I just don't get how Lemmy is going to act as a proper replacement for Reddit.
I understand the basic concept of Lemmy and the Fediverse, and people are touting the concept of it being federated and not centrally controlled, but it is an absolute mess and nobody seems to have an idea about what to do with it.
How are communities going to grow if there isn't at least some form of central management. Other than there being an underlying framework that connects the servers, they're all just doing what they want.
Outside of the underlying framework, there's no 'guidelines' or consistency. The servers have random names, and the main Lemmy.ml is telling people to register elsewhere.
How is this going to bring in a wider audience if people are being directed to lemmy.fmhy.ml, sopuli.xyz, or sh.itjust.works?
What is the purpose of the Fediverse when forums for niche interests already exist on the internet?
Does it make sense to have something like a 'sports' server that has communities for soccer, NFL, basketball, MMA? But then how do you get a consistent naming scheme that lets people know it's part of the fediverse?
Maybe Lemmy could work as a replacement, but it seems like it needs a 'flagship' server with a group of people maintaining it to set an example. Then other servers that cover more specific areas, such as sports, can be set up and potentially work closely with that flagship group.
If this doesn't happen, then I can't see how this doesn't just fizzle out.
P.S. I've also compared two different Lemmy servers and looked at the same post in a community, and there are different numbers of comments on each where they haven't synced up...
I also wanted to post this to the main Lemmy community, but as I had to register via a different server, I'm not able to access that community from the server I'm using for some reason...
What do users need?
And that is already happening. The tools are there! They might suck but they work at the very least as proof of concept, showing that you don't need a central management. What we need instead is to improve those tools and create new ones as necessary.
In this sense, the Fediverse is a lot like the very internet that it resides in.
Imagine if those forums were able to connect to each other. That is what we got here.
You don't need a consistent naming scheme. At least, not for that. As instances communicate with each other, it should be easy to figure out that there's a new instance popping up about sports or anything else.
There is. It's lemmy.ml.
In fact, one issue that I've found is that a lot of people confuse that flagship server with the whole, and they all get on it. I'm posting from it, mind you, but I've been here for ~two years and in general I happen to fit well in it. [I think.]
I'm glad that you figured it out, otherwise I wouldn't see this post!
SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND: yes, things are still messy and rough, but they'll probably get better over time. A better interface, more discoverability for instances and their communities, so goes on.
And IMO the main merit of this federated structure is that you aren't putting all your eggs (content and users) in the same basket (platform and administrating group). It's perfectly possible that one platform decides to go rogue, just like Reddit did; but then it'll be far easier to migrate to another platform in the federation. Centralised platforms have a nasty tendency to try to wall you in, while decentralised ones cannot do it by design.