What is a Fediverse Galaxy?
What is a Fediverse Galaxy?
What is a Fediverse Galaxy?
As more and more instances are providing multiple services under the same management, we need a term to talk about this type of arrangement. A Fediverse Galaxy is a collection of federated software that is provided by the same admin or collective.
[posted to the @fediverse Lemmy group]
#fediverse #FediverseGalaxies #FediDev
I feel like calling it a galaxy makes it sound like its a bigger deal than it actually is, but I like it.
@liaizon
this is a really good idea. Say #kolektiva providing a mastodon, lemmy, funkwhale, pixelfed, peertube etc. to all users. I think any communities that do this in an organised fashion would gain a lot of new users..... but it is a lot of work. Would love to see mastodon.art do this.@fediverse If you have any feedback on this idea I am just now playing with it. The term was mentioned months ago by @e and it had resonated with me since then and I have been wanting to try to give it a more formal definition since then. This is an idea in progress and I welcome any feedback you may have. Is this a useful concept to work on? Should we come up with a different name?
@liaizon @fediverse @e Like the idea very much!
On a side note: What I could need is an actual easy to understand "what is this even". I'm probably not the target audience but I don't understand the difference between #Mastodon and #calckey for example. and what most of these other tools do. But I'm also somewhat new to social media so maybe it takes time.@fediverse Mastodon and Lemmy federating with each other
@liaizon @fediverse as a newb to this (see my other post), what do they federate? Like from what I understand, Lemmy is a forum software. When I federate my Mastodon with someone's Lemmy, what do I see? Can I join in on threads on the Lemmy forum with Mastodon? and the other way around? Maybe I'm not getting the fediverse yet.
Not asking your precious time to guide me through this but that information would also be helpful in a visualisation like yours
I'm running my own Mastodon instance and might run a Lemmy instance and others in the future, and there are a few immediate issues I'm already concerned about in that I'd love to be able to avoid having a whole bunch of unrelated usernames.
But webfinger responses only distinguish between mime types, and provide no additional hints, so while I now forward my webfinger queries from my main domain to my Mastodon instance, I'm not sure if I can replace that with a response that lists both Mastodon and Lemmy without breaking both (I also don't know whether or not Lemmy handles aliasing the same way Mastodon does, but that's me being unfamiliar with Lemmy). It'd be really nice to be able to have an alias point at multiple different fediverse accounts if you want to.
But that also raises additional usability issues with respect allowing picking which account to follow if there are multiple compatible options in a webfinger result...
There are many additional usability challenges there. E.g. if my Mastodon followers come across a Lemmy post I make on Mastodon, it'd be nice to have a mechanism to resolve back to my preferred alias (and vice versa) so they knew I'm me even if it's coming from another platform. It'd be really hard to get all of this flow smoothly without confusing users.
But it'd also be enormously powerful if this is addressed even if only partially, because if admins can optionally be able to offer users unified identities across platforms they provide (or even aliasing to other instances entirely), it instantly turns the Fediverse from a collection of different platforms to something much more comprehensive that none of the centralised Twitter, Reddit, Instagram etc. "alternatives" can even hope to try to compete with.
Do these galaxies allow you to have one account shared across the various services?
no sadly the fediverse doesn't really work like that. tho there has been talk for a long time about attempting to do something in this direction
@liaizon @fediverse Actually @jerry is only missing three from your chart, I believe. Mobilizon, Funkwhale and Plume. See also: https://infosec.exchange/@geekgrrl/110529665917357916
@geekgrrl @fediverse @jerry oh wow thanks thats helpful, updated!
@liaizon @fediverse @jerry No problem 👍
@geekgrrl @liaizon @fediverse sadly Plume is dead - and I fear that writefreely is also dead software walking. I will have to look at the others...
@jerry @geekgrrl @fediverse we should try to get new people working on Plume, it came so far already
@liaizon @fediverse I think k Jerry runs a WriteFreely instance too. I was but wasn’t thrilled with it. Although not strictly Fedi, need Matrix on here too.
@fediverse @fediversereport I would love your thoughts on this
@liaizon @fediverse can we join? Https://www.ourselves.space
@derek @fediverse sure I would happily add you to this list. tho there is no membership per se, since its just an idea I am playing with
@liaizon @fediverse see now all I can think is, “Ha! I’m my own galaxy, I’m not just a star anymore mom I’m a God damn galaxy!!!”
Sounds like a useful new term.
The table does not capture the fact that e.g. @stux is hosting several Mastodon instances. Should those instances hosted for others as a service be counted as part of the same galaxy?
Or would this be a Fediverse family (in analogy to Tor where relays run be the same entity are called a family).
@christian @fediverse @stux I am not sure what exactly you are questioning? just that some admins have more then one mastodon instance?
I'm not questioning anything. I'm just wondering if "galaxy" is the same thing in the Fediverse as "relay family" is in the Tor world.