Reddit wannabes that are "federated." Meaning you have a bunch of separate servers and have to pick one to join. Then they share content with each other. Until an admin decides they don't like this other server and block it. And so on.
If the server you're on dies or stops federating, you get to join another server to get the shared content. Bonus round: all the communities are federated but they're created at the server. Meaning you get a tech group on server1, then someone created another tech group on server3. Suddenly you've got 10 tech groups. Fun stuff.
It's worse because at least /r/games and /r/gaming are obvious. It's a pain with /c/technology and !lemmy.world@technology. Then some user creates yet another technology instance because the default view for communities on Lemmy instances is "Local". So Bob checks communities, doesn't switch to "All" and can't find a bass community so he creates one. Except there's already a bass community on another server but Bob didn't check All. Just Local. Rinse and repeat until people read the how-to guides (assuming one gets posted to their local server) and understand it.
Of course, that also assumes people want to stay. Some looked around for a bit, found it confusing, and left.
Kbin is a bit better. They hide the server names for the communities giving at least a better presentation. They also show all content rather than split local and federated. The downside with Kbin is that their federated content is often a lot more limited. I'll hit a federated community and get the warning that this is cached content and I should visit the instance itself for up-to-date content.
I suppose I was thinking of it more from the community name perspective. On Lemmy, I might see technology, then !beehaw.org@technology, then some other server's technology. Kbin was just showing them all as technology. You could use the mouse to hover the link and see which technology community it actually is.
That said, Kbin's cache of all those other communities isn't very good.
Lemmy still needs work. People are joining to try and prep for jumping ship but the current federation setup isn't great.
It's good to appreciate the classics.
Reddit wannabes that are "federated." Meaning you have a bunch of separate servers and have to pick one to join. Then they share content with each other. Until an admin decides they don't like this other server and block it. And so on.
If the server you're on dies or stops federating, you get to join another server to get the shared content. Bonus round: all the communities are federated but they're created at the server. Meaning you get a tech group on server1, then someone created another tech group on server3. Suddenly you've got 10 tech groups. Fun stuff.
It's worse because at least /r/games and /r/gaming are obvious. It's a pain with /c/technology and !lemmy.world@technology. Then some user creates yet another technology instance because the default view for communities on Lemmy instances is "Local". So Bob checks communities, doesn't switch to "All" and can't find a bass community so he creates one. Except there's already a bass community on another server but Bob didn't check All. Just Local. Rinse and repeat until people read the how-to guides (assuming one gets posted to their local server) and understand it.
Of course, that also assumes people want to stay. Some looked around for a bit, found it confusing, and left.
Kbin is a bit better. They hide the server names for the communities giving at least a better presentation. They also show all content rather than split local and federated. The downside with Kbin is that their federated content is often a lot more limited. I'll hit a federated community and get the warning that this is cached content and I should visit the instance itself for up-to-date content.
I suppose I was thinking of it more from the community name perspective. On Lemmy, I might see technology, then !beehaw.org@technology, then some other server's technology. Kbin was just showing them all as technology. You could use the mouse to hover the link and see which technology community it actually is.
That said, Kbin's cache of all those other communities isn't very good.