I feel like i go around in circles saying this - there are literally hundreds of servers. If servers had caps, i.e. user caps and community caps, then people would be forced to spread out, rather than relying on two or three big servers. Otherwise we just have a central server, which is Reddit with extra steps.
Yeah. Personally, I also think the join-lemmy.org page should just be a randomised list of instances, not “recommended” and “popular”. It’ll help strengthen the decentralisation and make sure that instances are able to cope with a lot of new users coming to Lemmy easier.
Hard agree also - and the sign up button on each instance should just link to that randomised list, and people can join from there. Too many people go to “big” communities on the two or three big servers and want to be part of that - its a misunderstanding of how federation works and the UI needs to teach people that it doesnt really matter.
It kind of doesn’t matter, but the moderation policies, local timeline, server uptime/admin skill, blocked instances, and the theoretical longevity of instances can vary widely between instances.
The plethora of “Baby’s First Selfhost” servers don’t make for good Lemmy instances for example, because they are likely to be mismanaged and there’s a good chance they will disappear unexpectedly once the hype dies down in a couple months.
Or another example, you have servers that are essentially unmoderated and full of hate speech and illegal content, or heavily moderated servers that ban dissent and defed liberally, and everything in-between.
Good point. I think something like a short questionnaire asking what the user is interested in and how they align, then showing a randomised lists of instances that match that would be a better idea, then.
Either way, I still think the current way of listing the instances needs to change.
I feel like i go around in circles saying this - there are literally hundreds of servers. If servers had caps, i.e. user caps and community caps, then people would be forced to spread out, rather than relying on two or three big servers. Otherwise we just have a central server, which is Reddit with extra steps.
Yeah. Personally, I also think the join-lemmy.org page should just be a randomised list of instances, not “recommended” and “popular”. It’ll help strengthen the decentralisation and make sure that instances are able to cope with a lot of new users coming to Lemmy easier.
Yeah, mine used to be listed but now its not :(
Hard agree also - and the sign up button on each instance should just link to that randomised list, and people can join from there. Too many people go to “big” communities on the two or three big servers and want to be part of that - its a misunderstanding of how federation works and the UI needs to teach people that it doesnt really matter.
It kind of doesn’t matter, but the moderation policies, local timeline, server uptime/admin skill, blocked instances, and the theoretical longevity of instances can vary widely between instances.
The plethora of “Baby’s First Selfhost” servers don’t make for good Lemmy instances for example, because they are likely to be mismanaged and there’s a good chance they will disappear unexpectedly once the hype dies down in a couple months.
Or another example, you have servers that are essentially unmoderated and full of hate speech and illegal content, or heavily moderated servers that ban dissent and defed liberally, and everything in-between.
Not all instances are equivalent, some of them have very different politics and moderation policies.
Good point. I think something like a short questionnaire asking what the user is interested in and how they align, then showing a randomised lists of instances that match that would be a better idea, then.
Either way, I still think the current way of listing the instances needs to change.