How does federation work with the "subreddit" model?

Hi, I'm new here, so sorry if this has been asked before.

I understand that Lemmy is supposed to be like a decentralised Reddit, but I've got a question about this; on Reddit, there is only one server, with subreddits on it, so there is only one r/Music, only one r/AskReddit, etc.

However, on Lemmy there are many servers; would this lead to a situation where many servers have repeats of the same popular communities or does this not happen in practice? Is there a good way for me to find communities across all federated instances? Thanks :)

PriorProject, (edited )
  • In Lemmy, a community is the equivalent of a Reddit subreddit.
  • Each community has a home server, like this community is Lemmy@lemmy.ml, and you generally identify the community by its full name this way... including the server part. Local communities that exist on the server where your account is may omit the server part, but they are still homed to a server... it just happens to be the one your account is on.
  • Federation makes it possible to participate in communities on other servers. Like your account is on lemmy.blahaj.zone, and mine is on lemmy.world, but we're both able to post to this community which is homed on lemmy.ml. Not every lemmy server federates with every other lemmy server, but in general... federation makes the home-server of a community somewhat irrelevant.

Each server COULD have its own duplicate community, and in some cases that happens. Like there is both a Technology@beehaw.org and a Technology@lemmy.ml. It could also be possible to have two competing communities on the same server, like it would be possible to have a Tech@lemmy.ml as a third option. The end result isn't all that different from Reddit where you can have different subreddits with overlapping topics. In most cases, I think you'd expect one or two of those communities to get most of the subscribers and posts... just because mostly-empty communities aren't very useful. But absent major drama that splits a community into factions... most people would gravitate toward an established community even if it was on another server rather than start a new local community with no one in it.

ClumsyHacker,

Lemmy@lemmy.ml
Technology@beehaw.org

It kinda bothers me that communities are formatted like that instead of their actual http URL. When out of context, this is converted into a mailto: link, whereas using the http URL would result in a link I can click to actually get to that community.

PriorProject,

I'm a little fuzzy on the difference, but I think you CAN use https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy interchangeably with !lemmy@lemmy.ml... though yeah... the latter seems to be the thing that's displayed everywhere and it does get handled in a funky way by things that understand mailto.

kilgore,

I have a related question, maybe I can post it here - how would one go about finding "subreddits" on Lemmy? At this point I'm just sorting by "All" and seeing what comes up on my feed, subscribing to subs that I like. But if I wanted to search for something specific? Something that's unlikely to pop up on it's own?

mounderfod,

Try https://browse.feddit.de :)

tmpod,
@tmpod@lemmy.pt avatar

There still isn't an "official" way to do this, but there's a neat browser at https://browse.feddit.de
Give it a shot!

kilgore,

Thanks!

HenryWong327,
@HenryWong327@lemmy.ml avatar

Go to the communities tab, sort by all, then search for whatever it is you want.

iblis_sensual,

I can already see 2 communities for Technology on different servers. I am not sure how this would work out.

mounderfod,

I suppose you can subscribe to both, or eventually one will become more popular than the other

Cougar,

It is possible, but it's really no different than having two competing or complimentary subreddits.

From a users perspective you can subscribe to both !technology and !technology!technology

And interact with them regardless of your own home instance.

mounderfod,

That is a good point, I hadn't thought of the fact that Reddit has similar scenarios, thanks for the quick response :)

nachtigall,

It is possible that the same community is created on different servers. However, once a community is fetched, it shows up in the search. A good way to browse all communities of the lemmyverse is this tool: https://browse.feddit.de

mounderfod,

Ok, thank you for the tool recommendation :)

lmorchard,

Communities are per server, as I understand it. Two servers might host communities that have the same name, but they are different distinct communities. There is no global namespace.

Imagine two servers, each focused on a different city: !news and !news would be different, despite having the same name

nachtigall,

Thanks for elaborating. My comment wasn't very clear.

lmorchard,

Eh, your comment was pretty clear as-is. Hope I helped, though. 😅 This fediverse stuff is sometimes tangly to explain & understand

nachtigall,

Indeed! Your example illustrates the idea very well though :D

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