Hey, I gave this a watch but their use of the word ‘local’ doesn’t match mine in this case. When I use the word local, I’m referring to a geographic area, or at least a server that represents a geographic area. It looks like when local-first talk about local, they’re referring to interaction on a device. It would be nice to be able to have habitat not require an internet connection to queue a post, this is a great idea and I’ll look into that, but their point on “it should still work on device if the remote server is down (or even disappears forever)” I don’t believe is possible when we’re building a community platform. Or, at least, if such a thing is possible, I wouldn’t know where to begin. I appreciate the heads-up though, I love that such a group exists.

I haven’t, but I will absolutely look at this on the weekend! Thanks so much

Thanks for this! 😃 I have been going back and forth on the idea of providing the end user with the ability to create their own categories. I was wondering whether it would be better to have an Other type category which the admin can react to and create categories as needed, but your post has pushed me back to the idea of allowing category creation. I think if I do implement that, I’ll have a switch for it, so that the instance admin can choose.

Thanks! Worst case scenario is that I’ll learn a lot and have fun doing so.

😀 that’s great to hear! Thanks

Hey, you asked to be kept updated, so I thought I’d let you know that I have been working on Habitat: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/building-habitat/

Ha! Funnily enough I just responded to a different comment along these same lines: that’s the beauty of the fediverse. If a community of moaners exist, they could have their own instance. Or in the case of Lemmy (and the very theoretical Habitat), their own categories that other users can tune out from. I think you’re going to have places in which moderation is a success and places in which it isn’t. Anything that isn’t moderated appropriately and gets taken down as a result of something actually illegal won’t affect the communities that are appropriately moderated, because it can all be separated. It seems to be working well enough for Lemmy.

I think that’s the beauty of the fediverse though. Any community can be anything you want it to be. If some users don’t like how an instance is being used, they could create a competing instance that’s more aimed that their wants and needs.

Thanks for this. Perhaps invite only could work. When I signed up to my Lemmy instance, I was asked to say something nice about the UK to prove that I wasn’t a bot. I imagine this could work with a local quiz. But I personally favour the idea of it being open and communities being so small that it wouldn’t really benefit anyone to abuse. But it would certainly be nice to have the administration tools to quickly put a stop to it if it does occur. Something to think about. Thanks

I can’t seem to find anything relevant when I search for Topix, but I think we learn to moderate our local communities effectively. Just like here on Lemmy. The difference being that owners will have fewer people to moderate, so it should in theory be easier. If an owner is vile, create a competing instance.

I hadn’t heard of Yikyak, but it looks very similar to my mock-up. Thanks

Yes, I discovered this for myself yesterday after getting a lot of suggestions that it won’t catch on. I can do my best to foster my own community. If others do the same, that’s a bonus!

Thanks for this. I really appreciate (and enjoyed!) the use cases. What I have in mind is mostly the information sharing use case. I think there’s been a lot of focus on such a platform “catching on” and what it means on the global scale, and I did get caught up in that for a brief moment, but I’ve realised that my interest on the global scale is misplaced. I want something that primarily works for a local community, and I want it to be decentralised in a fashion so that if instances decide to acknowledge each-other’s existence, they’ll provide the ability to look for physically close posts by pointing to each other when relevant. This might not be how the rest of the Fediverse works, or want’s to work, but it seems better and actually simpler in design to me. I think I’m going to go off and try building my own thing. If nothing else, it’ll be a learning experience.

The Hometown functionality isn’t what I’m describing. I want something in which the experience is about physical proximity to the subject. I may be bad at explaining this. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Yes, it looks like this is a better comparison than Nextdoor in terms of features.

Hey, you’re the second person to suggest that it could be achieved with Mastodon. I’ll look into it, and if it can be achieved with Mastodon in the way that I’m picturing, I won’t be reinventing the wheel, thanks.

I’ll look into that, thanks. If someone has already done the work that’d be amazing!

The Home functionality could and probably would be used like Nextdoor is used, however categorisation would allow for niche interests that fall outside of general neighbourly discussion. The nearby functionality would result in functionality that I don’t believe Nextdoor offers, which is exploration focused.

Additionally, it’s decentralised, which I don’t believe Nextdoor is.

Thanks Rimu! Steal away! I just watched a video of you demonstrating PieFed. It’s good to get some positive feedback from a developer with experience in building a decentralised platform, because as of yet, I don’t have that.

I’ll almost certainly be using ActivityPub if and when, and I’ll keep in mind this address amendment :D

Hey, I’ve been looking into the idea of using population density as an indicator of how big a community should be, but it didn’t feel right that the platform would be deciding the boundaries of each community. I then thought about the idea that the owner, upon setup, would draw a shape on a map that would indicate the boundaries of their desired community. How do you feel that solution would that solution work around your river?