I am new to Lemmy, but from what I can tell you can create an arbitrary community, as long as the server allows it. Same name on different instances are treated as totally separate entities. In my opinion, as a new user, I think that is highly non optimal as it creates a fragmented set of users for a given topic. If you go to feedit.de and search for technology you will see a number (seems about 10 or so) different communities with the exact same name. It is up to you to go to each one of them and figure out which one, or ones, you want to follow.
francisco1844
When federation works it is good. The instance I signed up for was missing quite a bit of posts across many of the different communities I had signed for. It seems better now after a recent upgrade, but unless one checks manually there is no way to know for sure if one's instance is federating properly.
The other issue I find is that because anyone can create a topic on any instance, that can cause fragmentation of less popular topics so basically none of the instances has a good representation on that given topic because the few people interested in the topic are scattered.
I see a new version at lemmy.ml. will we be upgrading? It seems it is not an official release, but this current release seems in such bad shape that can't imagine an RC been much worse.
The more I check the more I am noticing lots, not few, of messages missing across many communities. Happy to point out specifics if it would help, but it seems fairly widespread. This totally defeats the purpose of having an account at a smaller instance if we can't view so many posts that we have to constantly read at he source and then can't vote / comment.
New to VLemmy, and Lemmy, trying to understand about federation. For example if I search for postgresql in https://browse.feddit.de/ I see only one answer.. Using that to subscribe, but if I search for FreeBSD there is one answer from lemmy.ml and one from lemmy.world.
Does it matter which URL I use?
From what I see, Lemmy is growing and it may, eventually, grow if you create a local community for a city / region. My advice for anyone that would like to create a new community is to ensure you are creating content on a regular bases until there are enough other people to also contribute, with the knowledge could be a while (weeks / months????) before others discover it.