this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Hopping between instances would have to be simplified significantly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

No, that's not right You can follow any community from any instance with your account, doesn't matter where you registered your account. I just subscribed to https://beehaw.org/c/programming from lemmy.pt user account

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

this is buggy. Pardon the nsfw, but it doesn't work for gonewild@lemmynsfw .com

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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.

I saw that something like [email protected] should work. It doesn't work for me now though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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:

[[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) which results in [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'm currently working on a Lemmy mobile client and have implemented multi-accounts until it's easier to do this. Basically you can make multiple accounts on different instances and aggregate the data from them all into a single feed. It doesn't currently prioritize posting from specific accounts (you just select a primary)--I'm trying to figure out a good way to go about doing it so you can section things off πŸ‘€