cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/3658116

or maybe some other terminology would be better? lots of people get confused when you ask them to choose an instance, sometimes I think even the word “proxy”, “host”, or “hub” is simpler

the specific terms aren’t my point, just a discussion to see if we can come up with a better name

  • NixEnglish
    16•9 months ago

    Server is the best term. It’s the most accurate and it’s already understood by the masses because of discord servers. Especially since people know anyone’s can create their own discord server and still talk with anyone rose on discord (through dms or visiting their server) so it makes it really easy to understand the fediverse and lemmy if we just call them servers

    • @[email protected]English
      13•9 months ago

      I think Discord actually is destroying meaning of “server” for many people. It should be called “communities” or “guilds”. Server is not an abstract division between communities, but an actual machine serving and processing data, so you really can’t create a Discord server unless you reverse engineer their code.

      • Max-PEnglish
        4•9 months ago

        Pretty sure the only reason Discord went with the server terminology is because they were competing with TeamSpeak, Ventrillo and Mumble which were all actual servers people would host.

        They completely murdered the meaning of the term just so they could advertise as “look how easy it is to make a Discord server! You don’t even need a server or mess with firewalls and IP forwarding and Hamachi, it just works!”

        I fucking hate it.

      • NixEnglish
        0•9 months ago

        i know discord servers are run on your own servers but us using the term would both be accurate and be understandable by the average person.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•9 months ago

          No, calling Discord groups/communities/guilds “servers” is not accurate and is totally wrong. You cannot create your own Discord server and Discord would never let you.

          It’s like calling Facebook a website hosting, because you can create a “site” on it.

          • quicklimeEnglish
            1•9 months ago

            I haven’t been on FB for several years, but ugh there was a while in the late 2010s when so many people over there were referring to FB groups as sites and just arghh arrghh aaarrgghhh.

          • NixEnglish
            1•9 months ago

            …. Im talking about lemmy servers. Calling lemmy instances servers. I don’t care what people call discord servers im saying they already call them servers. So people will understand what a lemmy server is because they already know what a discord server is and the concept is similar enough they will immediately understand how lemmy servers work and can still communicate with one another.