What I think could make Lemmy superior to Reddit is the ability to create themed-instances that are all linked together which feels like the entire point. I’ve noticed that a lot of instances are trying to be a catch-all Reddit replacement by imitating specific subs which is understandable given the circumstances but seems like it’s not taking advantage of the full power that Lemmy could have.

Imagine for a moment that instances were more focus-based. Instead of having communities that are all mostly unrelated we had entire instances that are focused on one specific area of expertise or interest. Imagine a LOTR instance that had many sub-communities (in this case “communities” would be the wrong way to look at it, it would be more like categories) that dealt with different subjects in the LOTR universe: books, movies, lore, gaming, art, etc all in the same instance.

Imagine the types of instances that could be created with more granular categories within to better guide conversations: Baseball, Cars, Comics, Movies, Tech etc.

A tech instance could have dedicated communities for news, programming, dev, IT, Microsoft, Apple, iOS, linux. Or you could make it even more granular by having a dedicated instance for each of those because there’s so many categories that could be applied to each.

What are your thoughts?

  • notun@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 years ago

    OP’s post is about having specialized instances, making hopping around necessary. It’s not convenient enough as it is.

    • AtomHeartFather@ka.tet42.org
      0·
      2 years ago

      Making specialized instances does not in any way make hopping around necessary. If you join a specialized instance that doesn’t already sub to the communities you want, you just add them.

      Example: I join a Star Trek themed instance that has a bunch of locally created star trek communities. I want to sub to all those, but i ALSO want to sub to the homelab community on beehaw. I just subscribe to !homelab@beehaw.org FROM the star trek instance I am a member of.

      Conversely, if someone has an account on beehaw.org and they want to read a star trek community based on that star trek instance, they just need to sub to it FROM beehaw.org.

    • feduser934@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 years ago

      By hopping around, do you mean changing your account to one on another instance, or viewing a list of communities on an instance, or something else?

      I don’t feel that changing accounts is necessary because of the magic of federation. But I don’t know how to view a list of communities in an instance without leaving your home instance. That would be a cool feature, but is only really important when you’re initially picking all your subscriptions.

      • notun@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        Exactly, it’s really inconvenient right now. And it’s really important for the usability of what OP suggested.

        If I simply link to a cool community I found, like https://beehaw.org/c/programming, you can’t follow that link conveniently if you’re from another instance.

        And I highly disagree with only being important at the start. It’s a big hurdle that stifles growth right now.

        • this@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          2 years ago

          Agreed, what needs to happen is an option that allows users to follow links from foreign instances in their hone instance seamlessly. I have to imagine with the ramped up amount of development in lemmy that sokenof the devs must be working on it.

        • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
          0·
          2 years ago

          That’s more of the interface you’re using a fault for not interpreting links correctly - it should be obvious that url/c/communityname should be interpreted as a community, just as !communityname@instance.org (right now jerboa is interpreting it as an email address) should also be interpreted as one, and if you remove the ! It should be interpreted as a username.

          But most interfaces are open source, so give them time and someone (maybe even you) can submit a pull request that fixes it. That’s the beauty of open source - in time the bugs get ironed out because it’s a collaborative effort.