Yep, there’s a clear avenue here. Discourse (where I no longer work, so I shouldn’t really have that staff title any longer) is also implementing ActivityPub, so the Rust forum will actually be able to subscribe to this hypothetical /rust community as well. We just have to give them a good enough reason to do so, by achieving a modicum of unification through this group-follow proposal.

Then it’ll be up to the Rust team to decide which particular /rust community on the fediverse they will hook up the official forum to as their trusted gateway into the larger network.

[–] v9CYKjLeia10dZpz88iU 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Discourse (where I no longer work, so I shouldn’t really have that staff title any longer)

I understood the title as staff for rust on a discourse instance. It seems like I misinterpreted the rank, and it actually might mean that you were a developer for the Discourse forum software.

We just have to give them a good enough reason to do so, by achieving a modicum of unification through this group-follow proposal.

I didn't really read the blog post very closely before commenting. It looks like the concern is more focused on how to create a global name system for communities that users understand. I don't agree that it's an issue for rust, but I do think it's an issue for the fediverse in general. I'll cover both quickly.

I don't think it's an issue for rust

I think programmers likely understand the fediverse really well once they've used it. I am doubtful there are actually problems with programmers finding their communties, and successfully subscribing to them. I think Discord servers are more comparable to communities than subreddits to communities. On Discord, if a server doesn't have a vanity address, it's partially not a problem because users are actively searching out official services. For programmers, if the organization backing rust officially designates an instance, I think programmers will understand it.

In my other comment on LemmyRS, I actually saw the disorganization of the fediverse as a feature, not an issue.

I do think this is an issue for normal users or services

I don't think users understand it at all. I think it's mostly hopeless to try to explain that this other website that seems similar to their home instance can be followed by returning to their home instance or installing this plugin that will link it for them. I think solving it as a client problem is likely a better approach. It seems like users surprisingly do comprehend how to send and receive emails, but I think there are still user interface problems that need to be solved for the fediverse.

I think trying to solve it at the federation level is likely a bad idea. In my opinion, it just seems like other federated services, like IRC and email, and even IP systems (IPV4 vs IPV6) have been very resilient to change. Though, I do think it's possible to have changes merged into Lemmy.

I view the name system as a feature for rust

There are multiple reasons, here are some

Users on other instances can have their name associated with their organization, ex. [email protected]
It provides organizations the ability to promote other related communities. I really like that programming.dev controls the local communities on programming.dev, as I'm able to find a bunch of related content all at once instead of having to search it out.
It prevents reddit-like problems from happening. No one can censor rust's organization from their own instance, they just can remove it from their competing instance. Defederation isn't really a risk because many instances will stay in federation.
rust as an organization is able to moderate and group their communities better.
I think it provides more diversity to how clients will change overtime. As an example, on an instance hosted by the rust organization, there could be really good rust language support, because the organization the develops rust cares about the language features on the forum

(Mastodon created the above clip)