Suggestion: prioritize topic-based instances as the recommended lemmy communities.
Suggestion: prioritize topic-based instances as the recommended lemmy communities.
When building out the database of recommended Lemmy communities, I think it makes the most sense to prioritize the communities that belong to instances focused on a specific topic over communities that are based in a "general" instance, even if currently the community is smaller in the topic-specific instance.
For example, for an user coming from reddit and signing up via a "fediversed" instance (like alien.top) it would make more sense if they see that the anime subreddits are on ani.social, the rpg/board games are on ttrpg.network, the programming communities are on programming.dev, the basketball ones are on nba.space, the NSFW communities are on lemmynsfw, etc, etc...
This will also avoid the issue that I am currently seeing where some communities have multiple entries in the recommended database due to the initial migration where each user was just trying to replicate their favorite subreddits in their own server they signed up for.
I'm not sure I agree. One counter argument would be that topic-specific instances are significantly more likely to have performance issues and downtime. The benefit of having communities on larger, general purpose instances is that the major instances are more reliable and trustworthy that they will still be up a year from now.
For instance, I was quite active on lemmy.beyondcombustion.net. That instance no longer exists, and the small but growing community of vaporents on Lemmy was disrupted by that event.
You're not wrong that it's a bit more confusing to have things scattered around like this, but imo it's a worthy sacrifice, because the actual functionality is better. If the communities are actually good, people will find them. I think having multiple entries is fine, as long as it's clear which one is the most active.
And I am not sure if I agree that "topic-specific instances are more likely to have performance issues". Plenty of "generic" instances also had issues and went under as well, but I do agree that any instance that gets to be recommended should have some good history about uptime, adherence to standard moderation rules, code of conduct, etc...
Also, I believe it would be healthier to federation if we had a cleaner separation between "servers that are for communities" and "servers that are home to the end people". For example, I've seen lots of people on /r/redditalternatives backing away from Lemmy because they were interacting with some community on lemmy.ml, heard about the lemmy developers' political views and got turned off by the whole thing.
If most people join servers that are completely "neutral" in ideology, it would mean that all the politics would be assciated with the communities and not the "generic" servers themselves. It's also a lot easier to say "we will block instance X because of their communities" then to say "we will block instance Y because we don't like some of the people there", which leads to some people getting caught in a cross-fire.
I misspoke, what I meant was that smaller instances are more likely to have issues, and almost all of the large instances are general purpose.
Also, I believe it would be healthier to federation if we had a cleaner separation between “servers that are for communities” and “servers that are home to the end people”. [...] It’s also a lot easier to say “we will block instance X because of their communities” then to say “we will block instance Y because we don’t like some of the people there”, which leads to some people getting caught in a cross-fire.
I totally agree and I think the model you are describing is the natural evolution of this platform. Lemmy.myserv.one is a good example of a server that doesn't host local content but simply hosts user accounts for browsing the wider threadiverse. Striving towards that ideal is definitely a worthwhile goal.
However, it will take a long time to build towards that type of structure, and in the meantime we have to make the most of the current, largely haphazard scattering of servers/communities. I would just emphasize that the priority should be that recommended communities are (1) active, (2) well-moderated, (3) on topic. If those three criteria are met by multiple communities, then by all means, prioritize the communities on topic-specific instances. But I would caution against prioritizing other factors above the three that I mentioned.
Sounds good