Personally that term makes me a bit uneasy. To me it sounds too grandiose and organized just for something that might just be some random people shitposting or chatting about their interests. And actually having tight knit communities can easily lead to all kinds of negative effects, group think, hierarchies and drama.
Of course some subreddits, forums, lemmy communities etc can be actual communities but just as a personal preference I don't like the idea of calling them that default.
To me subinstance sounds more like a technical term, but I guess people would just call them subs anyway. I think that's a problem in general with deriving anything from "instance".
I guess community does a good job at being a more human centric term. You have the technical side of things, servers and software (instances) and on those you have the actual user facing parts (communities) so in that way it's kinda fitting.
Further overthinking about the terminology I just realised that Lemmy calls joining communities "subscribing" and Reddit calls it "joining", while I would naturally think it would be more fitting the other way around. Naming things is hard.
I think "sub" is what people are going to call them reguardless. It is just internet language at this point, a subdivision of a community (by community I mean lemmy as a whole) is called a sub. Weather it's a subreddit or sublemmy. I'm not saying bring reddit with us, I am just saying the internet can take the term "sub" with it and use it elsewhere.
For now. Commercial servers are possible, especially if communities become multi-instance in the future.
Every mature decentralized service calls them providers. Phone providers, ISPs, email providers, etc. I guess usenet just calls them "news servers", though.
if there different "linux" communities on different instances? does this mean i have to subscribe to all of them? is there a way to see all content from communities called "linux" from different instances?
or does each "linux" community simply fight for critical mass to become the "main" linux community on lemmy?
I don't dislike the idea that there could be multiple similar communities (for example Linux communities) on different instances. That way if you have beef with one you could sign up to another; in a non-ideal world that strikes me as healthier than having one to rule them all and lots of people bitter about it. I think it's best to leave it to sort itself out organically.
There could be different linux communities on different instances, and to see them all you'd have to subscribe to them and sort by subscribed view. But yeah, in practice most of the time there will emerge one "main" linux community and, if it gets big enough, likely offshoot communities for different philosophies or more specificity.
I feel like if the short version isn't "sub" then it is never going to stick. Reddit doesn't own words but it has set the standard. Sublemmies. That's what it is in my mind now.
It's a nice lighthearted nod to the exodus, and also a nod to the subforums that came before Reddit. Communities may be the "official" name and I try to use it when talking to others, but they'll always be sublemmys in my head.
I wholeheartedly agree with this one. It's also still semi funny referring to them as basically trashcans. But I think as a new user it is just way more streamlined and sensible than calling them "magazines". When I read that first I just could think of like paper magazines and thought they'd be some sort of editorial content, which is highly misleading. Calling them "bins" just makes way more sense and sort of adds to the brand of the platform.
Yeah, in the lemmy source code they are called "Communities"; in the kbin source code they are called "Magazines"; I think Mastodon uses the ActivityPub lexicon and also uses "Groups" in it's source code. I perfer "Communities" because that is how the "Groups" are being used.
I’ve seen “communities,” and my personal conceit is that “like” communities (communities with the same, similar, or synergistic subject matter) are “cohorts” so you don’t have to type “multi-communities”
i come from a country where commie is never used as a slur, but by the number of replies that i have received that are mildly horrified, i guess that i may need to think of a different name!
Might as well keep it simple and call it what it is without the branding. There is plenty about a site like reddit that we should carry forward, but plenty were should leave behind, and redundant jargon is the latter.
I think part of why it's confusing is that we don't have defined names for these things. This is so early in a social media "product" life that there isn't a common understanding. You're now part of making those names. It's a bit exciting but mostly confusing while everyone uses their own terms to mean the same fundamental things. Embrace the chaos!
I don't know, Reddit and Lemmy differ from common social media platforms (I wouldn't really call Reddit style forums social media anyway) in that they are structured around different topics/categories and threads and in that way are closer to earlier newsgroups, bbs's, forums and such. So the main concepts aren't really that new and weird, we have had subforums, topics, groups, channels and such for decades now.
Yeah that's where I think the fediverse is failing new users. Talking about the fediverse itself and instancing etc is just making it sound complicated. No other social media/forum/whatever talks about its technology in such an up front way, for good reason.
Instances are effectively just different versions of the site, they all communicate with each other and display the same data (roughly), like someone said in a different post, think of it like Email, wherever you made your account being your host domain (An example being look at mine and your username, you are posting from Beehaw, while I'm from Sh.itjust.works, different instances, same content.)
I like board. Communities is too long, and coms sound like communication which armies use, magazines/mags is a bit odd and may be mistaken with the obvious gun reference. Forum is like the pre digg forums (like hardforum.com).
Yeah I'm still pretty confused tbh! So I'm on kbin, you have kbin next to your name too OP, but then the sidebar has reddthat.com and[email protected]?
Does this mean we both signed up at kbin but the subreddit equivalent is linux (on Lemmy.ml)? But then how does reddthat.com come into it?
You can kindof think of the fediverse stuff as being similar to email. You and I both signed up to create an account with kbin.social. This is where our account lives and it will show up in our full username (hover over any username) after the second @. You are @[email protected] and I am @[email protected].
OP created their account with reddthat.com so that is where their account lives.
Unlike email however, we aren't sending messages directly to each other - we are instead sending them to a particular "community" which happens to live on the lemmy.ml server. This is possible since each of these hosts are running software which can communicate in a common manner (this is what ActivityPub defines the rules for). You probably got to this thread from kbin's general "threads" page which is able to list posts from other hosts due to them being federated (can communicate what posts they have to each other).
As for kbin.social being put next to the right of the title for this thread, I'm not sure. I think that might just be part of kbin's UI showing where we are viewing the thread from?
The problem is that every "magazine" or "community" or whatever you want to call them (each one using a different name is also a bit of an issue) is part of their own decentralized network. Yes, you might be able to read them from other services, but it still causes a lot of fragmentation. For example when I look into something akin to a news sub for international news, I find [email protected] as well as [email protected]. Both basically do the same thing topically, but both have different submitted content, different users, and oddly in this case even the same owner.
This now begs the question for me as a user: Which one do I subscribe to if I want to stay informed? An article on one side could be submitted or gain traction when it does not on the other. But subbing to both could lead to a lot of duplicate articles being fed to me.
I think this is a huge issue in the whole design philosophy of the fediverse that will hamper the growth of those services. Deciding where to make an account might be something a new user gets around to, but being then confronted by this is very quickly going to turn away the absolute majority of potential users. There needs to be at least a little bit centralization to form major default communities that at least start as a gathering hub for new people. If there's issues with them then people can still create alternatives if the user numbers are high enough, but in its current form I'd have to decide between several places that are essentially the same thing.
But is it really a Problem exclusive to the fediverse? there is several large news communities on reddit as well, and you have to pick or see duplicates. Also, this is only an issue in heavily aggregation-focused communities, not in those where content is generated (memes, hobby communities) as those do not have the issue of duplicates so you can just sub to all the ones you are interested in, even if several of them have the same subject.
This now begs the question for me as a user: Which one do I subscribe to if I want to stay informed? An article on one side could be submitted or gain traction when it does not on the other. But subbing to both could lead to a lot of duplicate articles being fed to me.
Theres nothing stopping the client from offering a different or entirely customizable view to the content.
For example the client could allow user to place those communities under a common News category in their client. Then the client would combine all identical links in the category according to some criteria (e.g same link posted in the same day would count as identical) and either merge the comments or let the user pick which communitys comments to see, or preferably both. So comments section could have a buttons for "Comments at [email protected]", "Combine comments" etc.
I think it should be possible to build a client that hides most of the details about different instances and such so it would function almost the same as traditional RSS readers.
As for kbin.social being put next to the right of the title for this thread, I'm not sure. I think that might just be part of kbin's UI showing where we are viewing the thread from?
It seems that if kbin federates a post that doesn't have a link or image and just points to itself, it fills in (kbin.social) as the link pointer, when you view it on kbin. It's a bit confusing at first, should probably be replaced by something that indicates it's a federated "self"-post.
OP is on reddthat (@[email protected]), which is a Lemmy instance, and the community this post is on is ![email protected]. Not sure what's up with kbin appearing next to OP's name for you, might be incidental because of kbin's UI or something.
Edit: just looked on kbin for myself, no idea what is up with that honestly, but I see what you're talking about as well.
This is a post to linux community (@[email protected]) by user falcoignis (@[email protected]). You're reading it on kbin since it has federated this post. The default "front page" shows federated feed (Threads).
They're communities. And the different servers/sites are instances.
Petition to name them SubLemmys
I like communities, honestly, it sounds much less... y'know, reddity?
And also, it's much more intuitive.
Personally that term makes me a bit uneasy. To me it sounds too grandiose and organized just for something that might just be some random people shitposting or chatting about their interests. And actually having tight knit communities can easily lead to all kinds of negative effects, group think, hierarchies and drama.
Of course some subreddits, forums, lemmy communities etc can be actual communities but just as a personal preference I don't like the idea of calling them that default.
I don’t like the term community because it’s difficult to understand the hierarchy. Is an instance a part of a community? Or vice versa?
What do you think of subinstance?
To me subinstance sounds more like a technical term, but I guess people would just call them subs anyway. I think that's a problem in general with deriving anything from "instance".
I guess community does a good job at being a more human centric term. You have the technical side of things, servers and software (instances) and on those you have the actual user facing parts (communities) so in that way it's kinda fitting.
Further overthinking about the terminology I just realised that Lemmy calls joining communities "subscribing" and Reddit calls it "joining", while I would naturally think it would be more fitting the other way around. Naming things is hard.
I think "sub" is what people are going to call them reguardless. It is just internet language at this point, a subdivision of a community (by community I mean lemmy as a whole) is called a sub. Weather it's a subreddit or sublemmy. I'm not saying bring reddit with us, I am just saying the internet can take the term "sub" with it and use it elsewhere.
Sublemminals? (or Sublemmynals)
Love it 😂
Instances also need better names.
Why not "servers"? That's all they are. They serve content.
Because technically, one server can host multiple instances. Instances are containerized— literally an instance of lemmy.
Is there any practical reason to actually do that, though?
I'm sorry, I don't really understand, what would be the advantage of this over hosting another community?
Can you give me an example of this catering where the server would want different rules per instance?
Sorry, i'm not trying to be rude I just genuinely don't get it.
What would you call gmail vs hotmail?
Providers.
But that's a provider/customer relationship, on the fediverse it isn't.
Agree on a technical level, but in terms of the average netizen being able to visualize the relationship, "providers" makes it much easier
I don't think we should try to visualize something that's not there just because it's (supposedly) easier for the average netizen.
For now. Commercial servers are possible, especially if communities become multi-instance in the future.
Every mature decentralized service calls them providers. Phone providers, ISPs, email providers, etc. I guess usenet just calls them "news servers", though.
It's provider/consumer (not customer, something being a "provider" doesn't necessarily mean they are selling stuff).
We are consumers, we consume the content that the instances provide, as content providers.
new to lemmy....
if there different "linux" communities on different instances? does this mean i have to subscribe to all of them? is there a way to see all content from communities called "linux" from different instances?
or does each "linux" community simply fight for critical mass to become the "main" linux community on lemmy?
thanks
I don't dislike the idea that there could be multiple similar communities (for example Linux communities) on different instances. That way if you have beef with one you could sign up to another; in a non-ideal world that strikes me as healthier than having one to rule them all and lots of people bitter about it. I think it's best to leave it to sort itself out organically.
There could be different linux communities on different instances, and to see them all you'd have to subscribe to them and sort by subscribed view. But yeah, in practice most of the time there will emerge one "main" linux community and, if it gets big enough, likely offshoot communities for different philosophies or more specificity.
A “merge identical” option in the individual users’ ui would be kind of neat, to have one page.
Sub-Lemminal messages?
that’s brilliant actually for a mobile app name
I like this one
Communities, which have a parent instance.
+1 for Communities, since that's what they are called in the official UI and documentation
I like Lemmings. Has a ring to it.
I just thought they were called "communities". At least, that's what the Lemmy UI shows.
So "coms" for short?
Commies
⚒️✊
🔨
I feel like if the short version isn't "sub" then it is never going to stick. Reddit doesn't own words but it has set the standard. Sublemmies. That's what it is in my mind now.
2 m's makes it look better imo
Communities is the name used on my UI.
Mine, too. And it's fits the /c/... format.
I think this is correct. In my headcannon I have started to call flowing through the different sites exploring the lemmyverse, which just feels right.
I'll just call them sublemmys
Lol I quite like it, at one point reddit was a foreign weird sounding word
Way more fun than communities! Plus it speaks to the Reddit exodus in a bit of a tongue in cheek way.
It's a nice lighthearted nod to the exodus, and also a nod to the subforums that came before Reddit. Communities may be the "official" name and I try to use it when talking to others, but they'll always be sublemmys in my head.
I think using Communities is respectful to the people that were already doing community on Lemmy before the exodus.
I think this is the clear winner
Its prefect, I think the "trade name" for that is "sub" anyways and that's what they will be called no matter what they are suposed to be called.
On Lemmy, they are "communities".
On Kbin, they are "magazines". I am told that "magazine" is a pun in Polish (Kbin's maintainer is Polish).
Having been here all of 30 minutes, referring to them “bins” might be a nice
Did we just witness the birth of viral content in this bin?
I wholeheartedly agree with this one. It's also still semi funny referring to them as basically trashcans. But I think as a new user it is just way more streamlined and sensible than calling them "magazines". When I read that first I just could think of like paper magazines and thought they'd be some sort of editorial content, which is highly misleading. Calling them "bins" just makes way more sense and sort of adds to the brand of the platform.
nice and simple. this works for me..
Ditto. This is the winner!
Bin there, read that.
Yeah I mean it's short and kind of right there in your face... +1 for bins
If they're called "magazines", then I'm calling them "clips" for short.
How about mags?
I think I prefer "zines" as a shortened form of "magazines."
"Clips" sounds more like a post within a magazine.
Ohh, I like zines as a shortened version
Oh man, that'd annoy so many people that are pedantic, including me lmao.
I'm going "gazis."
one of kbin instances (the first one, maybe?) is called karab.in ("rif.le"), hence the magazines I guess.
Lemmings!!!
But aren't WE the lemmings?
Surprisingly philosophical
Dude... You just blew my mind. (ʘ ͟ʖ ʘ)
just call them communities (I also sometimes just call them topics because that's how they're called in my reddit clone pet project)
If someone says "comms" I'm going to think "communications"
but I guess that also technically works ^^
I saw red vent in comms
When someone says "sub", I think "dom"
Or sandwich, depends on my mood.
Lemmings
If anything I think that'll be what us users end up calling ourselves.
Indeed
username checks out
Ah the good ol' user-roo. Hold my jokes, I'm going in.
officially, per protocol, it's Groups. but that sucks :)
isn't that an ActivityPub term, not a lemmy term? usually ActivityPub uses different terms than the servers that use it.
Yeah, in the lemmy source code they are called "Communities"; in the kbin source code they are called "Magazines"; I think Mastodon uses the ActivityPub lexicon and also uses "Groups" in it's source code. I perfer "Communities" because that is how the "Groups" are being used.
communities
I’ve seen “communities,” and my personal conceit is that “like” communities (communities with the same, similar, or synergistic subject matter) are “cohorts” so you don’t have to type “multi-communities”
The official term is "community" as noted in one of the earlier github commits:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/commit/b0a6fefcf9dc861ae0b4757154050ec3f14ac14f
You can see a full discussion of the issue below:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/121
can we call them
commies?no
oof, id rather call them "comms" or just "cs"(cees)
i come from a country where
commieis never used as a slur, but by the number of replies that i have received that are mildly horrified, i guess that i may need to think of a different name!in th united STates, commie is an insult
it means communist, and it is a slur, it 's like the n word but for blievers of communims
The "commies" like the comunists? I suppose that does not work
classic
Hell yeah
oh snap! you know Lemmy has hit the big time when its a topic of discussion between SOs!
I've been talking about it with a relative, because she really enjoys "popcorn" (i.e. drama).
nerd drama the best drama. :-)
I like communities. I believe that's the the /c/ stands for
Might as well keep it simple and call it what it is without the branding. There is plenty about a site like reddit that we should carry forward, but plenty were should leave behind, and redundant jargon is the latter.
"lemmies" has a nice ring to it
Lemmunities (I pulled it out of my ass, take it or leave it)
Sometimes Iused "sublemmies" based on what a few others have done, but mostly I just use community or something similar.
I like this one because I read and say it as su-blee-mies.
I've seen sub-lemmy being used which is cute, but has the obvious ties to Reddit. I guess we all get to work this out together!
Agreed. Communities make sense and is easy to remember.
Technically communities but I prefer the term sublemmy
@falcoignis On KBin, they're called "Magazines". Not quite sure if I like it. lol.
Idea for next social media platform: call them circles.
One more: exactly like lemmy but call them rooms.
Another: exactly like every other one but call them... groups (ups, you might have to fight google though - "groups" might be trademarked!)
Sorry for the sarcasm, but shouldn't this be set in the spec for the fediverse protocol already?
Didn't Google have Circles?
Because you fill them with bullets (posts and comments)?
and more importantly, what are lemmy users called? for reddit we have redditors, for lemmy.. lemminors?!
Lemmings?
I like this one.
Oh god that show... it's so mind numbing but I still watch it occasionally.
Fuck it, call them Lem. Memes is a Sub-Lemmy on Lemmy on the lemmy.nl Lem.
Creating Lem Rezar
edit: what's the etiquette around image posts?
Yes! Your post gives me hope there are other fans of the hack frauds on here.
These men are pawns!
Referencing RLM? How embarrassing.
Oh god please no
This is all very confusing to me
ah Nice! that's a pretty clear explanation, thanks 👍
I think part of why it's confusing is that we don't have defined names for these things. This is so early in a social media "product" life that there isn't a common understanding. You're now part of making those names. It's a bit exciting but mostly confusing while everyone uses their own terms to mean the same fundamental things. Embrace the chaos!
@Piatro @CallMeIshmael In my heart, I still toot.
Lemmy is four years old, I think there are names for these things and we should probably learn them.
We are travelers in a land that already had people, maybe see what they call it before declaring it New Amsterdam.
But we do: Communities.
You find that term in the UI, in user documentation, and the /c/ part of the URL also refers to that.
Calling it anything else, especially unrelated to /c/, will only make it harder and more confusing for new people to join.
I don't know, Reddit and Lemmy differ from common social media platforms (I wouldn't really call Reddit style forums social media anyway) in that they are structured around different topics/categories and threads and in that way are closer to earlier newsgroups, bbs's, forums and such. So the main concepts aren't really that new and weird, we have had subforums, topics, groups, channels and such for decades now.
Yeah that's where I think the fediverse is failing new users. Talking about the fediverse itself and instancing etc is just making it sound complicated. No other social media/forum/whatever talks about its technology in such an up front way, for good reason.
Sublemmies?
I like the idea to put lemmie in every word it is like with batman. Users should be called Lemmiathans.
Lemmings.
I think it'd be more fun to just call us Lemurs
Lemmywinks? South park reference https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Lemmiwinks
Lemmywings? Like different wings of an overall government of lemmys?
So subreddit=subs as communities=comms? I'm not typing communities all the time lmao.
call them commies
community+lemmies -> commies, sounds pretty natural to me
presumably new slang will be developed as the communities mature.
yeah, over on hexbear comms is the usual parlance anyway. the wider lemmy population with the new reddit people might change that though
If the official name is magazines, then why not use "mags"?
I think just kbin refers to them as magazines, and (currently at least) Lemmy seems to be the more popular platform, calling them communities.
Neither is great tbh
Just call them sublemmies so we can just type subs.
Sublemminals, jk communities
That would make posts "sublemminal messages"
I saw someone below mention that hexbear calls them comms with 2 m's. That sounds like the best nickname.
My brain will never not read that as "communications," I'm gonna think everyone here is real serious about HAM radio lol.
Some of us are
Oooohh. Comms has that roll off the tongue sound to it.
forum works, board also works. Instances are new to me and interesting.
Instances are effectively just different versions of the site, they all communicate with each other and display the same data (roughly), like someone said in a different post, think of it like Email, wherever you made your account being your host domain (An example being look at mine and your username, you are posting from Beehaw, while I'm from Sh.itjust.works, different instances, same content.)
I like board. Communities is too long, and coms sound like communication which armies use, magazines/mags is a bit odd and may be mistaken with the obvious gun reference. Forum is like the pre digg forums (like hardforum.com).
Personally, I think "forum" works.
Communities
Yeah I'm still pretty confused tbh! So I'm on kbin, you have kbin next to your name too OP, but then the sidebar has reddthat.com and [email protected]?
Does this mean we both signed up at kbin but the subreddit equivalent is linux (on Lemmy.ml)? But then how does reddthat.com come into it?
You can kindof think of the fediverse stuff as being similar to email. You and I both signed up to create an account with
kbin.social. This is where our account lives and it will show up in our full username (hover over any username) after the second @. You are@[email protected]and I am@[email protected].OP created their account with
reddthat.comso that is where their account lives.Unlike email however, we aren't sending messages directly to each other - we are instead sending them to a particular "community" which happens to live on the
lemmy.mlserver. This is possible since each of these hosts are running software which can communicate in a common manner (this is what ActivityPub defines the rules for). You probably got to this thread from kbin's general "threads" page which is able to list posts from other hosts due to them being federated (can communicate what posts they have to each other).As for kbin.social being put next to the right of the title for this thread, I'm not sure. I think that might just be part of kbin's UI showing where we are viewing the thread from?
The problem is that every "magazine" or "community" or whatever you want to call them (each one using a different name is also a bit of an issue) is part of their own decentralized network. Yes, you might be able to read them from other services, but it still causes a lot of fragmentation. For example when I look into something akin to a news sub for international news, I find [email protected] as well as [email protected]. Both basically do the same thing topically, but both have different submitted content, different users, and oddly in this case even the same owner.
This now begs the question for me as a user: Which one do I subscribe to if I want to stay informed? An article on one side could be submitted or gain traction when it does not on the other. But subbing to both could lead to a lot of duplicate articles being fed to me.
I think this is a huge issue in the whole design philosophy of the fediverse that will hamper the growth of those services. Deciding where to make an account might be something a new user gets around to, but being then confronted by this is very quickly going to turn away the absolute majority of potential users. There needs to be at least a little bit centralization to form major default communities that at least start as a gathering hub for new people. If there's issues with them then people can still create alternatives if the user numbers are high enough, but in its current form I'd have to decide between several places that are essentially the same thing.
But is it really a Problem exclusive to the fediverse? there is several large news communities on reddit as well, and you have to pick or see duplicates. Also, this is only an issue in heavily aggregation-focused communities, not in those where content is generated (memes, hobby communities) as those do not have the issue of duplicates so you can just sub to all the ones you are interested in, even if several of them have the same subject.
Theres nothing stopping the client from offering a different or entirely customizable view to the content.
For example the client could allow user to place those communities under a common News category in their client. Then the client would combine all identical links in the category according to some criteria (e.g same link posted in the same day would count as identical) and either merge the comments or let the user pick which communitys comments to see, or preferably both. So comments section could have a buttons for "Comments at [email protected]", "Combine comments" etc.
I think it should be possible to build a client that hides most of the details about different instances and such so it would function almost the same as traditional RSS readers.
My first kbin ELI5!
It seems that if kbin federates a post that doesn't have a link or image and just points to itself, it fills in (kbin.social) as the link pointer, when you view it on kbin. It's a bit confusing at first, should probably be replaced by something that indicates it's a federated "self"-post.
OP is on reddthat (@[email protected]), which is a Lemmy instance, and the community this post is on is ![email protected]. Not sure what's up with kbin appearing next to OP's name for you, might be incidental because of kbin's UI or something.
Edit: just looked on kbin for myself, no idea what is up with that honestly, but I see what you're talking about as well.
This is a post to linux community (@[email protected]) by user falcoignis (@[email protected]). You're reading it on kbin since it has federated this post. The default "front page" shows federated feed (Threads).
Oh of course that all makes perfect sense now….
Call it sublemmy. I don't call it that though
Whatever it's called, it'd probably have to have "c" somewhere in the name, since that's what appears in the urls.
c-cum-com-community