Instances of any fediverse software, to be clear.
I am a big fan of content-specific instances. Some instances off the top of my head that fit this description:
- bookwormstory.social - Instance about the Ascendance of a Bookworm series
- ani.social - Instance about anime/manga/Japanese media
- slrpnk.net - Instance focused on the climate crisis and related issues
- programming.dev - Instance focused on software development
- startrek.website - Instance about Star Trek
- literature.cafe - Instance about books and writing
…and I am sure there are many others. I just think that having a focus like that provides a more interesting local instance environment than a large, generalist instance, though both have a place.
The nice thing with these instances is content discovery (easy to find more communities about a single topic), but there’s a downside as well: they create a lot of centralization in Lemmy.
If you’re mostly on Lemmy for a specific topic, and one instance has consolidated almost all discussion around that topic, then your entire Lemmy experience is controlled by a single instance. In other words, despite the whole network being decentralized, users in such situations are still getting effectively the same kind of downsides they would get on something like Reddit.
Few more listed on the links here
mander.xyz is nice for all the STEM communities
Yes, like I just learned about gearhead.town which is focused on vehicles (cars, motorcycles, etc.), which is an idea I’d had myself but I’m nowhere near skilled enough to operate an instance right now.
Crazy that there’s an instance about Ascendance of a Bookworm. I’ve just been reading this!
I’d always think about how neat it’d be if there was a Lemmy frontend that did theming, then themed instances could take it even further, like an LCARS interface for startrek.website
There is theming. lemmy.zip uses a different theme as the default for example.
Eh that looks more like just a custom color palette, I’m thinking of something way deeper than that
Like winamp skins for lemmy?
It really whips the Lemmy’s ass.
I’m a fan of local instances, like at least for a country and language.
Nice!
Mastodon where you can’t use the letter “e”: https://www.vice.com/en/article/its-like-tweeting-but-you-cant-use-the-letter-e/ ( oulipo.social )
Lmao, that’s such a goofy idea, I kinda love it
I’d like to see organization focused instances. Like a local government that runs an instance and moderates it. NGOs, clubs, sport leagues, etc. could do it.
It might become a nightmare of overlapping content, hierarchies and responsibilities, though.
Language instances come to mind
I think clear identity (I like the idea of a mission statement that someone mentioned), and a statement of the governance model of the instance would be really cool to see normalized
Erin Kissane has done a lot of fediverse research and found governance was really vital to people’s experiences, good or bad, but it’s difficult to asses from the outside until you have a problem and it’s either handled well or poorly.
There is no need for this.
Why do you think so?
Activity
I’m not sure if I’ve properly explored the idea, but a specific “digital culture” would help a lot. Inside jokes, ways of speaking, emojis, memes, etc. really help an instance to distinguish itself from others.
The best example is Hexbear (ik but just hear me out for a second). Their culture is borrowed from the edgier side of the leftist internet, but they still have a style of their own. They were so recogniseable even, that a user claimed to be scared of seeing pronouns next to someone’s username because they knew it would be a comment from Hexbear (they used to be the only instance with such features, before others followed suit).
I have a hypothesis that a good amount of issolation, or at least encouraging users to only post on communities on your instance, would be good for developping some kind of culture, maybe even kinship between them.
