont be creating those communities here. Hopefully everyone else does the same. But if not then at least there are communities on the topic.
Ehh, even on Reddit I was subbed to ~5 generic gaming subs. I think you're right though, there will be themed federated servers. Which does come with their own issues, basically creating super-mods again purely by their nature. (but at least they'll need to put their money where their mouth is this time around)
There will always be problems but this is a move in the right direction.