Say what you will about reddit, at least an established subreddit was the place to gather on the topic, ie r/technology etc.
With Lemmy, doesn’t it follow that similar communities on different instances will simply dilute the userbase, for example !technology@lemmy.ml and !technology@beehaw.org. How do we best use lemmy as a (small c) community when a topic can be split amongst many (large C) Communities?
This is an earnest question, in no way am I suggesting lemmy is inferior to reddit. I’m quite enjoying myself here.
I suggest creating some communities like “FindingTech”, and “FindingScience” and “FindingPets” with some similar naming convention - that covers this topic explicitly. That Finding* communities be the place people discuss the various instances and their experiences/ideals.
I could also see someone creating an entire magazine-like website that highlights new and changing communities and new owner/operators on the scene. Also present a tree of links that is organized based on reviews and allows bookmarking. Such data could be passed down to mobile clients or even some kind of webapp page of Lemmy sites.
Reddit was one big monolithic system operating under a multinational corporation jurisdiction. Small time Lemmy instances may be following conventions of a nation that end-users have never visited… it is much more of a “World Wide Web” convention, and you can see it much more in your face in how the language choice is presented to you on every posting you make.
Think about it - how long until owner/operators of Lemmy instances have to deal with DMCA takedown requests for images? Court-ordered disclosure of IP address and browser information? Who is to say that an operator won’t just put everyone’s IP Address out as public record - there are forums that operate that way. With massive websites like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook - a government seeking copies of deleted comments and IP Address is all behind the scenes and rarely disclosed (and even then, mostly disclosed in news reports that police got a copy of social media messages and had an account shut down after a shooting or other crime).
this is completely different than the issue described. A unified approach on search and/or communities is not being solved by a community where people will suggest other communities.