To those from the Western hemisphere, it’s always fascinating to hear that some homes and businesses from the times of the Greek philosophers still have inhabitants, and then you remember that the Western hemisphere is itself not without its own examples, for example some Mexican villages still have temples from the times of...
I've seen lots of discussion on reddit of users trying to get others to join Lemmy and the prevailing reply is that it is too difficult to navigate and comprehend. Having to answer multiple questions and wait for manual verification is combersome and is limiting growth at a time when nothing should be standing in Lemmy's way....
I think you're getting hung up on the word "federations" (noun) instead of the adjective "federated".
Who decides who gets to email who? The email provider admins. Should everyone be in a single email network/bubble since otherwise there is no communication? Mostly, yes. Do I need a separate account per email bubble? Per email bubble? Yes. But how many email bubbles are there? One? Whats the practical limit on number of providers per the email world? None, mostly?
Gmail does ban a lot of small email providers if they don't seem "legit" enough. And that is where you're onto something with the noun federations.
If a bunch of instances really disliked a different bunch of instances they can indeed severe each other from each other. The admins would do that. They put the other instances on a block list. Most Mastodon instances block Trump's Lie ehm Truth Social etc. But otherwise you can talk from gmail to hotmail to mcselfhost, with one account.
Basically federation works based on a block-list, not a allow-list, unless the admins of the instance set it that way, just like email providers.
Part of the problem might be that lemmy.ml is described as “flagship instance”, which can certainly be interpreted to mean “mainstream” or “general purpose”. I struggle to come up with a better, more accurate description. If you can think of one, please comment here.
How about root instance or just simply dev instance?
So let's take this actual example: There's !canada and !canada. They talk about the same thing, but are treated by the current federation implementation as separate instances....
The simplest way to allow users to merge communities like this as they please, as opposed to having the moderators choose for them what communities will merge or having the communities auto-merge, or adding the topic umbrella over communities (which I think is an interesting idea), is to allow ”multi-communities” (like multireddits), so https://lemmy.ml/c/startrek+startrek@lemmygrad_ml+startrek@mywebsite_com would display all the community's posts on one page.
Edit: To expand on how I see @Gwynne 's topic umbrella idea, each community would have a mandatory topic (not category, those already exist), that would by default be the same as the community's name (but could be edited), and going to https://instance.tld/t/startrek would display posts from all the startrek communities on all instances.
I understand this is an advanced federation feature, so I don't expect it made soon, I'm sure the devs have their hands full already, just an idea.
How old is the oldest building in the town you live in?
To those from the Western hemisphere, it’s always fascinating to hear that some homes and businesses from the times of the Greek philosophers still have inhabitants, and then you remember that the Western hemisphere is itself not without its own examples, for example some Mexican villages still have temples from the times of...
The time to streamline Lemmy onboaring is now. Let's do it like mastodon did. (blog.joinmastodon.org)
I've seen lots of discussion on reddit of users trying to get others to join Lemmy and the prevailing reply is that it is too difficult to navigate and comprehend. Having to answer multiple questions and wait for manual verification is combersome and is limiting growth at a time when nothing should be standing in Lemmy's way....
The Lazy Way to Solve Differential Equations with Haskell (iagoleal.com)
Lots of new goodies in v0.20: Release notes v0.20 - FreeCAD Documentation (wiki.freecadweb.org)
Official release v0.20 is scheduled for Monday, June 13th. (fosstodon.org)
Ranked: the environmental impact of five different soft drink containers (theconversation.com)
Best of Blender Artists: 2021-48 (www.blendernation.com)
What is lemmy.ml?
Recently there seems to be some of misunderstanding what the lemmy.ml instance is about, especially from newer users....
How would you feel about having the ability to merge communities across instances?
So let's take this actual example: There's !canada and !canada. They talk about the same thing, but are treated by the current federation implementation as separate instances....