So I was thinking of a few ways to help create a bit of direction in the chaos... These are probably already in the works or intentionally NOT implemented, so I'd like to hear why or why not. These are just a few thoughts of mine.
For everyone wanting a list of communities, and preventing duplicate communities on multiple instances:
- Create the culture that instances ARE the communities. The only thing this limits is duplicating/migrating accounts accross instannces so you aren't locked in to one instance/community if you're like me and like multiple things.
- Create the topics within these instances that relate to the community's topics. Then have a federated page where you subscribe to other instances and this is your feed.
For everyone wanting the largest federation possible even on small instances, have a central fed site that is JUST a center point of federation and a dynamic list of instances
- Make Fediverse.party or the like a central point that every new instance has to federate to once made. This makes it so all the other instances can see this new site too.
- This can help moderation where on Fediverse.party there can be a ranking/voting system on whether an instance should be defederated to the central hub, and can be individually federated if admins want.
- This also makes it so people can see the rank/review of an instance before joining, and get a good idea of the culture and ideals of that instance.
For everyone wanting more instances, but fewer duplicate communities on each, encourage instances to focus on the subject they discuss. Like Forums.
- For instance: You want to join an instance relating to Honda Cars, so you joinHondaCarForums.com. There is a general discussion on everything and this is where you will find the federated feeds of everything. Then there are topics like "Machanical help" or "Galleries", as well as "Training Videos" and this can be federation of other instances that are like PeerTube and PixelFed instances.
- You can then subscribe to other topics as well and this can be your "Subscription feed" that you only see your front page of your topics you want to see. This makes it so you aren't "constricted" by your specific topic on your instance.
For everyone not sure what the fediverse is or how to make a site federate, make federation the standard for ALL sites.
- Make current community sites federate using the protocol. Developers can make a plugin or some third-party app (think like Disqus) that makes it so current sites can be a part of the fediverse too.
- That way people know that "oh I can see HondaCarForums.com while I'm on KawasakiBikeForums.com, so that's how federation works!! Cool!" And have it easy to understand for new people. Honestly this is how I think the web should work but hasn't yet. Users with WordPress accounts can comment across WordPress hosted sites, which is how I think these sites can solve the issue of feeling locked in to a single instance. Have a third party app be where you make your federated account and can then be a part of any site.
These are easy to implement, can increase moderation abilities, and can encourage more instances be made as well as increase the simplicity of all of this "new-concept" complications with new users. This is all probably in the works but I wanted to see if anyone had any counter-points to be made to any of these ideas. What do you think?