I think the interoperability of the Fediverse is its main advantage. We don’t need to be constrained by what we previously thought our focus was before the ideals of the fediverse were mainstream. If people don’t want to follow individuals there’s nothing that would force them to, but I think being able to connect with much wider portion of the fediverse would really help Lemmy grow.
If there’s another, better way to do this then I’m open to it but allowing the following of individual accounts seems like a very simple and easy way to accomplish this.
IMHO better would be the reverse: proper group support in Mastodon, Pixelfed etc. But the developers of these seem to be as reluctant to implement that as the Lemmy devs are regarding user microblogging.
No, have a proper separate view that only shows group posts like on Lemmy. Friendica and Mbin does it like that and Pixelfed has teased the same for a long time now. No work-arounds and semi-working hacks like now when you try to engage with a Lemmy community from Mastodon. But that you even ask how should show you just how incompatible these two social media concepts are. Basically you need two entirely different interfaces for each.
Well this is why I think Lemmy allowing individual follows is the best solution. It’s completely compatible with the interface here. If I am understanding correctly, your suggestion would only allow you to see people who opt into posting as part of those groups. But what I want is to be able to reach and communicate with anyone on the fediverse, no matter the platform. I think this is really only going to work by connecting individual users with one another, which there’s currently no way to do.
Couldn’t you subscribe to a user the same way you do to a community, and see their posts show up in your feed? Is there some reason I am missing that can’t work?
I’m not saying Lemmy should change its whole schtick and become like Mbin, but if there is a small change that can allow more widespread connections across the fediverse, it’s hard to see the downside.
Mastodon etc. doesn’t really differentiate between posts and comments. So imagine your Lemmy feed having all comments from all communities you are subscribed to just there scrolling through and no real way to know what they even comment on without clicking though to try to find the originally referenced message.
In addition Mastodon has no concept of consistent threads, so basically every person sees something different and you can’t really comment on comments without it getting completely confusing.
I think the interoperability of the Fediverse is its main advantage. We don’t need to be constrained by what we previously thought our focus was before the ideals of the fediverse were mainstream. If people don’t want to follow individuals there’s nothing that would force them to, but I think being able to connect with much wider portion of the fediverse would really help Lemmy grow.
If there’s another, better way to do this then I’m open to it but allowing the following of individual accounts seems like a very simple and easy way to accomplish this.
IMHO better would be the reverse: proper group support in Mastodon, Pixelfed etc. But the developers of these seem to be as reluctant to implement that as the Lemmy devs are regarding user microblogging.
How would that work exactly? Make hashtags into “communities” or something?
No, have a proper separate view that only shows group posts like on Lemmy. Friendica and Mbin does it like that and Pixelfed has teased the same for a long time now. No work-arounds and semi-working hacks like now when you try to engage with a Lemmy community from Mastodon. But that you even ask how should show you just how incompatible these two social media concepts are. Basically you need two entirely different interfaces for each.
Well this is why I think Lemmy allowing individual follows is the best solution. It’s completely compatible with the interface here. If I am understanding correctly, your suggestion would only allow you to see people who opt into posting as part of those groups. But what I want is to be able to reach and communicate with anyone on the fediverse, no matter the platform. I think this is really only going to work by connecting individual users with one another, which there’s currently no way to do.
On Lemmy you would also need a separate view for microblogs. You can see on Mbin how that would work.
Couldn’t you subscribe to a user the same way you do to a community, and see their posts show up in your feed? Is there some reason I am missing that can’t work?
I’m not saying Lemmy should change its whole schtick and become like Mbin, but if there is a small change that can allow more widespread connections across the fediverse, it’s hard to see the downside.
Mastodon etc. doesn’t really differentiate between posts and comments. So imagine your Lemmy feed having all comments from all communities you are subscribed to just there scrolling through and no real way to know what they even comment on without clicking though to try to find the originally referenced message.
In addition Mastodon has no concept of consistent threads, so basically every person sees something different and you can’t really comment on comments without it getting completely confusing.
Ah, this is probably what I wasn’t understanding. Thanks for answering all of my questions. I can see how that might be a problem.
Seems like Mastodon needs some way to handle threading better before this could really work then. Kind of surprising that they don’t have that.
I still hope there is some way we can connect with the entire fediverse at some point in the future but we’ll have to see what form that might take.