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
Instance are far from being simple proxies. While instances can act as proxies for other instances, the aim is to have each instances to have their own communities and be somewhat self sufficient. If you remove the federation, Lemmy (and other fediverse software) still work, it’s just that it is more difficult in that case to reach a critical mass of users.
yea I understand, but I think the term “instance” confuses new users
I would only use terms like “proxy” or “hub” if the instance actually had federation enabled, otherwise I would probably just call it a “server” or “host”
The thing I like about proxy or hub is that they imply you can access the other content out there and the choice isn’t super important
the point of this post is to reevaluate our terminology because it’s a huge source of confusion for new users, I don’t know what term is best but I’m pretty sure “instance” is not good
no offense, but ‘proxy’ and ‘hub’ are also technophobe-ambiguous. servers, however… is somewhat mainstream. all my ignorant staff understand the server concept.
I agree with you on proxy.
For hub I am not sure, that sounds a bit more mainstream to me, with the caveat that English is not my mother tongue. That gives a nice image that an instance is basically an access hub to a whole universe of data.