147
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Averrin@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

Correct me if I'm wrong. I read ActivityPub standards and dug a little into lemmy sources to understand how federation works. And I'm a bit disappointed. Every server just has a cache and the ability to fetch something from another known server. So if you start your own instance, there is no profit for the whole network until you have a significant piece of auditory (e.g. private instances or servers with no users). Are there any "balancers" to utilize these empty instances? Should we promote (or create in the first place) a way how to passively help lemmy with such fast growth?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] altari@lemmy.world 45 points 2 years ago

After a day of use, I'm incredibly disappointed.

The fragmentation problems, and lack of cohesive community discovery (or even apparently any agreed standards for sharing communities etc. across instances in a way the most popular app can reliably recognise as being a community and not an external link or mailto address) will make Lemmy an absolute non-starter for 99% of potential users.

I'm sure there are solutions, but as it stands I can't see Lemmy gaining any widespread adoption without a significant leap in user friendliness in regard to how federated instances are implemented and managed.

[-] j4k3@lemmy.world 49 points 2 years ago

I don't see fragmentation as a problem at all. The number of total subscribers is published when doing a search and is the ultimate primary consolidator just like reddit. There were many redundant subs on reddit for any given subject, they just had no patronage. The process of establishing primacy takes time. Three days ago .world had less than 1k users and all of Lemmy had less active users than half those present on any one of several instances right now. The .world instance is 10 days old.

The priorities of decentralized service will not align with the antithesis model. I see a minor complexity barrier to entry as a positive filter for some of the worst quality users.

[-] Ataraxia@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago

Agreed. If decentralized doesn't appeal to certain people then this isn't for them. I came from reddit. I'm not trying to make this into reddit.

[-] binwiederhier@discuss.ntfy.sh 22 points 2 years ago

I haven't even been using it for day, and I share your disappointment. However, I understand that Lemmy is in its infancy. There are huge UX hurdles to overcome, and it's a lot for two developers to carry. The hope is that more devs will join, and make a good UX -- For what it's worth, the UI is quite neat IMHO, it's just the UX with regards to federation and discoverability.

Having a ways to add instances and then replicate community lists would be a start. Having to manually fiddle with URLs of other communities is weird.

[-] perkele@sopuli.xyz 17 points 2 years ago

What there needs to be is concerted development focus on fixing these quality of life issues. Unfortunately, there was not much time allowed for this to happen seeing as it was about a week or two from the announcement to the start of the blackout. These things take time and development time isn't always available.

[-] Skooshjones@vlemmy.net 2 points 2 years ago

True, but the big surge in popularity should help with getting more positive pressure on the community devs to improve things rapidly.

[-] Hellebert@beehaw.org 7 points 2 years ago

I initially felt the same way after a day or so of use, however once I got the app and figured out the clunkyness and rough edges it's really grown on me.

You're definitely right about discoverability but you're probably comparing this to Reddit that's had like 15 years to mature and sort it all out. Lemmy is made by like 2 developers for free and it's pretty impressive already what they've achieved.

I think if you give it more time and lower your expectations a little you'll appreciate it more. And you don't have to leave Reddit or whatever either, you can just use both and see what happens too.

[-] Midou@kbin.projectsegfau.lt 6 points 2 years ago

I don't think having a federated r/all would properly work in a federated network, where popular posts comes at the top of the community.

this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
147 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

40767 readers
488 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS