Fediverser Network

Hi there,

I've been chugging through trying to do my bit for the project by creating subreddits and providing alternatives for them. However the subreddit process seems to be a little buggy (unless I've done something wrong, which honestly isn't unlikely).

As an example, I want to suggest !sydney@aussie.zone as the Lemmy alternative to r/Sydney on Reddit. All was mostly fine, I added the Lemmy community to Fediverser, categorised it as local groups, then went over to the subreddits page, tried to create Sydney. It didn't let me, as "Reddit community with this Name already exists."

I figured someone else must've done it, but it hasn't been linked to !Sydney@aussie.zone, so I went to https://fediverser.network/subreddits/Sydney, and just got a 500.

I'm not sure if that's the intended way to access subreddits or not, but it's how I was able to create and suggest alternatives to a few other subreddits. I'm not sure whether it's intentional or not, but the subreddits page is completely empty, so there doesn't seem to be a way to search for subreddits, or to see if one already exists, except by trying to create it and seeing if it errors or not.

I'm also having the same issue with r/AustralianPolitics as well, and I briefly had the same issue with another subreddit (though I can't remember which one). That one resolved itself after 15 minutes or so, auspol and sydney have been broken for around 24 hours or so

This week a new version of the Fediverser project was released and is now ready to get more users helping to reach out to people on Reddit who are willing to migrate to the Fediverse.

This new release allows users to send DMs to select reddit users via DM with an invite code. Users on reddit will get a message from the "Community Ambassador" and will be able to accept or decline the invite.

A lot of work has also been done to let new users to find a new instance directly. Users can simply say what are their interests and their primary location, and the system takes that into consideration when choosing an instance.

The default option will redirect them to any random instance that is running the fediverser software (currently only alien.top), so if there are any other admins that would be interested in joining, please let me know.

Please post here for any change requests to the database that need to be undone or should be reconsidered.

I know that the fediverser project is quite a bit controversial due to the mirroring bots and how they were being used on alien.top, but today I'd like to talk about two other pieces of functionality which I believe have been ignored and eclipsed by the mirrors:

• The ability for users to signup to the lemmy instance by connecting via their Reddit account.
• The ability for instance admins to create a custom map of subreddit-to-lemmy communities, which can be used to auto-subscribe users who are registering via Reddit.

I think that these two pieces can really help solve the problem of user onboarding. Because it works as an extra service along with Lemmy, no changes in the core service are needed. For users, the possibility of starting an account on Lemmy and get a list of interesting content right away can reduce friction and would hopefully get more people to talk about it.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from the admins of the topic-focused instances, as (I believe) would have an easier way to reach out to the people that are closer to their interests. So, apologies in advance for the mass-tagging, here are the ones that I found on join-lemmy:

• @sal@mander.xyz
• @snowe@programming.dev, @ategon@programming.dev
• @fanaticus_admin@fanaticus.social
• @eerongal@ttrpg.network
• @admin@community.spoilertv.com
• @_Frog@feddit.ch
• @wintermute@feddit.de
• @skariko@feddit.it
• @ademir@lemmy.eco.br
• @admin@aussie.zone
• @hitagi@ani.social
• @edvdb@feddit.nl
• @Johannes@feddit.nu
• @poVoq@slrpnk.net
• @ijeff@lemdro.id
• @admin@lemmynsfw.com
• @smorks@lemmy.ca

To reiterate, this has nothing to do with the bots or mirrors deployed on alien.top. I'm only asking who would be interested in adding the functionality to allow user registration via Reddit OAuth. In case of any questions, feel free to ask here or reach out via matrix.

Most of the top 500 subreddits (by subscriber count) are fully mapped to the corresponding Lemmy community.

I've also ran a script to identify all the "over 18" subreddits that have a corresponding community on lemmynsfw, and linked them. This resulted in almost 700 communities.

In the following days, I'd like to find specific niches that need to be categorized and then see if any of the topic-specific instances would be interested in creating the communities that are missing.

I just found out about mander.xyz and it seems like a solid alternative for a science-focused instance. Can we go through its list of communities and map to the corresponding subreddits?

When building out the database of recommended Lemmy communities, I think it makes the most sense to prioritize the communities that belong to instances focused on a specific topic over communities that are based in a "general" instance, even if currently the community is smaller in the topic-specific instance.

For example, for an user coming from reddit and signing up via a "fediversed" instance (like alien.top) it would make more sense if they see that the anime subreddits are on ani.social, the rpg/board games are on ttrpg.network, the programming communities are on programming.dev, the basketball ones are on nba.space, the NSFW communities are on lemmynsfw, etc, etc...

This will also avoid the issue that I am currently seeing where some communities have multiple entries in the recommended database due to the initial migration where each user was just trying to replicate their favorite subreddits in their own server they signed up for.