I do think for the most part that the sorts of people that these actions would deter are probably not the sorts of people that would fit within this community. But also people may hear about it and not give the community a chance.

I do like having a niche community with others, but it isn’t so much of a priority for me for everyone with that interest to be accumulated there

For me there are interests that are judged harshly, and I like having places where I could talk about those interests without judgement from those outside it. Not that I particularly care about what others think, but for instance I like professional wrestling, and I like being able to talk about wrestling with fellow fans without being bombarded by the "you know it's fake" crowd. If Beehaw isn't that place then it isn't that place, but the one thing I liked about Reddit was the ability to connect with multiple communities from a single account. And while that's theoretically possible with Lemmy, it only is so long as those communities are accessible from the same instance.

Federation isn’t dependent on everyone being corralled together within a few of the largest instances anyway

This is why I still don't believe that the fediverse is the right place for a site like Reddit. The advantage of Reddit, for better or for worse, was that an interest had its own community and everyone could gather in that community. But within the fediverse it would seem that gathering everyone into a single community for that interest would require centralising into a few instances.

Like I said, Beehaw feels more like an old forum than it does Reddit, and I think that is a good thing. My initial concerns came from the promotion of Lemmy as a replacement for Reddit, but I think the fact that I joined Beehaw instead of any other instance means that that's not what I actually wanted. But I still think this is an important conversation to have, especially as we find our footing as a community.

I think my main concern now is about more niche communities that might not exist within Beehaw, and how defederation with their instances will affect the communities around those interests.

And about what the point of a federated internet is, which a lot of people have been invoking in this comment thread: federation is just a tool, a feature of the software.

The explanation I saw (that stuck with me) emphasized decentralisation, which from my observations seemed to be something that most federated communities also valued. I also fail to see the point in using the federated software and not federating with anyone, but I suppose that is their prerogative.

And while I understand that this is a reversible measure, it does set a precedent, and one that I think sooner or later the community is going to have to discuss. Though I do appreciate the transparancy of the Beehaw admins in this regard. I also understand that such a drastic measure was necessitated by the mod tools lacking degrees of nuance.

But do not mistake my concerns for a desire to not be here, or to demand this is undone. I believe that the stance that the admins have taken here is ultimately the best decision they could have made for their vision of this community in the current circumstances. In fact I probably wouldn't even be posting about this if I didn't want Beehaw to succeed.

This was actually my fear when it came to a federated Reddit, I was wondering what was stopping admins from defederating with any instance for any reason, and what would happen when they did. It seemed like communities would become centralised on a few instances, which seemed against the point of a federated internet.

I've since started thinking of this site more as a forum, where you can also access other forums from. And suddenly it clicked as to why I would use this site. And I think Lemmy being hailed as a Reddit replacement has actually done a disservice to its potential.

I do think, however, that there needs to be discussions as a community about what we do and don't want here, and I think the most important one is about what communities we want and how we want to handle them. I don't believe that I was subscribed to any communities on these instances, but I'm sure that there probably would have been some that I would have enjoyed.