I think people should pay (way) more attention to the domain name when creating a Lemmy instance. This is, of course, for admins of instances.

Instances such as lemmy.dbzer0.com and lemm.ee and such are just so unfriendly, in the name, that I think they do a disservice to Lemmy. They end up splitting the community. Due to the weird domain names, there will be privacy.lemmy.dbzer0.com, but the domain is just so unfriendly that people will also create privacy.lemmy.world and privacy.lemmy.ml and etc and it just creates unnecessary friction.

If you are considering creating a lemmy instance, please, please, think of the domain name. You cannot change it later!

  • Zizzy@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    10·
    9 hours ago

    I dont think there are multiple privacy communities because of the donain names. Its because people disagree with and dont want to be on or associate with thise instances lemmy.ml is a tankie instance, dbzer0 is specifically only for anarchists, etc.

    So its actually doing what the fediverse was designed to do, and allow people to have spin offs in their own flavor. Whatever the reasoning behind creating multiple of these communities is, Im almost certain it has nit been because the domain name was too unfriendly. This is especially apparent if you look at all the popular 196 communities and why they were made.

  • hisao@ani.socialEnglish
    7·
    10 hours ago

    Due to the weird domain names, there will be privacy.lemmy.dbzer0.com, but the domain is just so unfriendly that people will also create privacy.lemmy.world

    So you basically saying people will tend to duplicate communities on lemmy.world just for the sake of friendlier domain name? Why do you think people use that logic when creating communities? Also, when you’re registered on some instance and you want to find communities you go to global search and use that, all from UI, and at that point you’re not even looking at browser address string, so why is that even important? You click to subscribe to communities, and then see them in your stream and your sidebar, domain name being completely irrelevant to any actions you do.

  • Jeena@piefed.jeena.netEnglish
    13·
    12 hours ago

    What is the problem of having communities on several instances? Isn’t that the main point of decentralization?

    • amos@mander.xyzOPEnglish
      63·
      12 hours ago

      I think there are advances and disadvantages to this. Decentralization is definitely an advantage, however, having the same community split between many instances splits the community and the conversations and makes finding and interacting with the community much harder. This wouldn’t be much of a problem on a very big userbase (such as reddit), but on a smaller userbase (such as lemmy), it does constitute a problem in my view.

      Having said that, there are probably some UI/UX tricks that could be done to improve this sort of thing. For example, when subscribing to a “privacy” community, there could be a suggestions box/pop-up/whatever showing other privacy communities. Perhaps a graph of communities.

      • Jeena@piefed.jeena.netEnglish
        7·
        12 hours ago

        People usually just subscribe to both.

        Also the same community can be very different on different servers because the rules might be different, the moderation, etc.

        • amos@mander.xyzOPEnglish
          51·
          11 hours ago

          Some people, yes. But the person that wants something that “just works” probably doesn’t feel like searching for all the privacy communities. He/She does not want to have to search which one is the most active, which one has the best rules, etc etc. That point makes it a negative. My point is that reducing friction of usage is a good thing, for growing communities at least, such as lemmy.

          And just to be clear, I am the most pro-decentralization person you will ever find. I am not against lemmy. I hate reddit and what it stands for.

          • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
            21·
            11 hours ago

            I think if you really examine the realities of what you are saying, you’ll land on split communities being fine. It gives people a place to go if there are rogue admins or mods.

            No, it’s not user friendly but I also don’t think attracting every single person to Lemmy is a good goal. There are plenty of people on Reddit in happy to have stay there.

            • amos@mander.xyzOPEnglish
              41·
              11 hours ago

              My claim is not that Lemmy should attract every single person. However, it does need to attract many many people. Here is why:

              I think we all want to open a post about astronomy and read “Astronomer here. Here is what this post is saying:”. Or read a post about nutrition and have someone with actual nutrition knowledge talk about the topic at hand. Perhaps even the author of the paper?

              Do you want a random guy who installed arch-linux commentating (probably a shitty meme) on a highly specialized topic about math? Or do you want Terence Tao leaving his thoughts? I want the later. In order to have that, Lemmy needs to be welcoming to everyone and not just to people who know how to install Arch.

              I use arch btw.

              • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
                11·
                11 hours ago

                I mean I hear you. And the experience can be made better, but where that clashes with decentralization, I’d rather decentralization wins.

  • beSyl@slrpnk.netEnglish
    67·
    11 hours ago

    Damn OP, this post got massively downvoted. At -10 currently. I think people are being defensive of Lemmy and not understanding your point.

    I 100% agree with you.