I'm a fairly new users, but I feel that navigating around the fediverse is a bit cumbersome, maybe the wrong word for it. But there is a lack of overview in a way. I enjoy being on this server, but I also like to follow other communities. Lots of different topics, everything from cars to Linux to architecture.
Right now there are 10 (that I could find on browse.feddit.de) instances named Linux on different server. So the small number of Linux users using some fediverse instance is spread around over many servers. Coming from reddit, things were far from perfect over there, but there is only r/Linux. It's a shame users are spread so thin all over the place.
I used Linux as an example, I've seen the same "problem" for other topics as well. Anyways, just my perspective as a new users. Hope this wasn't too much of a rant, maybe we can look at this as an issue where the fediverse can improve.
I don't see this as a problem at all. The internet has always been this way. If there was one singular Linux community in the Fediverse and you had to go there to discuss the topic, you'd just have Reddit. And Reddit already exists.
It also happens on Reddit too. There's like 3 AITA subs, a few subs for Making a Murderer because I guess someone had some issues with the mods of the original one being a cop or something.
I don't see anything different with lemmy honestly, but it would be nice to have the option to kind of merge into bigger ones. I imagine that's in the roadmap at some point.
the centralization of people also was a more recent thing. I remember specialized smaller forums and websites used to be more popular when I was younger. hell even earlier with GeoCities people had their homepage and blogs.
and even with discord and twitter people had their own small groups that may seem "redundant".
Easy solution to this would be introducing a feature similar to multireddit where you can group smaller communities together as one. It could be on a global basis where everyone gets the same communities or on a local basis where users can add or remove communities as they see fit. I really don’t think it’s ultimately going to be as much of an issue as Reddit users think. The alternative is doing it the way Reddit does and then you just have…Reddit again. Reddit having everything centralised with a few people holding all the power is the reason most of us are here in the first place.
Yes, I don't wont it exactly like reddit. We are over 12k people here on this server so there are plenty of people so talk to to have a general discussion. The small issue is the more niche a hobbie/community is there more of a problem it. Instead of 100 Linux users on one server there is 10 people on 10 servers (just imaginary numbers to get my point across).
The point is to connect with people with similar interests. If one "sub" does go bad, we can just make a new one on a different instance.
I do agree that no one wants power-hungry mods ruining a sub.
In my experience I find niche community are very well "centralized", like there is only one gnome community.
However larger community are speard between servers like tech etc. That really is not a problem for me, as any of these larger community can give me the news I need. Also sub to all 3 of them is not a big deal either.
Like everyone on reddit sub to at least 3 art communities, 5 dank meme communities, and 10 music communities.
I'm sure a lot of folks came in saying that its better than centralization and I do agree with it. Centralization is simply easier to consume a lot of content mindlessly but I don't think thats how the fediverse works nor is it how it should be.
(Also sorry for using the terms incorrectly I'm not really a tech person. Also obligatory these are just my thoughts)
Centralization means that people usually get buried. Bigger instances are also harder and more expensive to host (from what ive heard). Perhaps we'll see the same issue when a certain instsnce gets bigger and more dominant, but the nice thing about different communities is if we dont like one we can move to another. And the cool thing about federation (ideally) is that we aren't completely disconnected from the fediverse if we decide to move instances.
While if its like with twitter, discord, reddit if we dislike a main rule or aspect we would be stuck with it because of the network affect. Even reddit has many different subreddits for the same topic because people have issues with how a subreddit is ran. For example r/childfree spawned r/truechildfree because people disliked how it became a child bashing forum.
But I do see how the fediverse can be seen as being too spread thin at times. But I hope that with welcoming communities it can seem more alive because people are more likely to participate. Its what will need to happen with a smaller community.
This isn't a problem with decentralization but more a UI/UX issue with current Fediverse clients. We all need to remember all of them are in early stages of development. I full suspect new features and tools will start popping up in the coming months to assist in the overall usability.
Niche communities will organically begin to congregate in one or two places in the fediverse over time. It won’t happen instantly. The same thing happened over at Reddit, but they’ve had almost 2 decades for it to happen, and communities are still fragmented there. Just look at r/gaming, r/games, r/pcgaming, etc. It’s no different on the fediverse, the only difference is that these communities might share a name. So instead of having r/gaming and r/games, you have two communities both named c/gaming.
For now, what I do is search for the community I’m interested (i.e. Linux in your example), take a look at the number of users subscribed to each option and pick the largest one as my main source. If I find the quality of that community to be lacking, I check out the other ones as well.
I’m enjoying the slow, early-stages feel so far. It feels like there is good potential here at Beehaw and I’ve seen way less “not nice” behavior here than I have on subreddits.
But yeah, I haven’t explored the other instances too much because I’m not quite sure how find communities I’m interested in without getting overloaded by things that I’m not interested in. It will just take time to figure out.
I agree. I started off creating an account on lemmy.world because I had no idea what I was doing in the fediverse (still don't lmao). All this drama/defederation between lemmy.world and beehaw.org was annoying because I liked the posts and discussions from communities in beehaw.org. Decided to give kbin a shot, which seems to be working well? The UX for lemmy and kbin are honestly gross and is taking a while to get used to.