I just don’t get how Lemmy is going to act as a proper replacement for Reddit.
I understand the basic concept of Lemmy and the Fediverse, and people are touting the concept of it being federated and not centrally controlled, but it is an absolute mess and nobody seems to have an idea about what to do with it.
How are communities going to grow if there isn’t at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they’re all just doing what they want.
Outside of the underlying framework, there’s no ‘guidelines’ or consistency. The servers have random names, and the main Lemmy.ml is telling people to register elsewhere.
How is this going to bring in a wider audience if people are being directed to lemmy.fmhy.ml, sopuli.xyz, or sh.itjust.works?
What is the purpose of the Fediverse when forums for niche interests already exist on the internet?
Does it make sense to have something like a ‘sports’ server that has communities for soccer, NFL, basketball, MMA? But then how do you get a consistent naming scheme that lets people know it’s part of the fediverse?
Maybe Lemmy could work as a replacement, but it seems like it needs a ‘flagship’ server with a group of people maintaining it to set an example. Then other servers that cover more specific areas, such as sports, can be set up and potentially work closely with that flagship group.
If this doesn’t happen, then I can’t see how this doesn’t just fizzle out.
P.S. I’ve also compared two different Lemmy servers and looked at the same post in a community, and there are different numbers of comments on each where they haven’t synced up…
I also wanted to post this to the main Lemmy community, but as I had to register via a different server, I’m not able to access that community from the server I’m using for some reason…
“How are communities going to grow if there isn’t at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they’re all just doing what they want.”
No one has ever said the Fediverse will be as easily accessible as Reddit, I think it’s pretty much impossible because of the lack of centralization. But in my opinion, this just doesn’t matter. The only solution would be, as you said, would be some form of central management. It is impossible to have a platform which both fixes the issues Reddit has experienced indefinitely AND has central management. Any social platform which cedes some kind of control, or even just legitimacy, to a centralized source (regardless of how the implementation starts out), will eventually turn into another Reddit. (Assuming the growth is there).
From my point of view the only downside to how Lemmy operates vs. Reddit is the slight learning curve of understanding Federation. Once you understand the concept, your concerns about the platform “fizzling out” would be moot. If you understand Federation, how is it confusing that your different sports communities are in different instances? Each community is distinct in its values, rules, and moderators, they get to choose where to exist, and the alternative would be impossible without granting control to a single meta-instance.
“but it seems like it needs a ‘flagship’ server with a group of people maintaining it to set an example. Then other servers that cover more specific areas, such as sports, can be set up and potentially work closely with that flagship group.”
I couldn’t disagree more, and this is one of my main gripes with Mastodon. Over reliance on a flagship instance only serves to shoehorn people into Lemmy without actually understanding how the platform works. Take the top three English-speaking mastodon instances:
mastodon.online was created by Mastodon as a secondary official instance, next to the original mastodon.social. When the Twitter influx happened, the vast majority of users signed up for mastodon.social because it was the “flagship instance”. Not as many user’s would have chosen mastodon.social if they actually understood how Federation worked, instead of just blindly signing up for the flagship instance.
Also, about communities about the same topic possible being fragmented across multiple instances is a pro of Lemmy, as long as we foster a culture of combining communities together who agree, while retaining the option to split off to another instance.
TLDR; Understanding how Federation works > Pandering to new users with a flagship instance
I don’t think this is necessarily true. Right now Lemmy is very open with what it is and touts the federation openly. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I think using clever user experience design to make it appear less federated might help.
As an example, currently there are communities dedicated to essentially the same topic across multiple instances. This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, as these communities might operate with different ideals or goals. However, if say there was a functionality for cross-instance community linking, where communities that share the same idea and goals can link together as a sort of combined community, that might serve to give the users a more cohesive and uniform experience.
If then say, the community ends up diverging, a difference in opinion rising and the communities choose to split off, unlinking them ought (in theory) be just as simple as linking them, allowing the communities to once again go separate ways.
I meant that Lemmy will never be as accessible as reddit because of reddit’s centralization; every community is 1 of 1.
But I agree with you, community linking would be a good idea.
As for the clever user experience, what about an instance of lemmy dedicated to this? It combines different lemmy communities into one within the UI, giving a more Reddit like experience. The name can imply it’s a simple experience, like lemmy.madeeasy or something.
I wouldn’t use it, but some people would probable prefer it! (And find it easier!)
I don’t think you’d necessarily need an instance for it, you could probably do it with just some clever UX design. If you really set your mind to it, that could also be made entirely optional so people that don’t want that kind of experience can simply just not opt in to it.
I’ve poked around in the client source code, it’s more approachable than I expected. Haven’t really done anything there, but I’ve started putting together a userstyle to tailor the client a bit more to my own likes.
If one were to poke around in the client itself it’d wouldn’t be all that tricky to set up things like “collections” of communities and such and have that be entirely on the client without any update needed to the server software. If one adds that as a feature to the server itself though one could make it possible to share community collections with other people.
I think that’d be a rather fun feature.