It was Lemmy+Mbin.
Now it's already up to Lemmy+Mbin+PieFed+nodebb.
And flarum and Sublinks may be added at some point as well.
So the plus syntax, now that there's already 4-6 of them (7 if you count Kbin but there's only a single instance in the entire world, in Poland I believe, that uses it these days, everyone else switched to Mbin), seems untenable?
I'm not sure what you mean by that -> if you mean that we need new episodes, then absolutely! Or if you mean that real life has caught up to implementing those ideas real-time, I think that was always going to be the case, sadly...:-(
On the other hand, the software used has an ENORMOUS effect upon the quality and such of the communication. e.g. forum software such as Lemmy allow much longer-form, topic-based discussions than e.g. Mastodon where you have to follow a particular user account or else you won't see anything at all. So "Mastodon" implies extreme difficulty in having conversations in the first place, especially for non-technical, normie users, and also a heavily short-form tweets/X-cretes/skeets/whatever, user-centric form of communication. Whereas Lemmy allows me to ramble on for quite awhile, and even if you don't follow my account, by being interested in this topic, you'll see my words.
So software isn't everything, but it also is not nothing either.
Anyway, we could call ourselves anything we like. Brain-dead fart pirates, I don't care, so long as we pick a name:-). It might help to pick one that people like though, especially the people that contribute much to making this place what it is.
I personally don't mind -verse. I don't watch most Marvel movies to begin with, and the word itself carries connotations of "the universe", which is what we want I think bc we are talking about like "the set of all, i.e. the universe of, connected (using ActivityPub protocol) forum-like software platforms". Hence Fediverse at the high end, i.e. including such platforms as Mastodon and Friendica and Pixelfed, but at the lower end... what there? Threads? ActivityPub Forums? Any short, catchy moniker may work -> so what is it then?
Yeah and I did not clarify well here that nobody will stop using Fediverse (I think?!): that is a fine term that should continue to exist. But we also need a term for the subset of that which the likes of Lemmy, Mbin, PieFed, and now as you say nodebb and soon flarum (and perhaps eventually Sublinks?) and ofc many others will also join. What is this subset of the Fediverse to be called?
Ngl, I kinda just instantly fell in love with fediforums as you mentioned it right here. However, it also seems fairly similar to Fediverse, perhaps too much so?
Forumverse seems more distinct, from the Fediverse? As too does Threadiverse. And the latter has history and traction, but also seems a bit tainted by association with Meta, who seems to destroy everything that it touches? :-P Though importantly, we here on Lemmy were using it first! So is that enough justification to reclaim the term, in people's minds? What do you in particular think?
Yeah, what features? Polls? Community flairs? The ability to restrict downvotes to only members of a community? The ability to combine multiple communities into one overarching category? And then customize that without needing admin support, and then also share that with other users? The ability to personally block every user from an instance, again without requiring admin approval? The ability to automatically label every user that has a brand new account, less than two weeks old? Or that posts 10x more often than they comment, hence might be an unregistered bot account? Or that gives and receives 10x more downvotes than upvotes, so is at best a controversial and at worst a highly toxic personality - but again, independent of an admin or moderator, and instead being totally in control of the user? Or the ability to block posts based on keywords, but perhaps not all such posts, and instead having granularity of All vs. None vs. Some? Or offering hashtags for content discoverability beyond communities and categories of communities? Or the ability to follow anything you want - a community, a user, a post, a comment (even not made by you) - and arguably far more importantly, the ability to NOT receive notifications for something that you wrote?
PieFed has all of that, and more. Lemmy has none of it. Do as you please, but now you know. Check it out: https://piefed.social/ .
Edit: even Reddit lacks many of these features. As it enshittified, it kept adding features that attempted to boost its profitability, like various forms of irl coinage, rather than provide stuff that people actually wanted to see.
I mean, yeah it'll be better to have a term in which Reddit plays no part in defining is!
And this post is an opportunity to make exactly such a term!
Say "fuck spez" in the absolute best way possible - by moving on and forget that he ever existed, as we build our own stuff here.:-D
True, but doesn't Xhitter and Bluesky and Mastodon also have a type of voting? Even if it is called or functions slightly differently?
I did not explain much of the back story, but the Fediverse is already the term used to describe federated social media, so the term here that we need is to pick one that describes the specific subset of it that focuses on threaded conversions, centered around those topic areas (called posts, and then those topics being further aggregated into higher-level topics, called communities) rather than centered around a user tweeting/X-creting/whatever their shit.
And we also have a focus on much longer-form content than those others, which like Mastodon have smaller character limits imposed upon their thoughts (so that they cannot ramble on as I have done here:-).
But that would mean that we mainly talk about Linux...
Which, yup, sounds about right!
In that case though, [puts actshually hat on], wouldn't it be gun+verse?
That is halfway a joke.
We also still have Fediverse, to encompass everything that implements the ActivityPub protocol, e.g. Friendica, Mastodon, Pixelfed, Loops (planned but not implemented yet iirc?). So the Threadiverse/Forumverse/Whatever is meant to distinguish from that.
But Bulletinfedi is distinct enough I think?
I used to prefer "Forumverse" as well. But people don't seem to want to use it?
While "Threadiverse" seems to predate Meta's Threads here on Lemmy, see e.g. https://szmer.info/post/349217 and this comment from Ada https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/93840 from 2+ years ago. Tbf I did find a reference to Forumverse from 2 years ago as well, but then virtually nobody uses it again until essentially db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com rediscovers it a handful of months ago.
So "Threadiverse" has some history behind it, except then Meta ruined the association for many people. But... we here on Lemmy were using it first!!?
They both have features that Lemmy lacks.
Like PieFed has polls, post flairs, hashtags, categories of communities (basically multi-reddits), which are user customizable and shareable, and a lot more. Though lacking quite a bit of polish such as post and comment previews, and very little to almost no official app support (though an API was recently released and Thunder is being tested, and Interstellar already supports it). It's newer than Lemmy, but written in Python rather than the difficult Rust language, so in many ways has already surpassed Lemmy in terms of features (and even Reddit in some ways too, especially since the only new features there for the last decade were solely aimed at increasing profits rather than good experiences for the users).
Mbin's primary distinction is also supporting federation not only with Lemmy (and PieFed) but also Mastodon. And it has a different interface that some people prefer to Lemmy's. If you want both the Threadiverse/Forumverse/Whatever and Mastodon integration with a single account, this is the only option atm.
Both PieFed and Mbin are entirely separate implementations of the ActivityPub protocol, so whether you actually use them or not it is worth celebrating that Lemmy is now not the only one that implements this forum/thread/basically Reddit replacement style (other notable implementations include Friendica a Facebook replacement, and Mastodon an X/Twitter one, Pixelfed I think an Instagram one, etc.). Especially with Lemmy's association with "tankies" that tends to drive many people away (e.g. 100% of the people that I've ever told about Lemmy irl; and Reddit's r/RedditAlternatives is filled with stories of people who don't want to come here bc of all the BoTh SiDeS sAmE rhetoric that we allow here, plus Lemmy is somehow more authoritian than Reddit even, having a modlog but no modmail, no notification of a moderation event, no ability to discuss bc it simply says that a "mod" did it, and you don't have a right to even so much as be told that your content is now removed! instance admins have much more freedom here, it's fantastic, but actual users only have what manages to trickle down from them, and the software itself very much reflects an authoritarian mindset, even in comparison to Reddit).
Btw, fuck spez.
TLDR: Lemmy isn't the only game in town, yet we need a name that is both distinct from other Fediverse tools (Mastodon, Friendica, Pixelfed, Loops, etc.) while also being inclusive to the other Reddit replacement tools, currently Mbin and PieFed, but in the future including Sublinks, and who knows what else?
Originally a light-hearted post poking fun at and doing a survey to gather input, but it has turned into a thought-provoking deeper dive into what it really means to be someone that people would call a "tankie". Note that to some (die-hard conservatives), we all are "tankies" on the Fediverse, but is there a meaning beyond the pejorative of merely "holding a belief that I do not personally agree with"? Come and join the fun, or read about the community consensus even long into the future?
Recently I have been thinking about Shining in the Darkness.
I never played it when it first came out, but I love to go through series back to their OG titles and often that leads me to dungeon-crawlers:-) - Phantasy Star, Wizardry, etc. A lot of games I'll just hack so as to speed through them more quickly, but dungeon-crawlers I like the slow pacing & grinding - it helps calm my mind, especially like during seasons of the year when I may have trouble sleeping:-).
The UI is really crappy - like looking in the inventory doesn't even show which items are equipped or not - but probably for its time it was revolutionary, or something. Anyway it's functional and that's sufficient. Oh and the graphics are not on par with modern games, obviously. But it's old, so... who cares? :-P
What I like most about it is that tripartite balance between the three hardcoded characters. There is something about that... - like Kirk + Spock + McCoy in Star Trek - that somehow speaks to the human condition. In this case your main character does the deep cuts necessary to win the boss fights (even barehanded he does far more than the others when you get them, he's so strong!), and your mage support Pyra can really dish out the broad damage to a group (especially with the cursed whip, the only really worthwhile cursed item in the game for long-term use) or even all enemies, and your healer Milo splits the difference with his own magic spells + multi-targeting weapon. Milo can become your MVP with sufficient leveling and the Boost spell from Pyra - and he's so speedy that I'll give him the Sword of Light if Pyra's whip + that can kill things for zero MP at end-game.
Dragon Warrior/Quest had a similar concept - 3 hardcoded character slots, each with pre-defined names (not sure about the main one?) and back-stories for them; where the main guy was a straight warrior, then a Prince as a hybrid attacker+spellcaster, and finally a Princess offering more spells, though the latter two would swap as to whose was more powerful throughout the game iirc. Anyway, Shining in the Darkness may not have been unique, but they just did it so very well that it highly stands out in my mind in this aspect.
Shining in the Darkness also offered SUPER high resell value for items - something like half or even three-quarters of the value? So rather than my usual tactic of skipping over items to purchase so as to save gold overall, in this game I would intentionally slow myself down and buy every single one of the gear items, and thus experience gear that otherwise might never see any use at all in the game. I think it is more enjoyable that way.
I think I really enjoy the idea of a leveled-up Pyra being able to use her whip to great effect. She thereby breaks the trope of "oh I'm a weak wizard-man/woman and can only cast spells, maybe do nothing at all from the back row when I'm out of MP", and that adds a dimension to the game of deciding when to use a spell vs. using the whip to hold off on using your MP for as long as you can (despite MP-draining floors!:-P). Likewise using her cursed whip offers its own set of trade-offs: more power at first, for less control if the enemies did not die after the first turn - which if she was not a spell-caster would definitely not be worthwhile, but since the effect only happens after she chooses to use a physical attack, again offers up a whole new element of strategy to the game. Milo's multi-attack weapons have similar trade-offs - if he's a high level and Boost + Slow are/or used, it becomes REALLY powerful, plus being able to hit+kill up to 3 enemies in normal mobs also helps a great deal - and too the use of a "shield" that boosts attack power at the cost of defense.
Running contrary to that is the idea that while you may be able to mop the floor with all the common mobs, when you open up a chest and get a "boss" type monster, you have to be REALLY prepared! It is the maximum difficulty of an area that matters most, not the minimum or average. But even here... that facts leads you to behave more cautiously overall, which then ironically wraps around to encourage boldness in the short-term, as in go in and do a bunch, then get out and return, not try to limp along and then have your ass handed to you unexpectedly.
Perhaps I enjoy the reminder that while it is good to excel in life, it is also necessary to find balance, maybe with the support of others, or even just within ourselves:-). And this game was all about balance, in every aspect of it, which I very much appreciated.
That works for Lemmy + K/Mbin.
But now with +PieFed, +nodebb, and soon +flarum, and perhaps +Sublinks, Lemmyville doesn't seem very inclusive?
I already started this as a poll about post flairs, neither of which features is nor is expected to appear on Lemmy very soon iirc. The rest of the Fediverse isn't waiting around for coders to learn Rust and eventually getting around to adding features to Lemmyville.
So Lemmy in particular may want to not start being exclusive! It will get left behind if it does!