I would ask, how do you want people to use Mander? Do you want it to be the singular home for your members and host to all of their varied and disparate interests (bringing in subscribers from a thousand other instances who are not remotely interested in nature or science), OR a destination repository of nature and science communities (topic-centered)?

I wouldn't worry about people needing to hop between instances, unless you'd prefer to eventually become a generalized server like beehaw. If you look at the issues they are running into right now, even though their communities are admin-created, catch-all is a model I wouldn't want to touch with a ten foot pole as an admin. Some of the instances they've had to block are just... shocking.

My own use case is I had already joined a handful of different instances, and set them each up to give myself some semblance of what multireddits used to do for me.

This is my brain-food account. From here I subscribe to communities about nature (my heart), science, and more broadly, those focused on curiosity, learning, research, and with more academically-oriented (or at least thoughtful) discussion. So my own extension of your theme has some pretty soft edges.

In terms of how to draw your boundaries, I honestly thought what you have in the sidebar should have been enough, it's short and clear and I wouldn't have thought to add anything... but then I saw communities for games/deals, a horror fiction author fan group, and a re-creation of the 'boring dystopia' doomscroll subreddit lol

Rather than getting into the absolute headache of putting hard boundaries around communities, another idea might be to just add a question/item to your registration process, reiterating that the focus of Mander is nature and science in general, and asking registrants to explicitly agree to consider this before creating a new community in this space?

This would leave the theme open to interpretation, while still respecting it. Like, the science of cooking is a super cool topic I would never have considered. Someone else mentioned a beekeeping community. Those are awesome and absolutely belong here. I think keeping the boundaries soft is a good idea, and I think "nature and science" should be perfectly fine, but a confirmation filter of some kind (either in registration or in the create community form, or both) could be helpful.

I wouldn't mind seeing some of these:

• Succulents
• Ornithology
• Nootropics
• Ask Science
• Nature Appreciation (general/casual, amateur photos, hiking, etc)

I also very much miss r/goblincore, but I feel like that miiight be a stretch for this server

Well now I'm going to have to turn bots back on. Very cool :)

Also, where did you get this picture of me at work?

It’s wild, I’m still relatively new to gardening, and when I watch an elder do their thing they are just expertly brutal. Meanwhile their gardens are gorgeous and happy, and mine are crowded and overwhelming.

I hate the idea of splitting so much! Like slicing through their lifelines shouldn’t be good for them. And having read about how plants actually communicate distress hasn’t helped my bleeding heart, haha

Sidebar:

If this is essentially a discussion forum already, what purpose do parallel platforms like discord or matrix serve?

I’ve made accounts there but have never really used them. Not against it, just don’t get it.

Ok.

I instantly love this tiny gorgeous creature.

To be honest, it felt a little gross suggesting it...

I've also now discovered I can block communities, so I may have kicked up a fuss over nothing. And while blocking feels extreme, it's really just a 'hide' feature I guess.

It may well be enough to add a note to the 'create community' page, asking that they read the room first lol

I do not have hoyas, but after nearly losing a few of my outdoor plants to an unholy mix of mildew/fungus and pests last year, I sprayed them all with sulphur this spring and the difference has been incredible. Plants I thought were goners are now thriving, moreso than before they were attacked in the first place.

Sulphur also saved a couple of my indoor plants from mites when nothing else was working.

I swear the stuff is magic.

For anyone considering using sulphur outdoors, I just want to add some tips to minimize impact on bees.

Although garden sulphur’s toxicity towards bees is officially classed as low, it can still hurt them up to a week from application. It can make them aggressive or kill them, and they can bring toxicity back to their colonies if affected.

Best practice is to apply when plants are not actively blooming, after 5pm, and when temps are below 55°F/13°C

Thank you for being the one to create a new home for goblincore in the fediverse! I’ve been missing it.

Your writeup in the sidebar is fantastic.

I’ve really been a lurker 99% of the time, but will have to come up with something nice to contribute as we rebuild here. Hopefully the others will find us.

Only a few... now I feel bad for all the unnamed

My big alocasia zebrina is Stampy, and my little amazonicas are Thing 1 and Thing 2

Jack is my hatiora salicornioides, and Sally is the tradescantia that lives next to him

My beautiful old mess of coppertone sedum is Grampus

The reaching tradescantia under my office window is Medusa

Gollum jade is named Coral

And my peperomia graveolens is Ruby

Some are not overly creative, lol

Not really, but I can easily see it now you point it out.

I grabbed up my username on a few different instances, partly so I could compare experiences on each and keep it on my preferred server/s when the dust settles. I found .world right after .ca so my impression at the time was more literal, heh

I do think devs/programmers (or at least the more tech-savvy) are likely a disproportionately big part of the fed space right now though, so you’ll find us all over. Lemmy/kbin are still buggy and not yet intuitive enough for the average user, and a lot of us tend to be early adopters.

Currently, kind of but not really.

Admins are reporting that they are getting bulk new account creations, with telltale markers of the less sophisticated types of bot accounts. So the locks, doors and windows are being actively tested as we speak.

Right now (as is my understanding) admin options include requiring confirmation of a valid email, using filter questions (meaning someone has to read and manually approve each registration), and implementing captchas.

Bots are coming. They’re here already. I sadly don’t know enough about it to be helpful, but I really hope the huge dev/sec community here is able to come up with better tools to detect and protect against them.

Someone made it! Thank you so much. It was one of my favourite places online.

And Kerfuffle wrote the perfect sidebar. An excerpt for the curious:

“In this cozy corner of the internet, goblincore enthusiasts come together to celebrate the beauty found in the everyday oddities and treasures of nature and the natural world. Inspired by folklore, fantasy, and a touch of mischief, Goblincore Lemmy embodies a love for all things wild, untamed, and delightfully peculiar.”

“Within this community, you’ll find a diverse group of individuals who share a deep appreciation for the charm of gnarled tree roots, moss-covered rocks, peculiar mushrooms, and the hidden wonders of the forest floor. They revel in embracing a simpler, earth-centered existence, finding joy in foraging, gardening, and crafting with repurposed materials.”

Not so much science, but a massive overlap for those who are also here for the love of nature.

haha fair, but I do feel like I need to hear the story of how Bums got its name

aaaaaah posts like this almost make me wish lemmy had heart reactions

I would only abuse it, though 😍