Context: I made a poll on PieFed about the new post flairs (so if you are one of the few hundred people who have a PieFed account, follow that link and answer there). Unfortunately Lemmy has neither polls nor post flairs, so this post is to open up the discussion to the wider Fediverse, or rather the subset of it that encompasses Lemmy + Mbin + PieFed, which is called… what exactly?
Is Threadiverse too traumatic & tainted by association with Meta’s (all but entirely defunct) Threads? Is The Verse too cool/poetic/nerdy (but niche) to be understood? I highly advise against Lemmyverse bc mainstream normal people are far less tolerant of tankies than we who are here are willing to put up with. Simply listing the software available sometimes is the best option - like the Interstellar app supports all of Lemmy + Mbin + PieFed, but most support at best 1 or 2 of those - but usually is too long to say and does not roll off the tongue, plus will just keep growing as time goes on. Is Forumverse thus the least bad of the available options, or perhaps you have a better idea? 💡
Anyway, the start to a listing:
- Threadiverse
- Forumverse
- (The) Verse
- Lemmy + Mbin + PieFed
- Something else?
Gonna be the odd one out here and say that all of these names are kinda stupid, but Lemmyverse is probably the best of the bunch.
The word itself sounds nice, but is the least inclusive.
That’s like saying that all of these conversations that we all have are on Lemmy.World? Sure, it’s between 50 and 80% true (users and the most active communities, respectively, including this one we are in now), but it misses a ton of nuance and detail there.
PieFed, Mbin, and now nodebb, with others on the way (flarum, perhaps Sublinks) also exist.
So why call this all “Lemmy”, when that’s only a part - granted, by far the majority portion - of the whole?
Forumverse makes the most sense but it really doesn’t roll of the tounge.
Hence I prefer Lemmyverse or Threadiverse.
Thank you for your contribution:-).
Threadiverse kinda captures it, but it also calls association with Threads (by Meta), like if it’s the parent of it, while in fact it’s not even part of it.
That’s unfortunate, because some of us were using that term before Threads existed.
When the first Reddit migration happened, the migrants called it #Threadiverse and has always been that way. Although some tried to change it (Threads was not around yet, or public, IIRC), it didn’t work, the migrants prefer Threadiverse so it stuck.
Changing names in the Fediverse is not easy since it has grown humongous already. Back in 2008 it was simply called #Identiverse. Then a few years later it morphed into the #Fediverse (this was before ActivityPub, yes, the Fediverse is years older than ActivityPub).
Back in 2021/2022, we tried to change the name “Fediverse” because Twitter migrants and the Press/Media were whining too much about it. Even though we reached a consensus, the we were far too small compared to the number of new people.
The people who kept on complaining about the name “Fediverse”, when they were asked to participate in the disucssion and polls, they did not. When they were presented with the new name, they either ignored us or started whining again. 🤷🏽
Anyway, if there’s a huge population involved, it’s not going to be easy.
Now, I’m not discouraging you, rather, I shared our experience in the hopes that you’ll find a better way. Because personally, I’m not so fond of “Threadiverse”, haha.
If you use, for example, the lemmyBB interface, it’s no longer “threadi”, it’s a forum. 😝 (I know, lame reason.)
Oh! One thing that came out of trying to rename the Fediverse, people don’t want “-verse” anywhere because it’s overused. Multiverse. Metaverse. Fediverse. Threadiverse. Benverse. Omniverse. Panverse. Whoverse. Trekverse.
What was the new name? I’ve heard open social web.
It started as a suggestion, then we compiled it and made phases of polls. (The instance clised shop, unfortunately.)
Based on those, the most that got the votes was the suggestion “Mycelium”. It was inspired by Star Trek: Discovery and the real-world mycelium.
The second one, I can’t remember but it was also related to nature’s fungi or plants.
The list of suggestions and votes were based on who participated. And at the time it was done, it was the Twitter Migration, and people were complaining loudly about the name “Fediverse”. And yet, those who participated were mostly pre-Migration people (who generally didn’t have a strong issue with “Fediverse”). 😄
Hmm… I like the -ville suggestion. #Threadiville perhaps?
- The #Fediverse is the “universe”.
- The -ville is the “local group”.
- The various software are the “galaxies”.
- The instances are the “planets”.
- The various software are the “galaxies”.
- The -ville is the “local group”.
So:
- Fediverse
- Threadiville local group
- Mbin galaxy
- Fedia IO planet
- Kbin galaxy
- Kbin social planet
- Nodebb galaxy
- Lemmy galaxy
- Lemmy World planet
- Mbin galaxy
- Microville local group
- Mastoforks galaxy
- Pleroma galaxy
- Writingville local group
- Plume galaxy
- WriteFreely galaxy
- Ghost galaxy
- Faceville local group
- Friendica galaxy
- -key forks galaxy
- CMSville local group
- Hubzilla galaxy
- Drupal galaxy
- Wordpress galaxy
- Threadiville local group
😁
- The #Fediverse is the “universe”.
Tagging @Snoopy@piefed.social.
This is a great summary of the history of the topic, thank you!:-)
deleted by creator
@OpenStars In the past we had gotten into the habit of calling the set of thread-based environments #threadverse, but the advent of the terrible Meta service has polluted this denomination.
Personally I would use the expression #topicverse
Topicverse sounds kinda nice.
To be fair, people were using Threadiverse before Meta revealed that they were working on their Threads. And now they do not want to switch?
What about boardnet?
Bc a network of forum boards?
The autism collective
Might be too obvious:-).
Alternatively, The Linux hangout.
As the creator of Mbin I’m also calling it Threadiverse.
Thank you for weighing in, this is quite helpful! 🙏
Lemmy Federate also says this:
1: Threadiverse refers to Fediverse software that implements “FEP-1b12: group federation”. For example, Lemmy, Mbin, Guppe, NodeBB and others…
Maybe try to get a piefed namedrop there?
I noticed PieFed.social on page 9, and the link is functional, even though next to it the status says “disabled”.
That site doesn’t seem very trustworthy. I wonder if it is measuring how “Lemmy-like” an instance is? Anyway I’ve never heard of that site before, but passing the note to @rimu@piefed.social anyway in case it helps:-).
It’s run by an instance admin. I wanna say lemy.lol?
even though next to it the status says “disabled”.
I believe that just means piefed.social isn’t participating in the service.
Edit: is that right, @iso@lemy.lol?
Yes, it is just disabled. Lemmy Federate supports every threadiverse software and Piefed is one of them.
Currently Piefed communities can be followed by Lemmy instances but not the other way around.
In general, every fediverse software that support FEP-1b12 and can receive Lemmy-like PM’s can register to Lemmy Federate.
/cc @OpenStars@discuss.online @rimu@piefed.social @julian@community.nodebb.org
Yeah something is screwy - PieFed.social is most definitely aware of lemy.lol (see this at https://piefed.social/instance/lemy.lol), but the last post it has from your own account seems to be nine months ago, and the second link on that page I linked, to “Posts” yields an error.
Nor does this portion of the conversation appear in this version of the OP (see here, which should have all of these responses below it but they are lacking there).
So apologies, I guess it’s not just the tool, rather the issue is wider than that: either your instance lemy.lol or PieFed.social (or both) are not communicating in the standard manner with one another. Fwiw, PieFed.social seems to have no trouble federating with (any? at least the vast majority?) of other Lemmy instances? But I will leave that to you and rimu to work out:-).
Interesting. I didn’t realize my instance wasn’t federated with Piefed. I’ll contact the Piefed admins about this.
However, this issue is probably not related to Lemmy Federate because Piefed.social doesn’t even use it.
Currently Piefed communities can be followed by Lemmy instances but not the other way around.
You mean using your tool, or overall?
Of course using the tool :)
@iso@lemy.lol what’s a “lemmy-like” PM :laughing: I think this explains why I can’t log into the site.
IIRC Lemmy and Mastodon PMs are different and incompatible. If you can receive PMs from Lemmy users then you should be able to receive auth codes. Currently @rikudou@lemmings.world is adding both Lemmy and Mastodon PMs here: https://github.com/ismailkarsli/lemmy-federate/pull/33
Also software other than Lemmy and Mbin needs to add ‘roleName: Administrator’ to their user webfinger requests. This is because ActivityPub doesn’t have a standard way to expose user roles.
I’m thinking of adding another ways of verifying like DNS based verification but still not sure. Any recommendations are welcome :)
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org NodeBB here, agreed.
It really is the most succinct nickname to describe the type of software we are… and I feel that outweighs possible association with Threads.
I follow you now :)
Threadiverse is by far the best name for it.
Personally I dislike anything with -verse involved because big companies have run it into the ground and then some.
The boring, dry ways of describing them work best in my opinion.
Federated forums is the driest, most technical and to the point but not very telling.
Swap out forum for link aggregator and you have similar, arguably even more technical (certainly more of a mouthful).
Connected/linked forums might be more approachable, more readily conveying how these are separate forums but networked together.
Cross-forums may work as well to the same end, but not sure how immediately understandable cross may be in this context and outside of gaming spaces.
Whatever the case I kind of think this has things backwards. What’s more important than describing and talking about the backend tech is pointing people to any of the sites built with them that have anything of interest to them to bother with. I can’t think of anything online I’ve ever gone to or used because someone told me it was using Apache, Nginx, phpBB, or like an Open Source Web Server or using such and such CDN.
The reason why is simple: next to nobody talks like that. The only people that might are deep in web dev.
This is the correct but boring (but correct) answer.
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?
Welcome to the cross-faggregatorverse
I’ve been using threadiverse, but I prefer forumverse
It’s immediately clear what it’s referring to, and it leaves it open to other compatible platforms once they implement activity pub nicely. Being able to subscribe and post to official support forums from the forumverse would be a cool promo point
Also people refer to many things as “threads”. Conversations, comment sections, discord has threads. Forum is much more clear
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!!?
Threadiverse
i think threadiverse is the move. partly because it’s already in regular use and partky because it’s very self-explanatory. forumverse could have some legs to it now that more traditional forum software like nodebb and soon flarum support federation now, maybe it could refer to the broader category containing traditional forums and the threadiverse, but i feel like leaving out the “fedi” part kinda defeats the point (threadiverse at least partially maintains it by being a pun on it). maybe fediforums is the way to go?
it’s a whole 'nother can of worms but ironically in my experience the “verse” part of threadiverse is more offputting than the “thread” part because people think “metaverse,” but that’s just anecdotal and the term fediverse itself already has too much momentum to easily fall out of fashion
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?
A quorum of forums.
Forumverse, I guess.
(Though I’m always in favor of silly word combos, there aren’t many good ones. I like Piebin, but how do you get lemmy in there? Plebin? No thanks.)
I’d like to see more proper forum features in.fedi software. Give me the full forum experience
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 gotta check it out, thank you for the recommendation
You are very welcome 😁
like what features are you wanting?
Lemmy already has the “New Comments” sort, which is the biggest feature of forums vs Reddit
Lemmy also has the “Chat” view for comments, which is good but needs to show context with them as my feature request here says https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2544
I’ve been calling it threadiverse because that is what I saw most other people call it.
Really all it is is “ActivityPub groups” or if that is too technical, “fediverse groups”.
