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?

  • notun@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      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. That star trek instance will then start syncing the homelab content from beehaw and you can read and reply from the star trek instance.

      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.

      • notun@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I know. We all know.

        Convenience is the issue here. You can’t directly go to an instance and start subscribing, you need to take unnecessary detours.

        • abraxas@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          …which would be perfectly fine if we had a better search functionality.

          If I search for something I’m interested in in some consolidated place (preferably directly from my lemmy instance or app), and it always finds what I want, and I can always subscribe to it, and links always work for it… then I won’t care about going directly to an instance to subscribe.

    • feduser934@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        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.

          • notun@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            That’s the string you need to put in the search and go through there. Clunky and inconvenient.

            The funny part is that the search also returns posts where that link works, but don’t know what the issue here is. Regardless, copy+pasteing a universal link should be an easy thing to do and not require manual typing.

            Edit: Okay, so to do those links you have to type it out like you would a reddit link:

            [!programming@lemmy.ml](/c/programming@lemmy.ml) which results in !programming@lemmy.ml

            • XpeeN
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              So it’s actually the /c/programming@Lemmy.ml link that make it works like federation, so the ‘!’ has no purpose? It’s weird, I imagined it like @ and # at other platforms, and actually at lemmy’s GitHub page readme you can see they mention the tagging just like that, like it works the same as other platforms. What are we missing here hahaha

        • this@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Agreed, what needs to happen is an option that allows users to follow links from foreign instances in their home instance seamlessly. I have to imagine with the ramped up amount of development in lemmy that some of the devs must be working on it.

        • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          That’s more of the interface you’re using a fault for not interpreting links correctly - it should be obvious that url/c/communityname should be interpreted as a community, just as !communityname@instance.org (right now jerboa is interpreting it as an email address) should also be interpreted as one, and if you remove the ! It should be interpreted as a username.

          But most interfaces are open source, so give them time and someone (maybe even you) can submit a pull request that fixes it. That’s the beauty of open source - in time the bugs get ironed out because it’s a collaborative effort.

        • AtomHeartFather@ka.tet42.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Yes you can subscribe to and read/reply to that community from any lemmy instance. You just need to add it if the instance doesn’t already federate with it.

          Go to ‘Communities’ at the top of your instance homepage then in the search bar put the url of the community you want to add. (example: https://beehaw.org/c/programming)

          This next part is undocumented, and might just be a bug. But this is the magic part.

          On the next page, change the top search dropdown from Communities to All.

          You will see the community you want to sub to in the results. It will say something like.

          Programming@beehaw.org - 0 subscribers

          Click it, then on the top right pane click “Subscribe”

          Done

          • notun@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Jesus Christ. I’m well aware of how you can subscribe to other instances. This is about convenience, with problems arising from situations like I described above.

            • AtomHeartFather@ka.tet42.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Having some additional messaging about how communities work, and how to subscribe to them would help. I’m sorry that I assumed you didn’t know how to do that. I meant no offense but there’s no harm in providing free information that you (or someone else reading this post) might not know about.

              There’s no way for an instance to know that you have an account on some other instance so the subscribe button assumes you are a local user. Maybe that could be addressed in the future, I don’t know what the plans are.

              At a minimum I would think the subscribe button could have some logic that can detect whether you are logged in or not and then give you some options. Like, log into your account if you have one on this instance, or if you don’t here are instructions for adding this community to YOUR instance.

      • Spzi@lemmy.click
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        I don’t know how to view a list of communities in an instance without leaving your home instance.

        On lemmy:

        1. Click ‘Communities’ (top left menu)
        2. Search using the search box (top right)
        3. Select ‘Communities’ from the drop down (top left)
        4. Make sure to toggle ‘All’ (*not *‘Subscribed’ or ‘Local’).

        This will show you communities matching your search term from all instances*.

        You can then subscribe to communities regardless on which instance they live and use them seemlessly, regardless of wether they are local or not.


        *) It will show you communities matching your search term from all instances, if your instance has already discovered that community.

        If it has not, it shows ‘No Results’. You can force it by some exclamation mark shenanigans which I haven’t understood well enough to explain. After that, your instance knows about that community in the other instance and will show it in future search results. I think as soon as one person from your instance force-discovers a community from another instance, that community becomes searchable for everyone on your instance.

        • abraxas@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The asterisk is the problem, IMO. There’s even a (I consider it a) bug where you have to deselect “Communities” from your search and choose “All” if you want to directly search for a community by its global name. Probably some interaction with global names and URLs, but it is a bit unintuitive.