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People act like Reddit only had one cats sub. Or as if there was only one forum on the whole web that was about Linux. Is there only one channel on YT that covers iPhone?
Like why exactly is it a problem there is a bunch of comms with roughly the same concept? Subscribe to all of them, post to the biggest one or to whichever you want. Big friggin deal.
Besides the majority of people only lurk anyway.
It's true that there were multiple subs for the some topic but there's always one that is "the main", usually the one with the most obvious name. Say /r/gaming. Not the only sub about gaming but that one was huge. You subbed to gaming and you were done
Here I subbed to [email protected], then I get defederated for no reason. I subscribe to [email protected], no big deal. Now it seems like, [email protected] is getting some serious traction. Fragmentation is a serious problem. Yes, I can subscribe to all of them but I also have to constantly be checking if a newer community is out there. The search function is also quite bad :/
Hopefully in time this will sort itself out.
But the subs with obvious names like r/gaming were also absolutely useless especially if you wanted to ask something, because they'd get a thousand posts a minute so your post would ether get buried immediately, deleted by mods for no reason, or, if posted a stupid meme or catgirl in a bikini, go viral with a trillion upvotes and 500 years of premium from the awards.
So you'd end up going to a niche sub anyway.
Yea there are issues here and there, but understand that 95% of Lemmy users and the whole network have only been around for 3 weeks. Of course there will be birthing pains, especially if everyone just expects a 1:1 Reddit replacement.
I like Lemmy and want it to succeed but fragmentation and instances defederating each other is a problem, especially in these early stages. It's not a moot point, it's a valid one.
I'm not saying it's moot, but it's also not such a big deal as it may seem. It took me maybe 3 days to get used to the concept.
But also I've also been fairly active trying to build up the communities I care about, like this one. So what I mean is that nothing is stopping anyone from building up a community to make it the go-to place.
I get it that it may not be up to everyone's taste, but that's what Lemmy is - a diy project we kinda need to finish and polish ourselves. If you just want a finished product, well, Reddit is always there, and we know how that worked out.
Also, the backbone of federation gives additional possibilities to solve this.
As the technology matures, there's no reason why [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected] can't be combined into whatever we're calling the equivalent of Views in SQL. Multilemmys?
Each individual community remains there in the background (across the whole fediverse) , but for reading they're already curated into a combination by instance admins or users themselves.
This would also give UX continuity for users if any particular instance went offline or defederated.
Yea but the more I'm using Lemmy, the less I care about some universal community umbrella.
The word right there - community - means some specific identity and togetherness. Even if it's something generic like technology, I can imagine the people involved in those comms feel connection to it, and wish to share that connection to the users too. At least that's how I feel about starwarsmemes.
Putting everything into an anonymous basket means loss of that identity by default, unless the user actively seeks for it.
Which I think is the wrong approach. I keep saying that humans have evolved to exist in smallish groups, communities. Societies who keep existing in such way are happier than those who gave that up for industries, cities and whatnot.
And it's not like having an identity means people and communities can't cooperate, Fediverse clearly shows how we can.
It only requires a little effort from the people to familiarize themselves with some specifics instead of just blindly consuming the newsfeed.
A tiny bit of effort.
If we can't give or expect even that, then what is the point of all of this?
I'm super new here, and have just started leaning on lemmy vs Reddit. Would it make sense to allow browsing by topics? Could communities use tags to identify their interests?
but I also have to constantly be checking if a newer community is out there
No you don't. That's your choice. You don't have to get every single piece of news instantly. The news that was posted to the brand new community you don't know about will make it to the communities you are subbed to after some time.
Hopefully in time this will sort itself out
It will. Smaller communities will either die off or find a specific niche not covered by larger communities. Also, users will give up on trying to see everything and just curate a feed that can keep up with.
Yes, it's my choice but I don't have to be pleased about it. Right now, the communities are very fragmented and it's a time sink to find which horse to bet on.
Maybe you have a higher tolerance than me for this issue, most less tech savvy people will probably be even less tolerant than myself.
I actually subbed to one of the smaller ones because I liked the content better with fewer people. I think /r/games instead of /r/gaming
But for some more niche things having people more spread out is certainly not ideal, but like you said I think that will sort itself out over time.
"We only need one official sub!!" — Average Kbin/Lemmy newb
"First time?" — Average Linux distro enjoyer.
I honestly find it crazy how so many people actively demand that competition and choice should be minimized and are breaking down at the thought they might need to follow more than just a single source of information.
If you think about it... That's scary.
I swear so many of these arguments against moving to lemmy have 0 thought put into them.
Wait, maybe its better that they have these qualms then...