Why decentralization doesn't work for forums

[zedstrian@sopuli.xyz]

When accounting for all defederations between all instances with at least 50 MAU (as of when I last checked in August, at least), the only instances that are defederated with over 5% of other Threadiverse users (inbound or outbound) are lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, fedinsfw.app, forum.guncadindex.social, and lemmy.1095.me, none of which are oriented towards the average user moving over from Reddit anyhow.

Less defederation on average is better, but defederation is not a huge problem as it stands, particularly if you pick an instance known to use it minimally such as lemmy/piefed.zip.

[givesomefucks@lemmy.world]

Buddy...

Because people expect a seamless experience?

You want a seamless experience...

And I already told you what to do for that:

Go there, none of us care

If that's what anyone here wanted, they wouldn't be here...

Why does one place not being how you want it, mean that it should change to be like everywhere else? And especially when you seemingly don't want to go to any of the many options that are already like that?

Do you legitimately not understand the responses this is getting?

If you don't like it, go back to reddit. But you're not going to convince anyone on the fediverse that the fediverse should be more like reddit. The few people that would agree with you, have already made these same posts, gotten the same responses, and went back to reddit.

How are you surprised the people who stay here like it?

[lehmuusa@nord.pub]

No communities I want to see have ever disappeared. Just choose your instance wisely and all is okay.

[lehmuusa@nord.pub]

Then why are you on .world? There are plenty of instances that are widely federated.

[auster@thebrainbin.org]

In case the OP isn't a troll...

Do you know why aquariums need to keep oxygenated? That's because the type of life that is put there usually needs the oxygen dilluted in the water to be able to breath. If oxygen is lacking, what's effectively swamp water starts forming, water where few life forms can thrive.

Multiple forums I've seen become a metaphorical swamp water because there was barely any renewal in userbase, all the while the original userbase grew tired.

Moderation's also a hit or a miss, and when a forum's slowing to a halt, even a good moderation can make things worse.

OP's discourse also makes it seem like defederation is being used rampantly and without care across the fediverse. But from my experience at least, usually it's a last measure act, even when communities are ideological opposites.

[parallelminds@lemmy.world]

I am not a troll, I have put my money where my mouth is and hosted my own forum nightash.net, of which I crossposted the article here.

You’re treating federation like it creates fresh users, but it doesn’t. It lets existing users move between communities; it doesn’t guarantee new people will find or join them. Centralized forums can have user turnover too, through visibility and a larger audience.

And the aquarium analogy cuts both ways: if defederation closes the flow between communities, then the ‘oxygen’ isn’t reaching everyone anyway. Calling it a last resort doesn’t change that users on either side can lose access to each other, or that they can’t take their account with them. That’s still fragmentation, just with a nicer plumbing metaphor

[parallelminds@lemmy.world]

Because I want to see everything, including lemmy.world.

[solrize@lemmy.ml]

Usenet was great back in the day. Decentralized and mostly unmoderated, full of trolls but you learned to block them. It still exists but barely.

[parallelminds@lemmy.world]

Good enough, wise enough.

[parallelminds@lemmy.world]

Fair enough if that's what you would like. But for the rest of us, yes we're looking for a seamless anti-echo chamber experience, the mirror opposite of Reddit.

[tootguitar@sh.itjust.works]

I imagine what the other commenter meant was that your post would have been 10x better just by removing the “You are a moron” sentence from the beginning.

Yes, in a perfect world, arguments should be all that matter. But on the other end of the little text replies here is (presumably) a real human being, and sometimes your argument doesn’t get across as well if you sandwich it with insults.

[tootguitar@sh.itjust.works]

Also, is there any centralized forum that is more active than the Threadiverse (Lemmy/Piefed/Pylova/Mbin)?

It looks like there are on the order of maybe 20-30k total monthly active users of the threadiverse, though I had to cobble this together from a few sources, so if you have any solid numbers I’d love to see them.

As much drama as there is/was, the Something Awful Forums are a Web 1.0 old school centralized forum which has been around for over a quarter of a century and is still going. At their peak they had hundreds of thousands of users.

[schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de]

People overall want to have a single website or app where they can access everything interesting to them.

Like, I remember being a teenager 15 years ago and regularly clicking through three, four, five different forums. I don't have time for that anymore. The Lemmy concept allows us to have the best of both worlds: no single point of failure, but also no need to remember to click through many different websites.

[lehmuusa@nord.pub]

Why do you then not move to an instance that offers that to you?

[parallelminds@lemmy.world]

Because that would be a category error. I want see everything includes all places all the time.

[comrademiao@lemmy.world]

Also, is there any centralized forum that is more active than the Threadiverse (Lemmy/Piefed/Pylova/Mbin)?

I can only think of Lobste.rs and Tildes.

[thejesusaurus@piefed.ca]

If you wanted. You could just join an instance or create your own where nothing is degenerated, am I wrong?

Is he saying federation is bad because it's working exactly as intended?

[lehmuusa@nord.pub]

I did not understand properly what you meant with this comment. Could you paraphrase, please?

[parallelminds@lemmy.world]

That's my whole argument, if Lemmy is going to be naturally fragmented and require a new account for every defederated instance, why not just use regular forums at that point?

[parallelminds@lemmy.world]

"I want to see everything" means that I want to see even the places that in theory I have no business being in.