When reddit goes dark on Monday, there will be a horde of people looking for an alternative. When the APIs go dark at the end of the month, another horde will come. When /u/spez says just about anything, it’ll happen again. What can we do to prep here for that? How can we attract good moderators to moderate communities here?...
I think communities “fusing” like you mentioned would be a good idea, but I still think one server needs to stand out from the rest as a place for people to join.
Most people in this thread seem to be content with Lemmy not being Reddit though, and I just don’t think they realise how quiet it’s going to be if new users trying to leave Reddit aren’t snapped up ASAP.
Personally, if I go to a community and there are 5 posts a day with only a few comments, then that seems utterly pointless and I won’t be coming back. I imagine some people will give me shit for that and say that I should be the change I want to see, while also being the exact same and likely giving up on Lemmy after a few weeks.
“How are communities going to grow if there isn’t at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they’re all just doing what they want.”
No one has ever said the Fediverse will be as easily accessible as Reddit, I think it’s pretty much impossible because of the lack of centralization. But in my opinion, this just doesn’t matter. The only solution would be, as you said, would be some form of central management. It is impossible to have a platform which both fixes the issues Reddit has experienced indefinitely AND has central management. Any social platform which cedes some kind of control, or even just legitimacy, to a centralized source (regardless of how the implementation starts out), will eventually turn into another Reddit. (Assuming the growth is there).
From my point of view the only downside to how Lemmy operates vs. Reddit is the slight learning curve of understanding Federation. Once you understand the concept, your concerns about the platform “fizzling out” would be moot. If you understand Federation, how is it confusing that your different sports communities are in different instances? Each community is distinct in its values, rules, and moderators, they get to choose where to exist, and the alternative would be impossible without granting control to a single meta-instance.
“but it seems like it needs a ‘flagship’ server with a group of people maintaining it to set an example. Then other servers that cover more specific areas, such as sports, can be set up and potentially work closely with that flagship group.”
I couldn’t disagree more, and this is one of my main gripes with Mastodon. Over reliance on a flagship instance only serves to shoehorn people into Lemmy without actually understanding how the platform works. Take the top three English-speaking mastodon instances:
mastodon.online was created by Mastodon as a secondary official instance, next to the original mastodon.social. When the Twitter influx happened, the vast majority of users signed up for mastodon.social because it was the “flagship instance”. Not as many user’s would have chosen mastodon.social if they actually understood how Federation worked, instead of just blindly signing up for the flagship instance.
Also, about communities about the same topic possible being fragmented across multiple instances is a pro of Lemmy, as long as we foster a culture of combining communities together who agree, while retaining the option to split off to another instance.
TLDR; Understanding how Federation works > Pandering to new users with a flagship instance
How are communities going to grow if there isn’t at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they’re all just doing what they want.
Why would “central management” be necessary for communities to grow? Email doesn’t have any central management, and yet people are quite capable of building mailing-lists and other services on top of email. While mailing-lists may be “old-school” they still work pretty darn well; I’m on lists for my college alumni, for various interest groups, etc. that all get active discussions.
I feel that, while lemmy is still a work in progress, it is already pretty adequate for solving this need. If you want to subscribe to other instances you can do it from within your insance by going up to communities and searching. You can also click the all tab and see a bunch of instances from around lemmy that your instance is federated with.
I think mastadon struggled with this because the twitter model is to follow people and depending how far removed the servers are this can be trickier. Compared to lemmy where people interested in a single subject will likely target and find the subject theyre interested in and bring themselves together naturally.
Furthermore I think some people are splitting up and dividing into sub instances and tiny subjects a little prematurely. Reddit didnt get super esoteric with it's subs until it got big and the larger subs either declined or got too noisy to talk about certain things. Like for example how beehaw has an operatingsystems instance instead of a linux, ubuntu, macos, windows, fedora, archinux, opensuse, openbsd, etc. Right now there arent enough of us that we dont need to subdivide.
Everything from beehaw.org is nice. Even stuff on lemmy.ml is okay as long you don’t bring up politics. Stay away from news or politics subs on this instance. And I hope we will get bigger communities on other servers than lemmy.ml or beehaw.org.
The all communities tab should be showing you communities from every instance you are federated with. It's true that they won't show up in your feed until someone on your instance connects to the instance it's on at least once, but you don't need to be on a massive server to be connected to all the major communities right from the start.
Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.
Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.
As the lemmy.ml admins expect a heavy load on their servers in the coming days, I’ve decided to run my own lemmy instance to be the dedicated forum for /r/piracy failover....
Yes, but lemmy.ml went down today, before the blackout, and way ahead of the API shutdown. It WILL go down again due to the load.
This might fragment the community, but a dedicated instance by a r/Piracy mod is better than relying on one that could go down at any moment. Eventually, people will just use the new one and it won’t matter. I think this is a good call.
This is part of the reason I made my own instance. It’s now my responsibility to keep my own account functioning, not someone else’s. Anyone’s server going down won’t prevent me from using Lemmy or making comments.
I've noticed in the explosion that we are getting duplicate communities in multiple instances. This is ultimately gonna hinder community growth as eventually communities like 'cats' will exist in hundreds of places all with their own micro groups, and some users will end up subscribing to duplicates in their list....
My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again,...
I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.
Servers running these apps connect to the same fediverse Mastodon servers connect to. As does Lemmy. All these apps just give you different ways to view the same social network, so which software you use makes less difference to what you can see than which server you use. Because there is no global view of the network, what you’ll find in hashtag searches or federated timelines in the micro-posting apps (Mastodon, Pler/Akkoma Miss/CalcKey) depends on which accounts are being followed from the server hosting your account.
I’m new to Lemmy’s way of viewing the 'verse, so I’m not sure what the equivalent is here. But I think what @dave describes in this thread about Communities hosted on other Lemmy servers taking a while to show up in searches here is relevant: lemmy.nz/comment/28480
just so this doesn't overwhelm our front page too much, i think now's a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let's try to keep what's happening in this thread instead of across 10....
Possibly. I’m not sure how true it is that the fediverse necessarily leads to more efficient computing needs per user. I’d bet it’s the opposite.
But, as you perhaps allude to, there are other factors. For those who only want niche smaller communities, they can enjoy a more stripped down experience without needing speedy and beefy servers. Similarly, the platforms here are probably slimmer and not bloated with features that are trying to engage and monetise.
The major factor, IMO, is ownership. Admins literally own their servers. And should have a much closer and codependent relationship with the users in their servers, except in the case of large instances which become different beasts. Additionally, users have much more choice and mobility on the fediverse. All of which means admins/moderators and users have more at stake in their relationship. More ownership over their platform/instance. And therefore actually have a reason to donate and contribute and help out.
Hi, all. I’m trying to subscribe to the Photography community on lemmy.ml from the server where I have an account. However, I keep getting a community not found error. I can subscribe to other communities on lemmy.ml just fine, and I’ve checked my spelling. The photography community also doesn’t appear in searches when I...
Wenn mehrere Lemmy-Server Communities hosten, die ähnliche Themenbereiche behandeln, kann man diese als eine Timeline im UI darstellen? So einer Art Community ‘Merge’ oder ‘Mingling’...
Im joining in on the reddit ditching thing, and was kinda worried at first that i wouldnt be able to like use it the way i did reddit as it feels like a whole new place, but after engaging with posts and people and actually being a part of lemmy rather than being lurk mode all the time i was pleasantly surprised with how easy it...
I like it ~ I joined mastodon but I think it was way too slow to load images - probably joined some dodgy overloaded server (though I like the Reddit format and community better rather than Twitter)
It's giving me Reddit 15 years ago vibes - smaller tech-savvy and agile community - my Reddit use was on and off through the years; but I like the idea that each community in the Extended Lemmiverse can all have their own vibes and cultures and implementations of the platform and we can all chat and follow topics together 🕊️
I've only been here a short while; but maybe one thing I'd love is not to see reposts in the /all section ; I know the communities are small and growing and can cross post for more stuff , but I'm sure there could be a way for the system to know that the title and url are the same - so only show one , or auto-merge the comments and prioritise posting your comment to your local community instance's post Edit - I might try install an instance on my website and try to make a merge function ~
I’m excited for the possibilities, but daunted by the realities.
It’s going to be tough to get enough foot traffic to start populating smaller subs. It seems like the Reddit API drama is the big break needed to hit a critical mass of users, but how many will take the time to figure out something like Lemmy? And are the Lemmy instances ready? It’s strange to root for Reddit to go through with the API changes after using Reddit for so long. But if there was ever a time to pay a bit extra for additional hosting resources, June 11th (or now!) should be it. If a large influx of new users crash Lemmy instances, and no one can sign up, a golden opportunity will be lost.
Signing up was not a flawless process. You are asked to make a choice about servers with little guidance on what it all means.
Requiring a 10 character password with additional character conditions is going to turn a lot of possible new users OFF. It should be 6 characters, with no conditions. Yes, it’s not secure, but we need sign ups above everything else. Users can choose to get as complex as they want, but simplicity should also be an option. If people later grow to value their Lemmy accounts, they can secure them at a later time. But extremely easy sign up should be the default for now.
Asking people to write an extensive answer as to “why you want to join this particular server” should also be suspended temporarily. Again, it’s about ease of signing up. We should try to get as many signups in as quickly as possible, and weed out the problem people later. After the possible Reddit migration boom ends, you can go back to application essays as a requirement for entry.
The web interface is buggy. The site will often “reset” as you are reading a thread, and the whole thread will act if “refreshed”. If this causes users to lose a long post they are typing, they might quit Lemmy then and there.
The community structure needs to be more unified across instances. It’s confusing that there are local groups as well as “multiverse” groups across federations, often with the exact same name. It’s a bummer that the communities can be splintered, and will have people not realize what’s really available.
I think we’re might see some weaknesses of a distributed system like Lemmy in the next few weeks. It’s hard to organize and get everyone rowing in the same direction with no “CEO” or clear leader. It does feel like little fiefdoms doing their own things, and that makes it even harder to hit critical mass.
In terms of content and userbase, so far so good. It obviously leans heavily towards the technically competent. Lemmy sort of screens for the technology inclined since it’s only well known to those who are up to date with the latest in tech. So of course it’s easy to feel like everyone is like minded and cool for now. But we need to attract casuals if we want vibrant, non-tech groups to exist and flourish too.
I’ve only been exploring for 2 days though, so I can be very wrong.
I just got approved here, but have been on Mastodon for a couple of months. Mastodon signup was a lot glitzier, and yet I still couldn’t convert my friend, who was like “I don’t understand, what do you mean it’s like email? >_<”. I don’t have high hope for Lemmy atm…
I think Reddit will backpedal and renegotiate with users/devs down the line, once the initial backlash has died down, and they have lowered everyone’s threshold of what they would consider a “victory”. Things like Lemmy will act as a sword of Damocles/safe harbour for the next time they screw up, sure, and that’s a good thing. But I doubt Lemmy will explode in popularity, even if some 3rd party Reddit clients are discussing adding Lemmy support to sort of rugpull Reddit, and that’s for 3 reasons(imo):
The hosting costs will be exorbitant for all those new users, considering
Lemmy will be stuck in the exact same boat as Reddit re:all those unpaying users, except now there’s no ads either. Donations are the honourable business model, but a couple thousand well-meaning people with disposable income can’t properly finance a popular platform.
Even if the Lemmy community solves the above 2 problems, you still have the deciding moment of the “let’s jump ship today” user tidal wave, which will make or break such a migration happening. Closest thing I can think of is the WhatsApp Privacy Policy shenanigans in '21. Melon Husk said “Use Signal” - a fine suggestion, tbh - but Signal wasn’t ready for this, and so their servers crashed and burned during the tidal wave, while for-profit Telegram just paid for more servers and thus converted the refugees into users.
Say what you will about reddit, at least an established subreddit was the place to gather on the topic, ie r/technology etc.
This premise on which your question is based isn't actually true though. There's /r/technology and also /r/tech. There's /r/DnD and also /r/dndnext. As of recently, for some reason there are like 35 nearly identical amitheasshole subreddits with different names.
I feel like what you're observing is just that reddit communities are mature, people have had time to gravitate to whichever community is more active or has better quality moderation and so there is generally a "winner" sub with more participation because... unless there's a major problem with the bigger sub it tends to be more interesting than a less well-trafficked sub.
Lemmy, in contrast, is still fairly wild-west. Most communities are not very active and have only a few subscribers. If a competing community with an overlapping topic appears, folks are willing to subscribe to it just in case it takes off. If Lemmy continues to retain a healthy number of users, I expect in most cases that consolidation would set in unless there were major differences in moderation policy or something else that splits the community into factions that align across server or community boundaries... and over time you'll see a similar layout of one or two dominant communities and a long tail of tiny ones that few pay attention to.
Welcome to c/Plex! (lemmy.ml)
Welcome to c/Plex, the home for Plex on Lemmy.ml...
How can lemmy handle 5k+ signups per hour on Monday?
When reddit goes dark on Monday, there will be a horde of people looking for an alternative. When the APIs go dark at the end of the month, another horde will come. When /u/spez says just about anything, it’ll happen again. What can we do to prep here for that? How can we attract good moderators to moderate communities here?...
How is Lemmy supposed to replace Reddit?
I just don’t get how Lemmy is going to act as a proper replacement for Reddit....
current lemmy status (lemmy.world)
People need to realize you can use alternatives
New official /r/piracy fallback community (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
As the lemmy.ml admins expect a heavy load on their servers in the coming days, I’ve decided to run my own lemmy instance to be the dedicated forum for /r/piracy failover....
Lemmy.world starting guide
(I’m creating a starting guide post here. Have patience, it will take some time…)...
Is there a way to create Super Communities?
I've noticed in the explosion that we are getting duplicate communities in multiple instances. This is ultimately gonna hinder community growth as eventually communities like 'cats' will exist in hundreds of places all with their own micro groups, and some users will end up subscribing to duplicates in their list....
In contemplating a decentralized future
I’ve had three glasses of wine after a long day at work, and I’ve began thinking about the slow shift towards federalization/decentralization....
I like this significantly better than Mastodon
My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again,...
a megathread for developments on Reddit and with third-party Reddit apps
just so this doesn't overwhelm our front page too much, i think now's a good time to start consolidating discussions. existing threads will be kept up, but unless a big update comes let's try to keep what's happening in this thread instead of across 10....
Unable to subscribe to [email protected]
Hi, all. I’m trying to subscribe to the Photography community on lemmy.ml from the server where I have an account. However, I keep getting a community not found error. I can subscribe to other communities on lemmy.ml just fine, and I’ve checked my spelling. The photography community also doesn’t appear in searches when I...
Lemmy UI Frage
Wenn mehrere Lemmy-Server Communities hosten, die ähnliche Themenbereiche behandeln, kann man diese als eine Timeline im UI darstellen? So einer Art Community ‘Merge’ oder ‘Mingling’...
How has ur lemmy experience been so far?
Im joining in on the reddit ditching thing, and was kinda worried at first that i wouldnt be able to like use it the way i did reddit as it feels like a whole new place, but after engaging with posts and people and actually being a part of lemmy rather than being lurk mode all the time i was pleasantly surprised with how easy it...
How do we deal with similar communities on different Lemmy instances?
Say what you will about reddit, at least an established subreddit was the place to gather on the topic, ie r/technology etc....
A few announcements
Hello all!...
Lemmy Apps
Here’s an alphabetical list of Lemmy apps for Android. This list will be updated as new apps come out!...