I slightly disagree. I think what needs to happen is there needs to be general instances, and specialized instances. By the nature of how they work, specialized instances would have more content, but less hosted users.
So Lemmy.World would be a general instance. You can host any community on a general instance, but it will do better if it can be hosted on a specialized instance (which most topics can be).
There may be niche topics that will do better on general instances, mostly if it doesn’t fit into any other catagory.
But lets say you want to follow your favorite baseball team. Well, you know Sports.InstanceName has all the sports. So you go there, search for your team and find [email protected]
And if everybody did this, the fediverse would at least make sense.
But lets say you want a community based on collecting toe nail clippings from the right foots pinky. Well, I can’t imagine a specialized instance would ever be made that you’d include THAT community. So you go to [email protected] and it will have like 3 subscribers.
Now, back to the baseball team for a second. IF you only come to the fediverse to talk baseball, maybe you’re fine being hosted on Sports.Instance. However most people would want their home instant to be a general instance. So that when they click “local” they get a bit of everything, whereas you hosted on the sports instance would only get sports.
The problem I see with the fediverse is there is a HUUUUUUUUGE learning curve. When you first get here, with zero introduction to the concepts of the platform, you’re just thrown in. I’ve even been insulted by people who assumed I didn’t know how the platform worked. Saying “You’re supposed to sort by subscribed, dumbass!”. The thing is, the problem I was describing WAS sorted by subscribed.
The way I’m describing, a new user can know "oh, this is where I find the sports, this is where I find the music, this is where I find the TV, ect ect ect.
You can still make [email protected], but without people looking for it there, you won’t get many people subscribing unless there’s some MAJOR issue with Sports.Instance.
You could also make Baseball.Instance. whereas Sports.Instance would be more of an all inclusive to all sports instance, which would help smaller sports communities grow, Baseball.Instance would be all about baseball communities.
And if I seem like I’m explaining the obvious, thats good. Thats the point. I want it to be obvious what every instance/community is, where it is, before you even seek it out or click it.
[email protected]. That doesn’t exist, but even as a hypothetical example, you already know what that community is going to be, and what that entire instance is catered to. You CAN’T click it, because it’s hypothetical, but you already know what it is.
That + a guide to the fediverse would go a LOOOOOONG way for newbies. I still don’t know how to visit Lemm.ee main page for example, without going there directly so I can stay logged in. I can figure out how to go to individual communities while logged in (and that whole process needs a simplification while we’re on the topic), but I can’t go to the main page, so I can click local, and see whats actively being posted to the whole instance like I can on my own instance. Theres probably a way…and it’s probably a bunch of overly complicated series of steps that isn’t naturally intuitive. Which is the biggest hurdle for this platform.