A lot of us come from reddit, so we're naturally inclined to want a reddit-like platform. However, it occurred to me that the reddit format makes little sense for the fediverse.
Centralized, reddit-like communities where users seek out communities and post directly to them made sense for a centralized service like reddit. But when we apply that model to lemmy or kbin, we end up with an unnecessary number of competing communities. (ex: [email protected] vs [email protected]) Aside from the issues of federation (what happens when one instance defederates and the community has to start over?) this means that if one wants to post across communities on instances, they have to crosspost multiple times.
The ideal format for a fediverse reddit-like would be a cross between twitter and reddit: a website where if you want to post about a cat, you make your post and tag it with the appropriate tags. This could include "cats," "aww," and "cute." This post is automatically aggregated into instantly-generated "cats," "aww," and "cute" communities. Edit: And if you want to participate in a small community you can use smaller, less popular tags such as "toebeans" or something like that. This wouldn't lead to any more or less small communities than the current system. /EndEdit. But, unlike twitter, you can interact with each post just like reddit: upvotes, downvotes, nested comments - and appointed community moderators can untag a post if it's off-topic or doesn't follow the rules of the tag-communities.
The reason this would work better is that instead of relying on users to create centralized communities that they then have to post into, working against the federated format, this works with it. It aggregates every instance into one community automatically. Also, when an instance decides to defederate, the tag-community remains. The existing posts simply disappear while the others remain.
Thoughts? Does this already exist? lol
Edit: Seeing a lot of comments about how having multiple communities for one topic isn't necessarily bad, and I agree, it's not. But, the real issue is not that, it's that the current format is working against the medium. We're formatting this part of the fediverse like reddit, which is centralized, when we shouldn't. And the goal of this federation (in my understanding) is to 1. decentralize, and 2. aggregate. The current format will eventually work against #1, and it's relying on users to do #2.
For some reason I suck at long comments, they keep getting destroyed when I try to post.
I had a long written out response about how when you have multiple communities on one subject, moderation responsibilities get dispersed and become easier for everyone. They don't have to set up any division of responsibility on a single board, they don't even have to agree on the EXACT same rules. They simply have to federate and link each other so that the community members know to watch for threads from each, comment where they like, and post on the one that is closest to their instance.
If we throw away the idea of "Redundant" or "competing" boards and just accept that we can have all these spaces coexisting, things could work out pretty nice.
I mean, instead of ONE Sherlock Holmes board that might discourage sexuality discussions and ban BBC Sherlock, you can have 3 that have slightly different rules, different mods but still federate with each other and give you 3 spaces to discuss Sherlock Holmes that are all reachable from your homepage on your home instance.
I have had the issue of receiving error messages when I try to post. In my case, fortunately, my words were not erased. I would hit "Add comment" and be taken to a 503 Error (telling me to come back in a few days!). Sometimes the page would eventually load, or I would go back. My post would still be there in the compose window. While this problem exists I have taken to Select-All / Copying my posts before attempting to upload them.
Somehow it hasn't felt too frustrating. I LOVE how patient and understanding most of us are when it comes to this place! For one thing, I ask myself, "Do I really need to post that?" before deciding whether to attempt again. I also think we are all patient because we see the powers that be here as acting in good faith, trying their best, underfunded, and honorable... unlike our experiences with corporate ad & data mining sites.
That's a good tip, thanks.
Yes, I am so much less frustrated here than other places. And I think you hit on why.