I just don’t get how Lemmy is going to act as a proper replacement for Reddit.

I understand the basic concept of Lemmy and the Fediverse, and people are touting the concept of it being federated and not centrally controlled, but it is an absolute mess and nobody seems to have an idea about what to do with it.

How are communities going to grow if there isn’t at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they’re all just doing what they want.

Outside of the underlying framework, there’s no ‘guidelines’ or consistency. The servers have random names, and the main Lemmy.ml is telling people to register elsewhere.

How is this going to bring in a wider audience if people are being directed to lemmy.fmhy.ml, sopuli.xyz, or sh.itjust.works?

What is the purpose of the Fediverse when forums for niche interests already exist on the internet?

Does it make sense to have something like a ‘sports’ server that has communities for soccer, NFL, basketball, MMA? But then how do you get a consistent naming scheme that lets people know it’s part of the fediverse?

Maybe Lemmy could work as a replacement, but it seems like it needs a ‘flagship’ server with a group of people maintaining it to set an example. Then other servers that cover more specific areas, such as sports, can be set up and potentially work closely with that flagship group.

If this doesn’t happen, then I can’t see how this doesn’t just fizzle out.

P.S. I’ve also compared two different Lemmy servers and looked at the same post in a community, and there are different numbers of comments on each where they haven’t synced up…

I also wanted to post this to the main Lemmy community, but as I had to register via a different server, I’m not able to access that community from the server I’m using for some reason…

  • araquen@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I don’t believe Lemmy’s architecture and structure needs to replace Reddit, or clone it. The appeal and strength of Reddit was in the discrete packets of common interest Reddit offered to the user.

    When I first joined Reddit, after the initial confusion, I unsubbed from every subreddit you got by default and slowly added back subreddits of interest. The end result was between 250-279 subreddits, many of which had overlapping subject matter, which was further curated into “mega” subreddits. For me, the only difference between Reddit and Lemmy is that I don’t have to purge a pre-defined set.

    I would say the current delta would be the quality of life improvements Reddit has - such as an easier way to locate communities of interest, and a better way to organize multiple communities. And personally, I can see a disconnect if you follow a link “off server” and then can’t join because you’re not logged in there. Lemmy could take a page from Mastodon here, and provide feedback to explain how to add that particular community to yours.

    Ultimately, Lemmy doesn’t need to replicate Reddit. It really juts needs more active engagement, and an easier way to identify which subreddits and which communities align, especially amongst the more heavily engaged subreddits. If people can feel like they can pick up on Lemmy where they left off on Reddit, the rest will work itself out.