Would there be interest and support in potentially building an art focused lemmy instance?

cross-posted from: literature.cafe/post/462140

I’ve noticed a lot of people complain that niche communities aren’t really all that present here or are difficult to find. Having some consolidated in specific instances is very helpful for discovery as well as spreading the federation around.

I started with literature.cafe (and am sticking with literature.cafe, obviously! That’s not going anywhere!) But last night I was looking at potential domains and was curious about what an art focused lemmy instance could be potentially called. I managed to snag lemmyloves.art for very very cheap, but I came to the realization as the morning came that not only is making an instance only as useful as the people who desire to use it… I currently pay for my own out of pocket and if I’m making another instance alongside this one it needs to be able to last long term.

I have the time, energy and ability to build the instance and manage it with similar principles that literature.cafe currently has (albeit slightly different to address the needs of art) but it’s just a matter of knowing if people will actually be willing to use it and if support for it would be a possibility. I can pay for literature.cafe out of pocket right now no problem, but hosting another instance that I feel very likely may need to be scaled up later on is kind of iffy thing for me to commit to right now. As well as the likelihood of it needing a team as well, knowing if there would be anyone interested in helping moderate as well would be helpful as well

Just generally curious what peoples thoughts are. I think back to the lemmy dev ama and one of the devs saying they wanted a “ravelry” focused instance to spring up lmao

joel_feila,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

I have some ben 10 fan art to share and there is a kirta community already so yeah there are digital artists here.

gabe,

I freaking love ben 10

joel_feila,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

it is one of the best shows, go check out my ben 10 comunity. lemmy.world/c/ben_10

amio,

Is there a reason to make it an instance instead of just creating a community (or communities - beware of branching out too much with a small user base, though) on an existing one?

gabe,

It’s better to have instances (so long as they can exist long term) that have niche focuses as they tend to attract users in those niches and it spreads things out across the federation. Right now a lot of people are just crowding their communities on general purpose instances and that’s just not healthy whatsoever for the fediverse

amio,

Why/not? Also, are those drawbacks, whatever they are, enough to offset the drawbacks of actually hosting and managing a whole instance?

gabe,

Yes. Very much so. Having things centralized on lemmy.world has already caused a slew of issues.

cacheson,
@cacheson@kbin.social avatar

I'm surprised that this doesn't exist already. There's terefere.eu - "Arts & history instance", but it seems to be down at the moment so I can't see more details. There's also crystals.rest - "A general instance for livestreaming, anime, and retro art!", but that's just for one specific type of art.

gabe,

Ikr! I’ll see if I can get the funds somehow to spin up the initial cost of the server, we will see though

cacheson,
@cacheson@kbin.social avatar

Don't stretch yourself too thin, though. Might be something to back-burner if money is tight.

gabe,

Posting the comment I made over on !fediverse but I checked and made some calculations and unfortunately I just don’t have the budget for the initial cost this month AND this instance alongside that. Probably next month I would. Sorry yall.

guyrocket,
@guyrocket@kbin.social avatar

Count me in.

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve been enjoying !pics , !traditional_art and !psychedelic_artwork here and thinking the same thing! Lemmy works quite well as an image board IMO.

Nighed,
@Nighed@sffa.community avatar

There is also !digitalart and there are a few imaginary network communities starting up.

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

Awesome thanks!!

Can’t wait for multi-communities to land so that I can have them all in one spot. Could use multiple accounts for that, but I’m lazy.

Nighed, (edited )
@Nighed@sffa.community avatar

A bit late - but here is the current list of imaginary communities:

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

Oh wow … I didn’t know these were all out there!!

Ummm … we really need multi-communities!!

Thanks so much!!

You should post this list to the new communities community so more can know about them (even though they may not be so new)!

Nighed,
@Nighed@sffa.community avatar

How new is new? Most of these have been around for two months or so now.

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

Yea, I figured. I think there should be a kind of “TIL” for communities, as in a place to share newly discovered communities that aren’t popular enough that many would know of them. And at this point I’d be happy to co-opt the new-communities community for that.

sbrl,
@sbrl@fedia.io avatar

New account, but the imaginarykanto link there doesn't work for me? I'm confused.

Did I pick the wrong server or something? Rather new to kbin.

ShittyKopper,

OP is using the /c/ link format which does not work in Kbin (which you’re on)

The correct way to link communities cross-everything is like !imaginarykanto ([email protected]) yet people still think /c/ is anything but an implementation detail (as they’re accustomed to Reddit’s /r/)

Nighed,
@Nighed@sffa.community avatar

I have updated the post with that format of link @sbrl you should be able to use them all now if ShittyKopper is correct.

This list was made by someone else and copied, I think I understand why they did it that way though - you can’t format those links nicely, the following doesn’t work: * [Imaginary Kanto]([email protected]) Looking like this (tries to link to a post or something?:

sbrl,
@sbrl@fedia.io avatar

Ahhh that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation! Still learning Kbin. It's more complicated than eg. Mastodon.

PeleSpirit,

I personally would love it, that’s basically what I’ve given up when I came to the Fediverse. Especially Instagram, my whole feed was just art.

scytale,

Have you tried Pixelfed?

PeleSpirit,

No I haven’t, I assumed it was kind of slow. Do you like it?

Corgana,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

I played around with Pixelfed.social and not only is it fast, I found it to feel faster than Instagram. I’m guessing there’s less bloat going on in the background.

Not exactly a ton of people on there, but I got the feeling that it’s definitely ready for the big time in if/when it comes.

PeleSpirit,

Cool, I’ll give it a go, thanks.

hoodatninja,
@hoodatninja@kbin.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    gabe,

    I think starting off on lemmy and potentially branching off to pixelfed might be a good starting point. Pixelfed is very very very much in its infancy, even compared to lemmy

    hoodatninja,
    @hoodatninja@kbin.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    gabe,

    Hmm potentially!

    Honestly right now I’m unsure if I should buy a new VPS. Unsure about initial hosting overall and if I can justify that initial cost. Am slightly curious if I could start the instance off this VPS since lemmy doesn’t use that much resources, but I’d be concerned about breaking federation potentially.

    maegul,
    @maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

    I’ve been thinking that lemmy might have something to contribute to the space and that we need not just defer to pixelfed for all things image based.

    I haven’t really used pixelfed, but I’d imagine the greater scope for writing longer posts in markdown here, the well known Reddit like format, organisation provided by the community structure, and, even, maybe the better interop with Peertube, all provide the basis for a good way to show and share art content.

    favrion,
    @favrion@lemmy.world avatar

    Yes, do it.

    CrypticFawn,
    @CrypticFawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Wouldn’t a community make more sense? It can be made on an instance that already exists.

    gabe,

    An instance dedicated to art and art focused things would help spread the federation out and attract users who are focused primarily on art. It’s really not a good idea to put everything on one instance. It’s a thing that occurs on the fediverse, outside of specific instances there are niche and hobby focused instances that attract a lot of people. Everyone is just crowding all their communities into the general purpose instances and that’s not really how the fediverse is intended to work.

    ratboy,
    @ratboy@lemm.ee avatar

    I had experience with mastodon several years ago and so when I moved over here from Reddit I was excited to try and find an instance that resonated with me but alas, the only niche ones are like, furry instances, porn instances, and tech instances. Bummed that there haven’t been more that have themes.

    gabe,

    That’s exactly why I’m asking, to maybe make a new one with a new theme :)

    wrath-sedan,
    @wrath-sedan@kbin.social avatar

    Yeah I’ve really loved the culture of niche instances like startrek.website, lebowski.social, sffa.alliance. I think they provide an interesting and friendly local feed, have a more general federated feed, and then of course you can have your own subs. I say go for it!

    PeriodicallyPedantic,

    I think that having different communities for different kinds of art, on an art-focused instance makes sense.

    You can have digital art community, painting community, photography community, music, video, etc.

    Some of those could even be subdivided like landscape photography, macro photography, portraits, urban life, etc.

    Tldr I think there enough different kinds of art that a single community wouldn’t do it justice.

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