The question is whether the project should be forked into multiple separate projects at all. An alternative would be to have a generic "Directory Platform" and have modules to make it a Book Review platform, a Movie Database, or whatever-you-wanna-collect platform with another module. The modules would mostly be templates and data structures + user interface widgets to present them nicely.
I think this is an excellent idea, a worthy project, and I applaud you for putting some real thinking into practical steps!
My federated X wishlist had social media, reddit-like thing, instagram-like thing, and a youtube-like thing. A federated IMDB alternative would be awesome.
Just wanted to mention that, according to GNU, Bookwyrm is nonfree because of being licensed under ACSL. I don't know the implications of this license on forks.
To be honest, I do not care. It is important to have the right license, but the value of a software should not be conditioned by license bias. It is a matter that is not strictly and directly related.
Software comes first, license comes close, but still second to it.
There would be a few levels of complexity to it. But if you're hosting a lemmy instance already, it shouldn't be any trouble for you ... basically make yourself the only account but allow people to federate with your instance. Add your own modified front end too if you like (as lemmy has separate backend and front end software stacks AFAIU). Interestingly, I think it would be a cool project for people to work on ... a front end suitable for hosting a single (or even multi) user blog on the fediverse.
An additional option would be microblog: https://docs.microblog.pub/. It's a single-user fediverse platform written in python and relying on sqlite (which sounds to me like a nice sweet spot for single-user instances).
Ahh, I didn't get that far in the docs, but seeing as there are no (that I can tell) post limits, running a blog on Lemmy would work pretty well with a bit of a UI change.
Yep, totally, there's search, sorting, comments etc, all in one backend.
A neat blog-focused front-end would actually be super awesome IMO. Many want to be on the fediverse but interact just through blogs. A sort of blogo-verse (not sphere). Lemmy might be the best foundation to make that happen.
A neat blog-focused front-end would actually be super awesome IMO.
I so agree. Did you find any ?
At first I considered using the official Lemmy UI with custom CSS & JS injected, but versioning is still zero-based (0.y.z), which means breaking changes can happen at any time, and that can cause huge issues with customization.
Now I'm considering alternative clients, like Alexandrite, but it's unsupported despite being maintained.
Many want to be on the fediverse but interact just through blogs. A sort of blogo-verse (not sphere).
Did anyone achieve this yet, whether using Lemmy or something else ?
Well there are blogging platforms for the fediverse (ie they federate) I forget their names but in it sure WriteFreely is one.
Beyond that, Wordpress has integrations now with the fediverse which federate as user accounts. It seems to work ok, in that I’ve seen blogs appear in mastodon. But one point of friction I think is how comments are federated. Maybe it works fine but I’m key sure they’ve made a choice to not federate comments from Wordpress to mastodon so there’s context collapse.
Otherwise, the idea I’m thinking of hasn’t been realised yet AFAICT. TBF, it would probably require more than a front end for lemmy, I suspect some backend features would be required too. Nothing too big I’d think. But alas no. Still think it’s be cool!
That being said, it’s not too hard to run a blog out of lemmy. Just start dedicated communities with moderator posting only and you’re good. Front end might be lacking in someway but that alone goes pretty far.
Yeah I already studied all federated blogging options, unfortunately none actually federate like true Fediverse apps.
I suspect some backend features would be required too
Hmm, there sure could be useful additions but I don't think it's missing anything required though, on the back-end.
The front-end, however, is far from being usable for a blog.
Front end might be lacking in someway but that alone goes pretty far.
Well, a Lemmy front-end, whether official or third-party, for a blog, makes sense for an existing Lemmy user, but for sure doesn't for anyone not knowing what Lemmy is, that's why customization is required on this part.
Well, a Lemmy front-end, whether official or third-party, for a blog, makes sense for an existing Lemmy user, but for sure doesn’t for anyone not knowing what Lemmy is, that’s why customization is required on this part.
Hmmm, at the risk of being annoying, I’m wondering what you’re thinking of exactly. I’m guessing something that’s streamlined in a few ways, like without upvoting etc. and related sorting options? Probably a bit of a facelift too and some elements that make it clear what community/blog you’re looking at?
As I’m writing this I’m thinking that it would probably make sense to have a built in web view specifically for outsiders to see a community as a blog.
Removing Communuties, Create post, Create community from menu ;
Adding local communities directly to the menu, used as categories ;
Adding posts from a "pages community" directly to the menu, e.g. About me ;
Removing Trending communities and Trending/Local/All filters from the homepage ;
Removing Blocks, Languages, Show NSFW content, Blur NSFW content, Bot Account, Show Bot Accounts, Show Read Posts, Import/Export Settings from settings ;
without upvoting etc. and related sorting options?
No, these are useful.
Probably a bit of a facelift too and some elements that make it clear what community/blog you’re looking at?
Yes.
As I’m writing this I’m thinking that it would probably make sense to have a built in web view specifically for outsiders to see a community as a blog.
A blog-focused front-end, as you said. Either that, or customization of the official front-end (but not while unstable).
It's more closely related to the initial intentions of the internet than most other social platforms. Ideally it could get things going back in the right direction again iif nothing else!
I'm for blocking Threads. I'm not for blocking instances that support Threads. That's ridiculous, you'd just split the community and make the Fediverse irrelevant.
If you have concerns that your posts will be public on a public message board, you're kind of fucking stupid. It's like being concerned that you will be visible if you leave your house to go to the store.
This was a problem on reddit too. Anyone could create accounts - heck, I had 8 accounts:
one main, one alt, one "professional" (linked publicly on my website), and five for my bots (whose accounts were optimistically created, but were never properly run). I had all 8 accounts signed in on my third-party app and I could easily manipulate votes on the posts I posted.
I feel like this is what happened when you'd see posts with hundreds / thousands of upvotes but had only 20-ish comments.
There needs to be a better way to solve this, but I'm unsure if we truly can solve this. Botnets are a problem across all social media (my undergrad thesis many years ago was detecting botnets on Reddit using Graph Neural Networks).
I think the best part of federation is there are no islands, you can make an account on an instance and follow content from the rest of the fediverse, you can even host your own instance just for you and follow everything else
I think lemmy and it's growth is the biggest step forward in the direction of the fediverse becoming "mainstream" alongside twitters implosion
As this platform specifically develops more and the front end UI improves in spite of its current flaws, I feel like lemmy and kbin are probably the most likely to be picked up by the general public as it is the easiest to navigate and populate with content. You can federate whole communities in with tons of content, instead of just individual users. There are quirks but I think it has the most potential, it's like the fediverse was made for this kind of platform in mind specifically.
Not everything needs to be mainstream to be great. Sometimes being less known is what makes sites great since you are sure that the user base that is on there are there because of similar reason. Unlike mainstream apps where users trend to be there only because it is hip to be there but don't care for what the sites actually stands for. Hence the proliferation of garbage material in large mainstream sites.
My personal observation is that people have been fed up for quite a while, not so much by the Instagram app itself but by Meta's brand, their untrustworthiness and the general vapid and scammy nature of the hordes of Influencers and "hustlers". It's just regular folks aren't aware of decent alternatives or the alternatives aren't quite there yet.
Also lemmy.world is not the most stable instance and experiences a lot of downtime. My user experience got a lot better after I moved out of lemmy.world.
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