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I am still trying to wrap my head around how it all works, but I feel like I am slowly getting the hang of it. One thing I was wondering, and forgive me if I get the terminologies wrong, since instances are their own little ecosystems, wouldn't there be multiple versions of the identical communities i.e. gaming, videos etc., or is that the beauty of it all?
Another minor concern I have is that since instances are run by individuals, wouldn't there be a risk of losing massive amounts of content if said owner no longer wishes to maintain their instance or "goes rogue" for a lack of a better word and shuts down access to all communities located on that particular instance/server.
I've been playing around with it a bit as well and came to a similar conclusion. I think there is bound to be multiple versions of an instance, but much like on Reddit, the strong will survive. Good content, moderation, and server capacity will lead to one instance being able to support a larger user base. I'm excited to see a little diversity as new communities and instances emerge, challenging the long-running status quo.
Regarding the individual running instances, I think the same applies. I also choose to use Lemmy as a means of communication and sharing of ideas, not data storage. If I really want to keep something, I turn it into a Google Doc or store it on another service. Either way, this doesn't concern me too much.
I'm looking forward to being a little less of a lurker and join in on the conversation!
I think those are all fair points. Reddit did duplicate communities too, sometimes because some communities wanted to focus on specific elements of the topic they were covering, sometimes because of splits and disagreements, and sometimes just because it happened over time. People tend to find their niche, as do communities, but there will usually be a main one with the most members and activity.
Regarding individual instances, the way Mastodon has tried to manage that is by asking the people running instances to commit to a set of rules, one of which is giving appropriate notice should they wish to shut it down. This has been adhered to for the most part, and instances that don't voluntarily subscribe to those rules can get degenerated, or more likely just not promoted through the various explorer tools. So long as there's notice, there's opportunity to migrate to another instance and copy over data. It would be good to see something similar on Lemmy, if it's not already there (this is my first day!).
Maybe lemmy can already do this, but maybe we need to reintroduce the concept of ‘mirrors’ — being able to create a community on one server that can mirror a copy of all posts from a community on another server, so if the original disappears then the mirror can be promoted into its place.
…or maybe this is already a thing, or isn’t necessary? I’m new here and still learning the ropes.
So I'm just high, know literally nothing about networking, and still don't have that firm a grasp of lemmy to begin with, but depending on the size of a given community reciprocal mirroring could be cool. Have a main host server, have several other servers mirror that, posts and replies can be done on a mirrored server, which then get sent over to the host server and in turn mirrored on the other mirror servers.
Would welcome the education re: why the above is dumb in either a general or lemmy-specific sense. But if such a thing is actually not dumb, it seems like it would get around the community-splintering issue re: popular general topics. No idea how the hell moderation would work though.