When posts are made on lemmy they can be federated over to any instance so long as the instance is federated with ours and the community is federated onto that instance as well. It’s awesome! But for community building sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming.

Since the lemmyverse is so big, sometimes posts on our own instance communities can be drowned out by others on other instances. That’s fine in most cases! We want discussion! More the merrier! But for the growth of communities such as this with a specific hobbyist focus, it can kind of stunt the creation of it’s own community identity sometimes.

Hence, local only communities can aid in that. Which is why when that feature comes to lemmy I will be making one in hopes of encouraging more local community general discussion as this instance grows. The purpose will be a general all purpose chat, similar to this but for those who want discussions focused on users in our instance only or don’t feel comfortable posting something that will get federated into the rest of the lemmyverse.

Some very important things to keep in mind with this:

  • Lemmy does not currently allow private communities, this new community will still be viewable for users who are logged out and browsing that specific community. It will simply prevent the community from federating over into other instances. Be mindful of this fact.

  • The purpose of this community will not be to shut people out, but as a way to make a more cozy space when users who want to talk with just literature.cafe users. Like a safe haven away from the chaos.

  • gabe [he/him]OPMA
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    1 year ago

    I’m personally extremely excited for this feature to come to lemmy as whenever something like it has been added to other fediverse platforms it tends to create a much more cohesive community identity in hobby focused instances like this tbh. Like a literature.cafe only book club, movie night, etc etc. I hope it gets used :)

  • Robertus Cognoscens
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    1 year ago

    I think it makes perfect sense. Federation is great, certainly, but at the same time it’s desirable to keep certain communities local, as otherwise they might not be able to focus on what they’re meant to be about.

    While the fluidity of interconnection is one of the principal aspects of the fediverse, if no particular group were able to specialize, then having different instances, or even using different applications, could become pointless.

  • gabe [he/him]OPMA
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    1 year ago

    @ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone I think you’ve been working on this, right?

    • kopper [they/them]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      gah i haven’t logged in for the last 3 days due just to make sure i didn’t get into all this recent mess

      the pr exists (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3889) and it should theoretically work but it’s completely untested and does not work how you’d expect local communities to work (things still federate out, but interactions don’t federate back in) (also there hasn’t been any response from upstream about approving it or not, so even if i tested it and got it to a ready state no idea if they’d accept it or not)

      i’m instead focusing on my own lemmy alt/clone i mentioned to you on the microblog side of fedi (which will launch with local communities if it ever gets to that state). if anyone feels like taking up my wip pr and getting it into a usable state they can feel free to do so themselves. i found out the lemmy codebase is far too overwhelming for my tiny little brain the hard way

      sorry for (over?)hyping it

      • gabe [he/him]OPMA
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        1 year ago

        Nah it’s all good!

        I’m interested in seeing your lemmy alternative develop :)

    • gabe [he/him]OPMA
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      1 year ago

      Yes, it’s being worked on currently. I believe it’s on the pull request iirc