this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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The subscribed feed would be empty and the All feed would be irrelevant in the Arsenal fan’s case.
Local would be full of posts from communities inside the Arsenal instance. Why would that be confusing?
It would be fine. Thing is there aren't that many content-specific instances. The Arsenal-Lemmy-Server is a bad example to generalize upon
This is where we disagree. I have active accounts in 3 instances and none of them are general-purpose. I need local feed in all of them.
We don’t really need more general-purpose instances. There’s <10 right now and that’s good enough. But there’s >100 content-specific instances. I may be wrong on the numbers, I’ll run some analytics and get back
Ok, but the ones with the most users are all general-purpose. Why do we need less general-purpose instances? The concern of instances is technical, which content you follow should happen in communities. That's the whole idea of the fediverse: you chose an instance and with that, environmental settings and then discover the Fediverse with it.
The whole conundrum of “choosing an instance” is a phase that early adopters like us go through. People can’t be expected to go through the choosing part, then find communities to follow.
We expect people to find their specific instances without even knowing what Lemmy is and if needed, grow their fediverse presence from there.
This decentralised nature is the fundamental idea of fediverse. More generalised communities like lemmy.world means we keep trying to build a centralised alternative to Reddit.
The ultimate end user doesn’t even need to know what Lemmy is. Much like a blog’s reader doesn’t have to know what Wordpress is. They can create an account at arsenal.club and if needed also subscribe to [email protected]. But by default they see their local feed filled with news related to Arsenal. And their subscribed feed full of their interests apart from Arsenal.
The local feed is what differentiates an instance. The quality of which is a direct indicator of the instance’s quality. Hence the most important feed
You don't necessarily need to. Here you can just send somebody a link to an instance. But this should not be the case for communities.
I agree with you that the dezentrality should be hidden as much as possible - but first: how do you explain to such a person all the other communities on the community tab? Second: If the frontend is designed well (almost as it currently is, just with the different default setting I suggested), you can browse through communities of other instances AS IF they were on your own instance. The thing that the choice of the instance decides should be technical stuff, moderation standards and the instances (ergo the communities) you see.
No. You are turning the whole idea of the fediverse upside down. The dezentrality is there for tech and architecture but not for content. What YOU suggests points to a gated community just as big techs wants it. Sure, choosing an instance should maybe be jumped over when joining the threadiverse but the aspect of dezentrality should, even if it only abstracted, be an aspect of the user experience from the beginning. Maybe then people realize what instances actually are after a while but I'm not a fan of creating first a "sandbox" where they can experience the threadiverse as if it where a centralized platform to later join the "real" threadiverse and learn everything about dezentralization, choosing your instance etc because too often they stay there.
The problem about lemmy.world is that it is too big - but how should other instances grow if all the user focus is directed to internal communities?
The all-feed does so too given which instances they mute. I think currently Lemmy does not have really good moderation tools but that doesn't change the fact that the quality of All is also determined by the instance you are on.
So if they start on an Arsenal lemmy instance they think about lemmy as a social network about Arsenal? And you would be ok with that and even consider it a user-behavior that should be encouraged? I'm sorry if I sound too harsh but that's just not I have in mind there.
To answer the last part of your question, they don’t need to think of Lemmy at all. “Lemmy” is a framework, not a social network. infosec.pub is the social network I’m on. I don’t need to know about Lemmy at all (most of us don’t know what powers Reddit). Here we discuss information security and I can also communicate with the wider fediverse.
It doesn’t even have to be lemmy. I can connect to anything that uses activitypub. Mastodon, Kbin, Bookwyrm, Wordpress, etc. using my infosec.pub account.
The lemmy code provided by lemmy team is cloned and then patched (if needed) by infosec.pub maintainers and then deployed to their servers. The code for all intent and purpose is owned and maintained by infosec.pub. Lemmy doesn’t have any real control at that point.
Same with the arsenal example. arsenal.club is a social network about Arsenal powered by lemmy framework. If mufc.club uses another activitypub enabled protocol, the arsenal fan on arsenal.club can view that in their subscribed feed too.
Switching to another instance is central to the idea of the Fediverse and should be easy. But here, I leave all my favourite communities behind and have to search for them all over again, let's say on a different arsenal server.
I think we should admit that's just two views on the same system. Or is it maybe because the architecture of Lemmy feels kind of make-shift? Kind of in the spirit of the fediverse by design but not quite ... although I don't know how to make it more consistent
@_thisdot @blue_berry If you use IceCubes you can add multiple local feeds.