TL;DR: I have a number of Lemmy instances meant for discussion groups around specific topics. They are not being as used as I expected/hoped. I would like to set them up in a way that they can be owned by a consortium of different admins so that they are collectively owned. My only requirement: these instances should remain closed for registrations and used only to create communities.
During the height of the “Reddit API protests”, I had come up with The Grand Plan to bring a sizeable part of Reddit’s userbase to the Fediverse alternatives. The Grand Plan was as follows:
- Identify the largest segments of community interests that are popular on Reddit.
- Create different Lemmy instances for each of these identified topics.
- Build a tool to let users sign up to Lemmy and automatically subscribe them to the relevant communities based on their favorite subreddits
- ???
- Profit!
Much to my own frustration, The Grand Plan has not progressed much beyond step #3. Reasons for this failure abound, but there are two flaws that are exclusively my fault:
- Because I wanted to keep the instances focused around topics, registrations were closed and I was the only one who could create communities on them.
- Because I was promoting these instances along with Communick, I led people to believe that these instances were going to be part of some commercial scheme.
I am now looking to find a way to fix both of these problems. I would like to find a way to have these instances under the governance of some collective or consortium, and to make them part of an unified response for anyone that is looking for a Reddit alternative.
These are the instances that are active and running:
- https://soccer.forum (Football)
- https://nba.space (NBA Basketball)
- https://nfl.community (American Football)
- https://matchpoint.zone (Tennis)
- https://hardware.watch (Consumer Electronics)
- https://poweruser.forum (Software Support)
- https://selfhosted.forum (selfhosting)
- https://blockchained.world (crypto)
- https://netheads.online (VoIP)
- https://sfw.community (Equivalent to Reddit’s SFW Network)
- https://level-up.zone (Gaming)
- https://metacritics.zone (TV & Movies)
- https://healthy.community (Health & Fitness)
- https://indiehackers.space (Business and Entrepreneurship)
- https://viewfinder.pro (Photography)
- https://hi-fi.community (Hi-Fi Audio)
- https://style.land (Fashion and style)
- https://gearhead.town (Car and Motor)
My only “requirement” to make this happen is to keep these instances exclusively as a home for groups, so registration should be closed at all times. Unlike with Mastodon, I believe that keeping groups/community actors connected to instances of related interests for the following reasons:
-
Make it easy for content discovery. Things currently are very ad-hoc and people tend to create communities for their interests if they do not immediately find them on their instance. If we have a better separation between “instances for users” and “instances for groups”, onboarding would be easier and unnecessary duplication can be avoided.
-
Mitigate potential issues from political fighting between users from different instances. If instance A has a conflict from instance B and wants to defederate and if a community is popular on B, then the “natural reaction” would be for users on A having to recreate the communities. This is not just a problem for users of A and B, but everyone else on other instances. If the communities are on a neutral ground, they would be less likely to become collateral damage.
-
If we have instances that are more focused on hosting users, it would be easier to distribute incoming users around.
To repeat: I am not doing this because of financial issues (though I wouldn’t mind if you want to become a sponsor) or because I am unable to keep managing them. The only reason that I am considering this is to see if I can get more alignment with other instance admins and organizations that might be interested in collaborating.
If you are part of an organization that could be interested in joining, or if you are an individual who would like to help, please feel free to reach me on Mastodon.