I have a question about communities. Are communities server-specific, for example, is the “Gaming” community on lemmy.ml different from the one on, say, beehaw.org and will I need to join both?

  • @testman@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    271 year ago

    O wait, the whole federation allows federation of just users and not communities?
    So all this time I have been looking at posts just on the main instance and not posts across all instances?
    fugggggggg so now I have to go search for communities of same name on all other instances as well and subscribe to them? ok, fine. How do I do this? there should really be something that automates this process

      • @Neuromancer@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        221 year ago

        I would argue that “viewable from” is a far cry from truly federated. The fact that I have to subscribe to infinitely many individual communities to see all, say, “Technology” content across all of lemmy seems like a near-fatal flaw to me.

        • Ada
          link
          fedilink
          English
          151 year ago

          The same problem existed on reddit, and it will resolve in the same way. There are often overlapping communities, but ultimately, the users will decide what works, and one or two of them will win out.

            • FloppySlapper
              link
              fedilink
              English
              211 year ago

              What’s the point of federation then?

              There’s not just one server or one entity that controls everything. If one server shuts down it doesn’t shut down the entire service. And even though having multiple communities on multiple servers named the same might not be ideal, it’s also a feature. If you really don’t like the mods of one community on one server, you can join a similar community on a different server. You can think of the servers like cities. Every city has a game store, and this way you can access all the game stores at once. You might have a favorite community on a favorite server and that might be where you create your new posts, but you can still read and participate in the discussions going on in similar communities on all the different servers.

              • Dessalines
                link
                fedilink
                English
                151 year ago

                People should really see naming conflicts, not as a negative, but a positive.

                If you have two cities that run their own lemmy servers, say Wales and Wellington, they can each have their own !news community, like:

                • wales.lemmy.com/c/news
                • wellington.lemmy.com/c/news
              • @Neuromancer@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                121 year ago

                You can think of the servers like cities. Every city has a game store, and this way you can access all the game stores at once. You might have a favorite community on a favorite server and that might be where you create your new posts, but you can still read and participate in the discussions going on in similar communities on all the different servers.

                Great analogy. One of the great things about the internet of old though, was that you automatically got exposed to all of the ideas out there, not just the ones in your city. :)

                • FloppySlapper
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  111 year ago

                  That’s possible with Lemmy too. Just make sure you select the “All” filter when browsing instead of just the “Local” filter and it should show you all the federated posts.

              • @gnoop@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                21 year ago

                I think the point is more that the federation is visible and confusing to your average end user.

            • Ada
              link
              fedilink
              English
              111 year ago

              It avoids centralisation. You can simply defederate from nazi instances, and the whole platform can’t be sold out from underneath you.

              And for someone like me, who is trans and runs several instances for the gender diverse community, I’m able to curate the experience so my users don’t experience constant hate and aggression. So if someone is posting transphobic stuff that doesn’t get actioned on their home instance, I can block that user (or their whole instance) from mine even if I’m not a moderator of the community.

          • @gnoop@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            41 year ago

            That or what happens is that everyone goes with their local server’s version and the federation isn’t as heavily user. At present on lemmy.ml, you’re presented with Local by default and you have to actively switch to All to go outside the server. It seems a bit as if they’re selling the idea of federation while also not promoting the idea of federation once you’re logged in by having ‘All’ be the default view.

        • @yboutros@infosec.pub
          link
          fedilink
          English
          81 year ago

          Hmm yea I don’t like it much either, however, I remember /r/technology got progressively worse and the alternative was just a shittier subreddit with a slightly different name.

          Unison would be nice, but it’s not so different from reddit come to think of it

          • @Neuromancer@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            21 year ago

            I’m not sure anything is different here in that respect. I’m still learning my way around, but are communities not still autocratic fiefdoms controlled entirely by some combination of the server admins and moderators? It will just be a shittier community with the same name.

            • @yboutros@infosec.pub
              link
              fedilink
              English
              71 year ago

              Hmm true that is a concern

              I’m just speculating here, but I remember way back when reddit was just a bunch of shitty html css and blue links. People would joke it would weed some times of people out

              Maybe the complicated nature of federated web apps will drive away a similar crowd

              • @Neuromancer@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                41 year ago

                That’s actually a really good point. There’s an optimum number of users that’s obviously orders of magnitude higher than where Lemmy is at right now, but it’s probably an order of magnitude lower than reddit’s current position. If reddit’s changes could drive the most technologically literate 10-20% of reddit’s user base over here, that might be a very good thing indeed.

      • @pe1uca
        link
        English
        11 year ago

        Do instances “subscribe” to get the communities of other instances? Or how does it work the “all” filter?

        • Dessalines
          link
          fedilink
          English
          31 year ago

          Instances don’t subscribe. People follow federated communities. So you can type !gaming@beehaw.org into the search bar here, and subscribe to it.

          • @pe1uca
            link
            English
            41 year ago

            Yeah, I understand that, it’s why I used subscribe in quotes since I didn’t know to phrase it better.
            My question is, how an instance knows about the communities of other instances so they appear when changing from “local” to “all”?
            Is it only until a user searches for them in that instance? Before that both instances are unknown to each other?
            Or is there a config so one instance tries to always be updated of other instances?

            • Dessalines
              link
              fedilink
              English
              21 year ago

              Federation is based on a push methodology, that happens after a subscribe. The flow is that I subscribe to a federated community, and that community’s server now knows my activitypub id, and can push community posts and comments to my servers inbox. The connection happens after that first subscribe.

    • @sup@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      201 year ago

      Something I noticed. If you visit “All”, it contains posts from multiple servers, so that can help with discovery.

    • @sexy_peach@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      101 year ago

      It’s not a big deal, as the posts to these communities and thus the communities should be in your ALL tab anyways. As long as someone on your server already follows them.

    • @whiny9130@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      81 year ago

      they are federated in the sense that they’re an email-like entity. it’s just they’re not all merged together I suppose.

    • @gnoop@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      41 year ago

      It’s a loose federation of communities. Each server has its own communities that are pushed out. Meaning you can end up with 20 different gaming communities as each one will list the server they’re part of. It’s not like usenet where the newsgroup name is the same regardless of what server you’re on.