@kopper I think we need way more than mere tags to get the same level of separation as separate forums. For instance, hashtags are way too ad-hoc so it's often hard to tell which one is "right". Is it #bird or #birds or #avian or ...? Also, nothing stops people from posting anything under any tag.

What we need is a proper abstraction for communities which works like everywhere else. Let's call them "groups", let them have rules and a staff to enforce them (so they stay on-topic), and generate a group feed (for the filtering). I pitched this idea many times in the past, too.

Some additional thoughts on why alt accounts don't seem to work here even though people have no issues participating in multiple separate forums. Last time I said it was because I can interact with the same people and posts regardless of which account I use.

The problem is, as usual, the microblogging paradigm. Sure, I could create multiple accounts and only follow furries on the furry account, software devs on the software dev account, etc. But it would never work because microblogging is unfocused. You can post about anything and there are no repercussions in going offtopic. You might lose some followers, but that's really it. Many people wouldn't care.

Even if we all started off on the basis to keep topics separate, it would fall apart very quickly. As soon as others stop doing it, it stops working for you as well because then all the software devs you'd been following would suddenly start talking about politics, sports, etc. Fediverse instances having a theme doesn't solve this because federation mixes them all together anyway.

In contrast, forums were focused on a theme and there was a staff to make sure it stayed on track. Alt accounts may serve other purposes, but they can't be a substitute for taking part in separate communities.

More additional thoughts because the explanation above also may help you understand one point of conflict that never seems to go away: peoples confusion about instances.
I used to think that choosing an instance was like choosing an email provider. Others will say that it's also like choosing forums to join, and nobody had trouble with that either. The truth is, though, that it's both in the worst possible way.

This part of the fediverse is focused on microblogging. Like i said, microblogging in its current form has no concept for communities because everything goes into a global scope.
We like to say that instances on the fediverse are communities, and at the first glance that makes sense. They have a theme, rules and standards, a staff to enforce them, and a join process. It's the same as forums, right?
But instances are also federated, and this leads to the lines becoming blurred. So blurred, in fact, that it's hard to see any difference between them. Same as with alts, you can interact with the network and the experience will mostly be the same. The only difference is what parts of the network are inaccessible due to moderation and maybe a custom UI (if the user even sticks with the web UI).

Is this enough to create a sense of community? I don't think so.
Communities are formed around a shared interest, with members talking about it, sharing their own works, holding events, etc. How could instances possibly be neat units of communities when all of these acts happen across the boundaries? Personally, I never felt intrinsically closer with anyone just because we were on the same instance.

It's easy to choose an instance on a purely mechanical level. You open one, register, done. It's no different from other platforms and this *isn't* the part that makes people struggle. It's the lack of a clear point of instances in the first place. They're first and foremost a vehicle to drive decentralization, but are presented as communities, leading to clashing expectations and behaviors. This is where the confusion comes from.

This doesn't mean that instances are bad or pointless. The mistake the fediverse made was adopting the instance = community concept without ever adjusting the microblogging design to represent them as such.

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip I have what sounds like a minor disagreement, but IMO it changes the core of the argument

You're right that instances aren't like forums, so they don't build community like forums. But something else that isn't strictly kept in topic is IRL meetups in communities.

Parkour is the best example for me, I have this circle of friends where we met in parkour class and we all love it and to talk about it. But then at some point I'll mention that the song that's playing is really cool and I learn that someone there also plays drums and we go off on that tangent. Then I'll complain about my cats and I'll learn that one of them is a professional pet sitter.

My point is, building community in real life is the shared interest as the anchor for everyone to have something to talk about, and for new people to know how to enter the space, but then things will inevitably branch out.

So maybe picking an instance is more like picking a club or gym or hacker space to make friends in, rather than a forum. But I think it is building a community in the same way we build it IRL, where you know the beings behind the screens, not just their opinions on the topic

@gwenthefops

That's a good point, but I think it doesn't contradict mine. What a club or gym does is provide a consistent separate environment for everyone to be at, segregated from the public. A familiar comfortable space they have to themselves. Instances lack this property because everything still takes place in the loud global space.
So like I said, the fediverse would have to present instances as communities in some way to restore this property and actually make them work for community building.

More additional thoughts because the explanation above also may help you understand one point of conflict that never seems to go away: peoples confusion about instances.
I used to think that choosing an instance was like choosing an email provider. Others will say that it's also like choosing forums to join, and nobody had trouble with that either. The truth is, though, that it's both in the worst possible way.

This part of the fediverse is focused on microblogging. Like i said, microblogging in its current form has no concept for communities because everything goes into a global scope.
We like to say that instances on the fediverse are communities, and at the first glance that makes sense. They have a theme, rules and standards, a staff to enforce them, and a join process. It's the same as forums, right?
But instances are also federated, and this leads to the lines becoming blurred. So blurred, in fact, that it's hard to see any difference between them. Same as with alts, you can interact with the network and the experience will mostly be the same. The only difference is what parts of the network are inaccessible due to moderation and maybe a custom UI (if the user even sticks with the web UI).

Is this enough to create a sense of community? I don't think so.
Communities are formed around a shared interest, with members talking about it, sharing their own works, holding events, etc. How could instances possibly be neat units of communities when all of these acts happen across the boundaries? Personally, I never felt intrinsically closer with anyone just because we were on the same instance.

It's easy to choose an instance on a purely mechanical level. You open one, register, done. It's no different from other platforms and this *isn't* the part that makes people struggle. It's the lack of a clear point of instances in the first place. They're first and foremost a vehicle to drive decentralization, but are presented as communities, leading to clashing expectations and behaviors. This is where the confusion comes from.

This doesn't mean that instances are bad or pointless. The mistake the fediverse made was adopting the instance = community concept without ever adjusting the microblogging design to represent them as such.

Agreed with all of this.

I think Mastodon in particular struggles with community, as it never really leaned into that to market itself, but rather going into "replace Twitter/Bluesky with us because we're ACTUALLY decentralised!" (despite the fact they never implemented migration or ActivityPods, so I disagree), but the Fediverse sucks for that, and I don't get why people are still marketing it as that. If Mastodon leaned less into "it's decentralised! it's better than bluesky!" (lmao) and more into community creation and curation, I think it and maybe even fedi as a whole would've had much less of an adoption problem.

Meanwhile with something like Wafrn, I can say that Wafrn already has a Homestuck themed instance, it's easy to understand "oh, this is like Tumblr, but for Homestuck fans!", and looking at its federated timeline there is a lot of Homestuck fandom posting from the get-go. They're still talking about other topics, but you can tell there's a proper community growing there. I think Misskey might also lean into this pretty well. I can't pin-point what Wafrn is doing better than Mastodon besides the fact it was inspired by Tumblr though.

More additional thoughts because the explanation above also may help you understand one point of conflict that never seems to go away: peoples confusion about instances.
I used to think that choosing an instance was like choosing an email provider. Others will say that it's also like choosing forums to join, and nobody had trouble with that either. The truth is, though, that it's both in the worst possible way.

This part of the fediverse is focused on microblogging. Like i said, microblogging in its current form has no concept for communities because everything goes into a global scope.
We like to say that instances on the fediverse are communities, and at the first glance that makes sense. They have a theme, rules and standards, a staff to enforce them, and a join process. It's the same as forums, right?
But instances are also federated, and this leads to the lines becoming blurred. So blurred, in fact, that it's hard to see any difference between them. Same as with alts, you can interact with the network and the experience will mostly be the same. The only difference is what parts of the network are inaccessible due to moderation and maybe a custom UI (if the user even sticks with the web UI).

Is this enough to create a sense of community? I don't think so.
Communities are formed around a shared interest, with members talking about it, sharing their own works, holding events, etc. How could instances possibly be neat units of communities when all of these acts happen across the boundaries? Personally, I never felt intrinsically closer with anyone just because we were on the same instance.

It's easy to choose an instance on a purely mechanical level. You open one, register, done. It's no different from other platforms and this *isn't* the part that makes people struggle. It's the lack of a clear point of instances in the first place. They're first and foremost a vehicle to drive decentralization, but are presented as communities, leading to clashing expectations and behaviors. This is where the confusion comes from.

This doesn't mean that instances are bad or pointless. The mistake the fediverse made was adopting the instance = community concept without ever adjusting the microblogging design to represent them as such.

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip it sort of does that, but you still go to your other communities and mention that thing that someone said in the gym, or you get times when communities meet when one of them is having a birthday party or something. Things bleed over

I think that is reasonably modeled by Sharkey's "home" mode, where your posts only go to the instance local timeline and to followers, but users can still boost it (aka retell the story to the beings in other communities).

Or maybe I'm missing some nuance in your take, in which case I'd love to hear more!

@volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip how much better do you think things could be if more fedi software was designed around the idea of instances being communities more? that's always been the direction I've prefered at least, since it would make choosing an instance feel more like a feature than just a necessary obstacle to allow for decentralization