I wish the fediverse would just stick to one set of jargon, and everybody uses the same terms to mean the same thing. Even “instances” should just be called “servers”. That’s all it is. This server talks to that servers, and information is exchanged.

So, if I understand this right, “magazines” on Mbin are the same as “communities” on Lemmy, are the same as subreddits on reddit. Three names to mean the same thing.

And a “Thread” is just a post. Like I’m making a post right now on Lemmy. If I did this on Mbin it would be called a “Thread”.

But then I see there’s also “comments” which is self explanitory (I hope…)

And there’s also “Posts”. But if Threads are posts, then what are Posts?

QUIT FUCKING AROUND WITH TERMS, FEDIVERSE! LETS ALL JUST KEEP THINGS SIMPLE!!!

…I keep thinking I have things figured out, until someone says “yeah, but have you tried this?” and then I look into it, and I’m confused again. Arg!

  • SorteKaninAEnglish
    71·
    3 months ago

    Using “server” instead of “instance” is misleading. An instance could use many servers behind the scenes. It may be more appropriate to simply call it a “domain” instead, cause that’s kinda all it is. But instance is also well-understood.

    If you really wanted to unify the terminology, you would call communities and magazines “groups”, as this is what they are called in ActivityPub. It is a group of all the people following the community.

    But I don’t think terminology unification is a goal in itself. Different clients and implementations can use different terminology and that’s a good thing. There’s no need to force anyone to use a certain term. There’s no need to nail down language like that - it is a fluid, evolving thing after all.