When a user lives within an instance, the user is only capable of creating a community in that instance.
My original thought process was the following:
I want to set up an instance in which the focus is nature and science, and so people that share the same interest can join in. However, I do not want to set limits on the types of communities that can be created, because I also want users to be able to build communities about their other interests without needing to be searching for another more appropriate instance.
However, after reading comments from a few users, I have considered a different perspective too. Users that join into this instance may appreciate being able to browse specifically content about science and nature when sorting through “Local”, and diluting this content with off-topic communities can worsen that experience. By setting a tighter boundary on the types of communities that are created, we may be able to provide a better “Local” experience for the average user.
So - I would like to hear from you.
Would it be worth restricting the topics of allowable communities, even if that means that some users will need to hop in between instances to create their communities?
If yes, than how should the boundaries be drawn?
Some cases are easy to define. A sports-betting community is certainly off-topic, and a Nature Sketching community certainly on-topic.
But what about a community about “Sensors”? One can argue sensors fall into ‘engineering’ and not necessarily ‘science’, but I still think that there is significant enough overlap. So, if anyone has some good tips on how to define the boundaries, please let me know.
Of course, even the boundaries can be ‘soft’, and common sense can be used, but I think users would appreciate knowing what to expect.
I would ask, how do you want people to use Mander? Do you want it to be the singular home for your members and host to all of their varied and disparate interests (bringing in subscribers from a thousand other instances who are not remotely interested in nature or science), OR a destination repository of nature and science communities (topic-centered)?
I wouldn’t worry about people needing to hop between instances, unless you’d prefer to eventually become a generalized server like beehaw. If you look at the issues they are running into right now, even though their communities are admin-created, catch-all is a model I wouldn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole as an admin. Some of the instances they’ve had to block are just… shocking.
My own use case is I had already joined a handful of different instances, and set them each up to give myself some semblance of what multireddits used to do for me.
This is my brain-food account. From here I subscribe to communities about nature (my heart), science, and more broadly, those focused on curiosity, learning, research, and with more academically-oriented (or at least thoughtful) discussion. So my own extension of your theme has some pretty soft edges.
In terms of how to draw your boundaries, I honestly thought what you have in the sidebar should have been enough, it’s short and clear and I wouldn’t have thought to add anything… but then I saw communities for games/deals, a horror fiction author fan group, and a re-creation of the ‘boring dystopia’ doomscroll subreddit lol
Rather than getting into the absolute headache of putting hard boundaries around communities, another idea might be to just add a question/item to your registration process, reiterating that the focus of Mander is nature and science in general, and asking registrants to explicitly agree to consider this before creating a new community in this space?
This would leave the theme open to interpretation, while still respecting it. Like, the science of cooking is a super cool topic I would never have considered. Someone else mentioned a beekeeping community. Those are awesome and absolutely belong here. I think keeping the boundaries soft is a good idea, and I think “nature and science” should be perfectly fine, but a confirmation filter of some kind (either in registration or in the create community form, or both) could be helpful.