this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Correct me if I'm wrong. I read ActivityPub standards and dug a little into lemmy sources to understand how federation works. And I'm a bit disappointed. Every server just has a cache and the ability to fetch something from another known server. So if you start your own instance, there is no profit for the whole network until you have a significant piece of auditory (e.g. private instances or servers with no users). Are there any "balancers" to utilize these empty instances? Should we promote (or create in the first place) a way how to passively help lemmy with such fast growth?

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[–] goldenarchmage@lemmy.world 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

It's a bit worse than that actually. I'm now seeing several communities with exactly the same name that originate on different servers - so clearly Lemmy doesn't have a rule about duplication once you cross a server boundary. That's going to get unwieldy quite fast particularly if, I dunno, "Aww" gets popular on two separate servers at the same time - I guess I'll have to subscribe to both...

[–] Ataraxia@lemmy.world 57 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well one instance shouldn't monopolize a community. If it takes a dump on one instance at least it exists elsewhere. If I want to start up my own cat community I don't see why that's an issue.

[–] Dax87@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 years ago

Wouldnt @ solve this? Or some form of unique designator.

[–] a1studmuffin@aussie.zone 52 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is a feature, not a bug. But we definitely need a solution to make subscribing/coalescing them easier for users. Mastodon allows subscribing to topics (hashtags) - I think something similar is needed here, but that will evolve naturally over time.

[–] nx2@feddit.de 9 points 2 years ago

Yes. This is 100% necessary. Otherwise giant communities would be built and probably all on lemmy.ml

[–] NuclearArmWrestling@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Maybe have them coalesce based on channel name, but have local mods on each server. It'd be great if you could share moderation between trusted servers or trusted mods on different servers as well (this could be on a per-community or per-server basis).

[–] fuser@quex.cc 7 points 2 years ago

you don't have to have an account on the same lemmy server to mod a community on it. The creator of the community can add anybody as a mod.

[–] YoungPrinceAmmon@lemmy.world 52 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't get argument about duplicates. The same situation was on reddit - you've got few, sometimes more, subs about same topic. You could subscribe to whichever you wanted. Why on Lemmy this is suddenly a problem?

[–] kadu@lemmy.world 58 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I think users are still having trouble with the mental model for browsing Lemmy.

The first interaction with the service is already fragmented - you need to choose where to create an account and start browsing. Even though you can browse communities from other servers, people are now seeing them through the lens of "fragmented" "my server vs other server" and that creates the illusion that these duplicates are somehow a huge issue.

But duplicates can actually be quite useful - a community called "memes" on Lemmy.world could attend to a different audience than a community also called "Memes" but made in an instance entirely in French.

Also, if two instances have two communities you enjoy, with the same name... Subscribe to both? Nothing stops you from doing that. It's okay. Reddit had "me_irl" and "meirl" which were the exact same, but with different mods, a relatively similar number of subscribers and quite honestly the same content. I didn't know the actual difference between the two, and I still do not know - I just subscribed to both and kept getting depressing memes to cry before going to sleep. No issues.

[–] LookThere@fedia.io 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's a really good analogy. Still, there needs to be an easier way to search remote communities. Copy pasting community links in search bar is really clunky.

[–] ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

It would be really nice if the search would show all communities in federated servers, and maybe communities in servers federated with those severs, etc.

[–] chiisana@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Are there ways to manage lists of such? For example, on the former platform that doesn't deserve a call out, you can do "me_irl+meirl" and aggregate both into one feed. This makes reading the (albeit potentially cross posted) content in a unified feed much easier.

Another similar point I'm having a hard time getting over is that with a centralized platform, it is easy to go to "Subject A", and see everything on that subject. However, now I need to see "Subject A@lemmy.world", "Subject A@lemmy.ml", "Subject A@someother.instance"... Yes, I could subscribe to them all, but this ultimately end up creating a noisy home feed with also "Subject B@lemmy.world", "Subject B@lemmy.ml", "Subject C@lemmy.world", "Subject D@lemmy.ca", ... etc. all baked into one feed, as opposed to just something focused on "Subject A".

Lastly, discoverability leaves a lot of room for desire. Today, I'm fairly new to Lemmy, I am actively seeking out communities that I might be interested in, across multiple popular instances, and hoping that federation is enabled between the two instances. Tomorrow, I'd find that I'm subscribed to too many (see the noisy main feed issue above), and I'd remove a bunch. Next week, am I likely to go to the Join Lemmy directory to find new instances, and add "duplicate" communities from newly popular instances? I think not.

I think the long term survival of the platform (to expand beyond just us tech nerds that hate the former platform) will depend a lot on streamlining this workflow to make content discovery much more consistent. Even a simple option where a pseudo "!Community@" (with no instance) feed that aggregates all the "!Community" regardless of instance that you've subscribed to, might go a long way.

[–] Aninjanameddaryll@beehaw.org 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Discovery really has been the biggest drawback for me. The r/system combined with wikis and sidebars made it very easy to find interesting things.

That's lacking in lemmy so far. Which, it isn't a bad thing, barriers to entry have benefits. But from a user perspective, trying to replace reddit, the difficulty in navigating and finding things is frustrating.

But I'm coming from reddit, and they aren't meant to be the same. The issues are part of what makes it next to impossible for what happened there to happen in a federated system. And I'm so fucking sick of corporate bullshit ruining good things . I figure that lemmy will catch up in feature parity soon enough, and there's bound to be apps that make it easier to use at some point.

I just wish I had the resources to run a server myself.

[–] Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, by just searching topics in the search bar you can typically find instances related to the search. You need to click the "chain" icon rather than the "federated star" icon to view the post "from your instance" and stay on your personal account.

[–] SickIcarus@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You need to click the “chain” icon rather than the “federated star” icon to view the post “from your instance” and stay on your personal account.

Woah. I’ve been clicking the star the whole time. This may make things a looot easier.

[–] Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

It does! That way, you can immediately subscribe to the community regardless of what instance it's on.

[–] SomethingBurger@beehaw.org 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The feature I'll miss the most from Reddit is multireddits. I wish there were a way to create multilemmys.

Even a simple option where a pseudo “!Community@” (with no instance) feed that aggregates all the “!Community” regardless of instance that you’ve subscribed to, might go a long way.

I think we should have both this and multilemmys. For example, I would group all !gaming@... communities in an pseudo-community, then put it in a multilemmy with other gaming communities (Linux gaming, PC gaming, etc).

[–] chiisana@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I really do think we need both:

!gaming@... or !gaming@ which aggregates [!gaming@instance.a](/c/gaming@instance.a), [!gaming@instance.b](/c/gaming@instance.b), ... etc. that I've subscribed to into a single feed; and

#gaming which I can put !gaming@..., !pcgaming@..., and !consolegaming@... into a single collection.

This way we'd get the flexibility to pick and choose what we'd want to see more easily.

[–] GhostCowboy76@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago

undefined> I just subscribed to both and kept getting depressing memes to cry before going to sleep. No issues.

Hahahaha I’m sorry but the way you snuck this in at the end just killed me. But you have a valid point. Every platform like Reddit/Lemmy has duplicates. That is kind of the point.

[–] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago

That's true, and the point I guess. You sub to all relevant communities and the overlap isn't an issue because it's different communities with different instances making content with others interacting through federation. The "subreddit" is diversified to the top communities in all of the highest subscribed instances. It's just the nature of the beast, but once you find all the top comms it probably doesn't seem so bad.