From what i can gather, it could be beneficial to, for example, have an instance which would become the main place to get videogame content on Lemmy. Most communities would be for specific games or AAA companies, but it could also have c/general for asking questions or topics which are non specific to any community, or c/meta, which would work as a place to discuss the state of the instance.

Overall, nothing that different from the actual status quo, but this way, we could consider instances as hubs for certain topics, which would then specialize with the /c/s within said instance. Instead of having 7 c/technology across instances, we could have @Tech.no and subdivide it into c/topic1, c/topic2, etc. (was supposed to come up with smthing but came empty handed shut up i dont browse that sub) .

What im mostly seeing here is that popular instances themselves are not different from reddit. The most popular instances on lemmy are beehaw.org and lemmy.ml, which have the same m.o, if you will, of reddit. Which is good, theyre popular for a reason, but in a way, theyre competing with each other. Not financially, but there will be overlap between certain /c/s.

Of course im not asking if its possible. Its just a matter of running the server and having the right infrastructure. My question is if you think its feasible to decentralize lemmy from the main instances, or even a good idea in the first place. Maybe you think its ok the way things currently are? Or maybe what i said is supposed to be the goal and im just late to the party? What are your thoughts?

  • SalamanderAEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    In my personal view, in a developed “Lemmyverse” one instance would cover a topic about as specific as a general subreddit.

    When making an instance I first thought about making a much more focused instance. To give you an example, one idea was to focus on reptiles and amphibians.The communities would then be much more specific - salamanders, pets, geckos, snakes, etc… And this structure can certainly work, as there are many forums like that! For example, this forum about microscopy has a healthy community. But several people with very specific interests would need to show up simultaneously to build an engaging community. So I decided to broaden the topic to cover science and nature in general - and at the moment it is fine because there are not that many users.

    However, once Lemmy becomes more popular and hopefully scales up successfully, there will be many more people with specific interests looking at these sites. Then it should be possible to form reasonably engaged communities based around niche topics. At that point, an instance dedicated to “Science” would be way too broad!

    It is great that many users are joining in by discovering the instances that already exist. Hopefully many will realize that the really interesting part is the ability of creating and self-hosting an instance in a server that you have control of. I think that the best way of scaling up would be by having lots of people hosting small instances.