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?

  • Matthieu@piaille.fr
    4·
    1 year ago

    @_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

  • kevincox@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 year ago

    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).

    • Guy_Fieris_Hair@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Carchi@lemmy.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • feduser934@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • notun@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        OP’s post is about having specialized instances, making hopping around necessary. It’s not convenient enough as it is.

        • AtomHeartFather@ka.tet42.org
          1·
          1 year ago

          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.

          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.

        • feduser934@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • notun@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            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.

  • Fluffery@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    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