I don’t understand how Lemmy intends to do it when the different instances are federated, if several instances create the same community for example…is that possible?

  • DessalinesMA
    2·
    5 years ago

    Having different servers, many of whom aren’t connected, having different “versions” of the same community, that share some data, but not all, would be infinitely more complicated.

    • muirrum
      1·
      5 years ago

      I see your point, however I think community fragmentation is an issue that will need to be resolved, and having separate communities for each instance won’t help with that.

      • DessalinesMA
        1·
        5 years ago

        What if instance A wants to make a /c/news, and have control over it, but that name is already taken?

        Fragmentation means community owners actually get full control over anything they want to create.

        • muirrum
          1·
          5 years ago

          Ah, I see. How will communities across instances be differentiated?

          • DessalinesMA
            1·
            5 years ago

            With different identifiers. So if you’ve subscribed to both communities, you will see a posted by X to instance1/c/news, and posted by Y to instance2/c/news.

            Communities are totally different from hashtags, which have no moderation and anybody can put anything they want in them.

              • DessalinesMA
                3·
                5 years ago

                “Fragmentation” of communities is a good thing.

                If someone starts up a lemmy instance about star trek, and someone starts up one about breaking bad, both of them can have /c/news communities.

                And from my feed, I can subscribe to both startrek/c/news and breakingbad/c/news

                • DJWalnut
                  1·
                  5 years ago

                  Honestly, I think a better idea is to separate human-readable names and formal names. say, the community ID is a random 128 bit string (could also be a public key if you do something neat with cryptography) and then the community’s human readable name is a mutable variable that can be set or change, and doesn’t have to be unique

                  • Serge Tarkovski
                    1·
                    5 years ago

                    So basically you want a distributed community, like, for example, what happens in the blockchain world. Anyway, you depend on the mods then, if not on the admins of a particular server. In either case, it’s all about people in the end. Also, what if someone decides that the mods of a particular “unique” place have broken things up / corrupted the original idea etc.? Where to create another, better place if this one has already been occupied?