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
    5·
    2 years 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·
    2 years 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).

    • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 years 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.

    • Guy_Fieris_Hair@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 years 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.

    • feduser934@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      2 years 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·
        2 years ago

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

        • feduser934@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          2 years 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
            2·
            2 years 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.

  • twistedtxb@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 years ago

    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

  • Kasrean@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • Carchi@lemmy.ml
    1·
    2 years 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.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
    1·
    2 years ago

    This is good but at the moment the user base isn’t big enough to support splitting interests like that.

  • BurningnnTree@lemmy.one
    1·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • Fluffery@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years 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

  • XpeeN@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    2 years ago

    I feel like is not necessary because you can subscribe and communicate to subLems from basically anywhere. We’re right now 2 users from 2 different instances talking at a subLem originate at a 3rd instance, but does it even matter? As long as everything’s federated it (basically) doesn’t matter where you’re account is from, and what subLems are originate from your instance. That’s the whole beauty of the fediverse.

    PS, I do glad that lemmygard implemented your idea, so because my instance defederate them I don’t have to see those guys ever again (they’re the reason I ditched my lemmy.ml account long ago).

    • Quit_this_instance@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      2 years ago

      There are some good reasons to do it. You can basically recreate the classic forum experience. Say you want to make an all purposes Blades in the Dark community. You could just make /c/bladesinthedark in your favourite instance, but you could also make mybladesinthedark.org/c/generaldiscussion, /c/characterart, /c/gamestories, /c/playbypost, even /c/offtopic, and restrict the creation of new communities to mods, or to admins with an @mybladesinthedark.org account, or something like that. Maybe mybladesinthedark.org is owned by the company that publishes bitd, allowing them to create a series of “official” communities linked under the lemmy network but still locally managed.

      IMO this is a pretty powerful tool, and while I don’t think it should be the standard, it definitely does ad d cool value that competitors lack.

  • hugz@lemmy.ml
    01·
    2 years ago

    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

    • ChemicalRascal@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      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.

      • hugz@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 years ago

        It’s a term that broadly refers to people with more experience in a technology and more ability to extract use from it.