Hi there -
I’m trying to dive into the fediverse and am debating kbin vs lemmy instances. My question is on how people approach dealing with with communities /magazines that share names, subject matter between the various instances.
For example - the “Fediverse” magazine in kbin.social is not the same as the “Fediverse” community in lemmy.world (they obviously have different namespaces) but the content is often similar and the subject matter is pretty much the same. (I imagine other implementations will have their own flavours too.)
As a user, how do you decide which is the optimal one to follow? Do you subscribe to each? Can you cross post between them? Could/would the magazines/communities eventually merge?
I get that everything is federated and things will congeal to have some being more dominant (or not) over time, but coming from a reddit world, it’s definitely a bit more daunting. This is ok. Change is good - just looking at how people tend to approach this.
Do you have accounts at multiple servers? Do you pick one and subscribe from all over?
Interested in hearing how you tackle it.
Cheers!
In your example, I would subscribe to each community. Sans any federation issues you can cross-post between communities on different servers.
I have an account on kbin and mastodon since each platform has different features. I haven’t had any of the servers I’m on have federation issues but I imagine I would change servers if needed but generally I pick a server and stick to it.
Honestly, it’s kind of a terrible experience.
You can just try to join them all but the problem we will run into is people not following or remembering the rules of each.
It perhaps would have been better if their couldn’t be duplicates but then who decides which domain can host which community?
My gut feeling is it will probably only get better if the websites and apps make it super clear with design and font that they are separate.
Ex. Informally Videos@lemmy.world is shown with a font color and an icon next to it in all apps and domains so it becomes uniquely recognizable.
This is just an unfortunate downside of a federated system.
I just subscribed to a kbin magazine from Lemmy, yay!
I tried joining @RedditMigration@kbin.social from my login instance at lemm.ee so I navigated to https://lemm.ee/c/RedditMigration@kbin.social from the address bar and selected subscribe. Then I subscribed to another Kbin magazine by searching communities. Very cool.
Lemmy’s canonical names are not working right 0.17.4 (the ones starting with an exclamation point). I think that’s fixed in 0.18.0 so that will make things easier especially if it can recognize Kbin canonical names.
I’m not sure how well Kbin is picking up Lemmy communities but I see Kbin users in posts here so it must be working. In any case you can get the content on either platform so just use the one you like better.
I’m a little guilty of this myself since I’m trying to see which instance I want to settle on, so I’ve made a few duplicate communities across the three I’m on (Lemmy, kbin, shitjustworks.)
That having been said, while they may be very similar now, I assume that each will develop its own unique flavor so to speak. There is probably also a sizable pool of folks who prefer local communities since they are probably choosing their instance based off of moderation, wanting communities to follow specific guidelines.
As a user, how do you decide which is the optimal one to follow? Do you subscribe to each? Can you cross post between them?
You don’t have to decide which is optimal. Yes, subscribe to each. Yes, you can cross-post.
Do you have accounts at multiple servers? Do you pick one and subscribe from all over?
Yes, but I only use one. The other is on an instance which has it’s end of life announced. A 3rd blocks my nick on another instance which I frequently visit.
At the moment I have a .world, .ml and .studio account. The .ml account is used to follow programming topics, .studio for music, .world for ‘rest’. I’m working oj locally hosted instances, so I can dreate a user in my own domain.
When there are multiple magazines and communities about the same topic, I usually follow all, maybe weed some out later, depending on content. However, I pick the ‘specialized’ identity for studio/music and programming. (Although I use this identity most, maybe it’ll become main)
You know, I was also comtemplating creating an instance (private) for just myself to centralize a single account and then picking and choosing from all over while maintaining my own ‘home’ that only I control.
I need to research it a bit further though. The idea has some appeal.
I’m looking into the option to have 1 user@my.domain to use for mastodon, lemmy,… As I understood each protocol comes in on a different port, so it should at least be possible to receive all streams on the same address. No clue how to keep all users apart or combine login to a single instance/user administration.
Somehow I guess I need a mastodon@my.domain, lemmy@my.domain,… account to keep them apart. I could use different domains, as I now have 2 different ‘identities’ on mastodon and lemmy as well.
That’s more or less what I’m thinning, though I’m not there yet. Still need to understand what persists on my server etc. Ideally I just want a portal/gateway to centralize connections to the outside world. This would let me control my own credentials and have a single login (notwithstanding additional protocols)
I’m not interested in persisting much data.
I worry it’ll become a headache though. Already I’m finding compatibility issues in the fediverse - when I tried Jerboa, my first toe in the water here I realized it didn’t work with lemmy.world because of minimum version level. Obviously it’ll iron itself out in time, but it does highlight that running an instance is not absolutely set-and-forget.
Thanks for responding!
