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What are the current solutions for discoverability in Lemmy? Having a tombstone on Reddit pointing people towards a specific instance is good but it’s still har

What are the current solutions for discoverability in Lemmy? Having a tombstone on Reddit pointing people towards a specific instance is good but it’s still hard to be the definitive community when the namespace isn’t as restricted any more. Maybe that’s better?

Namahanna 3y ago
You can go to Communities -> All in your preferred lemmy instance to see all communities that instance has federated with https://lemmy.world/communities/listing_type/All/page/1 https://lemmy.world/communities/listing_type/All/page/1
seszett 3y ago
https://startrek.website https://startrek.website is the third Google result for "star trek lemmy". "Star trek discussion board" shows many other discussion boards, so discoverability seems fine to me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
davidcollantes 3y ago
I don’t see this approach as a viable one, but time will tell. I never subscribed to the Startrek subreddit, but having it on an isolated website instead of been agglomerated on a solution like Reddit will have an engagement decrease, especially when people who subscribed to the sub still participates in other subreddits.
- fsflover 3y ago
  > isolated website Did you hear about federation?
  - davidcollantes 3y ago
    I understand it is federated, apologies. What I meant was, to engage with the new StarTrek Lemmy you need to know their address. On Reddit everything is at https://reddit.com/ https://reddit.com/. It is frictionless.
    - Stephen304 3y ago
      I'm not sure if you're aware, but only the first remote user needs to know the address. After that the content gets federated to the feeds of other instances automatically, including the new/hot pages where popular upvoted posts from the star trek instance can show up on the front page of other instances, allowing new people to discover, join the "sublemmy", and comment often without realizing it's hosted on a different server.
      - slindsey 3y ago
        Based on my mastodon experience, it's a little more nuanced than that. You are on a server (not the star trek one). Someone on your server needs to follow stuff on that star trek server for it to show up on your server. So if your community is mostly about fishing and no one likes star trek but you, you'll never see it unless you go looking for it.
        Izkata 3y ago
        What? That sounds like a great way to pollute the tightly focused fishing server... There's got to be something more to it, right?
    - fsflover 3y ago
      It seems you just got used to Reddit. I don't see how knowing the subreddit is (much) easier than knowing a website.
    - diffeomorphism 3y ago
      No? Why would you need to know the address? Also, that is not even true on reddit: you don't need to know whether it is /r/startrek or star_trek or trekkies or whatever; you just search, done.
- nottorp 3y ago
  > will have an engagement decrease That's great! A community should have interesting discussion, not engagement!
  - bazmattaz 3y ago
    Well unless it’s lack of engagement from the most valuable users.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  Yea, there's definitely advantages to everyone being on Facebook. Many of us are focusing on the disadvantages of a single platform ruling all communities, though. Software wise (Lemmy/Kbin/etc), it's definitely not for the faint of heart currently but that will improve in time. For me though the biggest thing is "One platform to rule them all" is not viable. It will have issues, users will suffer, and this isn't some unique thing we've never seen before. The more quickly we can regain some aspect of "the web" in favor of users, the better. In my book.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    I think we need a federated facebook replacement and a federated image server, but I don't know how to go about building this myself.
    - unshavedyak 3y ago
      Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about ActivityPub. I'm in the process of learning it now for some software i'm writing, but take everything i say with a lethal dose of salt. I'm venturing into ActivityPub myself, though focused on UX of link Aggs, mostly. One issue i've seen so far with Mastodon/etc, is that AP works decently for cheap stuff, but expensive stuff like Images and Video still have significant cost. I believe with Mastodon it's all hosted from the source location. Ie you run `tinymastoinstance.com` and one of your "Toots" with videos/images goes viral in federated instances, i think pretty much everyone is pulling the image from your instance. Not sure how much they try to federate the heavy stuff. Hypothetically they can of course.. but i'm just not sure what the AP spec says about that. It's of significant concern to me, though, since i'm wanting to build software for micro-AP instances and hotlinking files on a micro instance will almost assuredly burn the instance down. Facebook on the otherhand though, seems totally viable. Identity duplication is probably the biggest issue AP has with a more identify focused application like Facebook. Notably as i learned the other day there's nothing in the AP spec for persisting identities across instances. No private key you can reuse on new instances to identify yourself as the same user, etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
joecot 3y ago
> Having a tombstone on Reddit pointing people towards a specific instance is good but it’s still hard to be the definitive community when the namespace isn’t as restricted any more. Maybe that’s better? I don't think that's much different than reddit itself tbh. So many subreddits splinter into "Foo"/"TrueFoo"/"TrollFoo"/"Foojerk" etc as it is, as groups have fights and run off. Often the original "Foo" is dead, with no tombstone marker to the real active subreddit. Lemmy and kbin will involve a lot of the same, with just different instances with their own "Foo" instead of "xxFooXX".
rakoo 3y ago
There's a third-party indexer here: https://lemmyverse.net/communities https://lemmyverse.net/communities Much like any true decentralized system, there can be as many star trek communities as there are trekkies. But this is not a technical problem, it's a social problem: when wanting to discuss, they will naturally converge towards the same space(s). If there are multiple, that's not a problem, just like it's not a problem to have multiple linux distributions. Each space will have its rules, its technical background. You can be part of both. This situation can't be solved with technical tools, only with a human consensus. That's as good as it gets.
- graypegg 3y ago
  Oh hey that’s EXACTLY what I was hoping for! A board of boards. Human consensus works pretty well for sorting a list like that. Thanks!
- moskie 3y ago
  What's the intended workflow, once I see a community I want to subscribe to? I've created an account on lemmy.world, but I see a community from lemmy.ml..... what do I do?
  - Goronmon 3y ago
    Subscribe to the communities you want on lemmy.ml from your account on lemmy.world?
    - moskie 3y ago
      Ok, I've done that, but it involved switching away from my tab on lemmyverse.net, going to lemmy.world in a different tab, and manually searching for what I found on lemmyverse. Is there an intended workflow that involves clicking something on a result I see on lemmyverse.net? edit: i've just now noticed that I can click the label under the title to copy the text that I can then paste into lemmy.world search. There should be something like a chrome extension that captures lemmy links and redirects them to the lemmy instance that i have an account on.
btw0 3y ago
https://redditmigration.com https://redditmigration.com

Namahanna 3y ago

You can go to Communities -> All in your preferred lemmy instance to see all communities that instance has federated with https://lemmy.world/communities/listing_type/All/page/1 https://lemmy.world/communities/listing_type/All/page/1

seszett 3y ago

https://startrek.website https://startrek.website is the third Google result for "star trek lemmy". "Star trek discussion board" shows many other discussion boards, so discoverability seems fine to me.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

davidcollantes 3y ago

I don’t see this approach as a viable one, but time will tell. I never subscribed to the Startrek subreddit, but having it on an isolated website instead of been agglomerated on a solution like Reddit will have an engagement decrease, especially when people who subscribed to the sub still participates in other subreddits.

fsflover 3y ago
> isolated website Did you hear about federation?
- davidcollantes 3y ago
  I understand it is federated, apologies. What I meant was, to engage with the new StarTrek Lemmy you need to know their address. On Reddit everything is at https://reddit.com/ https://reddit.com/. It is frictionless.
  - Stephen304 3y ago
    I'm not sure if you're aware, but only the first remote user needs to know the address. After that the content gets federated to the feeds of other instances automatically, including the new/hot pages where popular upvoted posts from the star trek instance can show up on the front page of other instances, allowing new people to discover, join the "sublemmy", and comment often without realizing it's hosted on a different server.
    - slindsey 3y ago
      Based on my mastodon experience, it's a little more nuanced than that. You are on a server (not the star trek one). Someone on your server needs to follow stuff on that star trek server for it to show up on your server. So if your community is mostly about fishing and no one likes star trek but you, you'll never see it unless you go looking for it.
      - Izkata 3y ago
        What? That sounds like a great way to pollute the tightly focused fishing server... There's got to be something more to it, right?
  - fsflover 3y ago
    It seems you just got used to Reddit. I don't see how knowing the subreddit is (much) easier than knowing a website.
  - diffeomorphism 3y ago
    No? Why would you need to know the address? Also, that is not even true on reddit: you don't need to know whether it is /r/startrek or star_trek or trekkies or whatever; you just search, done.
nottorp 3y ago
> will have an engagement decrease That's great! A community should have interesting discussion, not engagement!
- bazmattaz 3y ago
  Well unless it’s lack of engagement from the most valuable users.
unshavedyak 3y ago
Yea, there's definitely advantages to everyone being on Facebook. Many of us are focusing on the disadvantages of a single platform ruling all communities, though. Software wise (Lemmy/Kbin/etc), it's definitely not for the faint of heart currently but that will improve in time. For me though the biggest thing is "One platform to rule them all" is not viable. It will have issues, users will suffer, and this isn't some unique thing we've never seen before. The more quickly we can regain some aspect of "the web" in favor of users, the better. In my book.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  I think we need a federated facebook replacement and a federated image server, but I don't know how to go about building this myself.
  - unshavedyak 3y ago
    Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about ActivityPub. I'm in the process of learning it now for some software i'm writing, but take everything i say with a lethal dose of salt. I'm venturing into ActivityPub myself, though focused on UX of link Aggs, mostly. One issue i've seen so far with Mastodon/etc, is that AP works decently for cheap stuff, but expensive stuff like Images and Video still have significant cost. I believe with Mastodon it's all hosted from the source location. Ie you run `tinymastoinstance.com` and one of your "Toots" with videos/images goes viral in federated instances, i think pretty much everyone is pulling the image from your instance. Not sure how much they try to federate the heavy stuff. Hypothetically they can of course.. but i'm just not sure what the AP spec says about that. It's of significant concern to me, though, since i'm wanting to build software for micro-AP instances and hotlinking files on a micro instance will almost assuredly burn the instance down. Facebook on the otherhand though, seems totally viable. Identity duplication is probably the biggest issue AP has with a more identify focused application like Facebook. Notably as i learned the other day there's nothing in the AP spec for persisting identities across instances. No private key you can reuse on new instances to identify yourself as the same user, etc.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

joecot 3y ago

> Having a tombstone on Reddit pointing people towards a specific instance is good but it’s still hard to be the definitive community when the namespace isn’t as restricted any more. Maybe that’s better? I don't think that's much different than reddit itself tbh. So many subreddits splinter into "Foo"/"TrueFoo"/"TrollFoo"/"Foojerk" etc as it is, as groups have fights and run off. Often the original "Foo" is dead, with no tombstone marker to the real active subreddit. Lemmy and kbin will involve a lot of the same, with just different instances with their own "Foo" instead of "xxFooXX".

rakoo 3y ago

There's a third-party indexer here: https://lemmyverse.net/communities https://lemmyverse.net/communities Much like any true decentralized system, there can be as many star trek communities as there are trekkies. But this is not a technical problem, it's a social problem: when wanting to discuss, they will naturally converge towards the same space(s). If there are multiple, that's not a problem, just like it's not a problem to have multiple linux distributions. Each space will have its rules, its technical background. You can be part of both. This situation can't be solved with technical tools, only with a human consensus. That's as good as it gets.

graypegg 3y ago
Oh hey that’s EXACTLY what I was hoping for! A board of boards. Human consensus works pretty well for sorting a list like that. Thanks!
moskie 3y ago
What's the intended workflow, once I see a community I want to subscribe to? I've created an account on lemmy.world, but I see a community from lemmy.ml..... what do I do?
- Goronmon 3y ago
  Subscribe to the communities you want on lemmy.ml from your account on lemmy.world?
  - moskie 3y ago
    Ok, I've done that, but it involved switching away from my tab on lemmyverse.net, going to lemmy.world in a different tab, and manually searching for what I found on lemmyverse. Is there an intended workflow that involves clicking something on a result I see on lemmyverse.net? edit: i've just now noticed that I can click the label under the title to copy the text that I can then paste into lemmy.world search. There should be something like a chrome extension that captures lemmy links and redirects them to the lemmy instance that i have an account on.

btw0 3y ago

https://redditmigration.com https://redditmigration.com