This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
I believe that Lemmy should add the ability for an instance to self-aggregate, were an Admin bundles other instances communities into a /g/ grouping.
So instance.tld/g/community could include the whatever communities across the fediverse they felt it should.
Some instances would use it for general aggregation, others would be more strict as a way to merge identical communities.
But as for now, there is no feature set.
@briongloid Not admins. Users should be able to do it.
As an admin, there is no way I can be across all of the niche subtleties and naming schemes of communities I'm not involved in. If I have to group them, I'm going to get it wrong.
If it's going to sit anywhere above the individual level, it should be at the community mod level, not the instance admin level. But of course, many community mods aren't going to want to actively point people at other larger communities that overlap with theirs.
Maybe if G is common across the Fediverse, it'll help solve the difference in URL formats? (C vs M)
/c/ & /m/ is the same, /g/ would be a grouping of both.
This could be achieved within the UI and seems like a good idea.
Each kbin/lemmy instance decides to follow magazines/communities from others through activity pub and stores it locally for the instance.
Having the UI retrieve all local posts with the same magazine/community name (e.g. m/star_trek@kbin.social c/star_trek@lemmy.world). Wouldn't be hugely difficult, I believe Kbin uses postgres database as the local store. The community/instance should be columns you can search for, it would be a small SQL change.
Even if that wasn't an option, there is a means to get all of the magazines/communities from the kbin UI and retrieve all posts for a specific magazine/community. So you could do it entirely in a web client.
The combined view wouldn't change how you comment on specific posts. The issue is where do you post and what view would take dominance (e.g. if a magazine had themed itself).
The solution here would be to default to the local instance if it exists or the instance providing the most posts/comments. Perhaps with a drop downso users can choose.
You'd probably open yourself up to magazine poisoning that way. Would be easy enough for a troll to spin up a new community or entire new server that helpfully drops spam into magazines with the same name. I think I would prefer users be able to create meta-magazines that will aggregate posts from multiple federated/local sources.
Technically can't they do that even now?
Sure, I guess. Truth be told there are probably lots of vectors for spam to come in until the moderation tools get a big overhaul.
That's just a moderation tool. A community would simply need the ability to run a whitelist or blacklist of communities to aggregate.
Frankly, I think a more manual process as an option is better because it would help account for naming variations. It'd also allow a mod team to create a place SPECIFICALLY to aggregate, which strikes me as inherently useful even within an instance.
I think you've misunderstood. Lemmy/Kbin absolutely DOES allow for one big forum to exists for a subject, across the whole fediverse.
It's just that people are creating communities on their own instances, because they don't know or care that one already exists on another somehwere, which they could be joining.
They are two separate communities. They are like if you had two subbreddits called r/startrek and r/alsostartrek.
They could be about the exact same thing, but they were started by different people. The second of which, either didn't check if one already existed, or wanted to make their own for one reason or another.
In the future, it might be possible to combine communities in some way (like multireddits), but for now, all they have in common is the subject matter.
And, while communities have a "home" instance they are not solely accessible by people on that instance. They are accessible by any user on any other federated instance. Making more communities for the same thing on other instances, is not how federation works. You're just making more "subbreddits" with similar names.
Basically, both communities exist on both instances. Only one is needed, on one instance, for there to be a community for a given subject on the entire fediverse.
You can view the Kbin magazine, of course: kbin.social/m/startrek
But you can also view the lemmy.ml community, still in Kbin: kbin.social/m/startrek@lemmy.ml
And the same works in reverse, the Kbin magazine, in lemmy: lemmy.ml/c/startrek@kbin.social
Basically, someone made a second one, even though only one is needed. They both exist for the entire fediverse, not just their respective instances.
The redundancy that is being complained about is a problem, but it's also one of the fediverse's greatest assets. What happens when a group of discussion is forced or becomes more dominant in just one place and something happens to that place (whether it be corruption, data loss, just cut off from other places)? I think rather than creating a desire or necessity to congregate in one place, having tools for similar groups to distribute topics among themselves is a much better solution for everyone.
Much like people making copycat subreddits. As apps become more popular, the larger communities with better content and engagement will naturally consolidate into the more ‘dominant’ ones.
Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of the Fediverse in the first place, though? Consolidation of users/power? If we're going to use a single instance for every topic, then why not just stick with Reddit?
Because there's multiple instances, and new ones can be spun up if the existing ones "go bad." It's completely different from Reddit, I don't see how you're considering them the same.
I can make a new website with a forum if Reddit goes "bad," too, but that doesn't change anything. All of the content and the users would be on that one specific instance. That's what people care about: content and a critical mass of users. There's a reason people are still using Reddit, and it's not because Reddit has wonderful ownership that cares about the users; it's because that's where the most people currently are. Migrating people from one site to another isn't easy, and that would be the exact same situation if a super popular instance were to go "bad," whether or not it's part of the Fediverse.
I can make a new website with a forum if Reddit goes "bad," too, but that doesn't change anything
It doesn't change anything on Reddit, because Reddit doesn't federate with anything and nothing can federate with Reddit. People on Reddit would have to create a new account to interact with your forum.
Here on the Threadiverse, if you start a new community on a new instance then the users who were using the community on the old instance can seamlessly move over to start using the new community instead. The content would remain available to both, the users would remain available to both.
Migrating people from one site to another isn't easy
On the Fediverse migrating people isn't necessary, since users on other instances can interact with each other.
This is ultimately the point of Federation. There isn't a "critical mass" for each instance because they all share the same userbase in aggregate. As soon as a new instance comes online they instantly have as many users that can post there as an instance that's been around for years.
Except on the fediverse all the old content would still be accessible, and your new site would be connected to the existing network.
Most users would just have to sub to a new community, and thats that. Only users on the instance that went down would have to make entirely new accounts.
This is how the Fediverse is. That said, I’m pretty sure there is functionality being worked on in some way to accomplish exactly what you are looking for.
You're probably wanting something like Reddit's "multireddit" functionality. I know of this issue for Lemmy, with some links to related issues in the comments. Kbin has one here.
Check out https://startrek.website/c/startrek
This is the main Star Trek community incase anyone wasn't sure.
How do I, a user with a kbin.social account, create a post there?
Just go to: https://kbin.social/m/startrek@startrek.website
And hit the + button at the top, followed by Add New Article, Add New Link, or whatever.
Ahh. So what would be helpful then, for smaller communities that started here not knowing there was one someplace else would be to add some kind of post that points to the specific community.
As we’re still learning as we go here
As cool as it would be, currently federation doesn't work in this way
Basically the two communities you mentioned are !startrek@kbin.social and !starktrek@lemmy.ml; notice that when I write it out like this, they have different full names.
If you post on either community from any instance it will federate to that community on all instances but not between each other as they are separate communities
Hopefully this helps, I'm not great at explaining these things 😅
Join the biggest.
From the screenshot the local one is on top, but the main one is just below.
Yeah. Startrek.world is the shit
Because they're two different communities/magazines hosted in two different servers from two different platforms
Federation makes it posible for you to participate in both
I understand they are two different communities, I was just hoping it was a bug with Lemmy and kbin not talking to each other properly. The reason Reddit/Facebook/et al are so huge is because people want to have a single community to talk with, not 15 little communities all having their own discussions. I get the appeal of that, but if I wanted to join a small forum I'd go to startrekforum.com or something like that. We already have sites that offer small communities; what we needed was a replacement for Reddit. For the moment, it appears that Reddit is still the best way to be part of a large community, and that's sad for people like me that just want a large community without having to rely on one website to host that community. Oh well.
We already have sites that offer small communities; what we needed was a replacement for Reddit.
The thing is neither Lemmy not kbin were made to be Reddit replacements.
The reason Reddit/Facebook/et al are so huge is because people want to have a single community to talk with
They're also centralised and their respective servers can tolerate much more content being shared/posted onto them than a fediverse server can. Having different communities allows for a given server not to be saturated.
Idk why there are so many general use instances when the threadiverse would be a great place for themed instances to exist. But even with thematic instances you can't avoid similar communities existing (because multiples servers could exist for the same topic/fandom/etc.
Something that connects communities about the same topic from different servers into a "macro-community", so everything posted in any of the communities can be read when you click one of them, without putting to much pressure into a sole server, would be cool. But I don't think is posible with AP alone.
Idk why there are so many general use instances when the threadiverse would be a great place for themed instances to exist.
I would suspect that it's because when these instances were coming online a week or two back there weren't any other instances around, so having them be general-purpose was good. The Threadiverse can't "afford" special-purpose instances until there's already a large number of people around.
