I think the main point of decentralization is to spread the burden of hosting around so that no individual has control of the system. I think having themed servers like what you're suggesting would aid in discoverability of different communities, but the downside is that that would mean individual servers would have monopolies on certain subjects.

I don't agree. If I like LOTR and giraffes I don't want to create an account on both "instance groups". I want to do like today and create a single account, then subscribe to the communities I am interested in wherever they are.

To me it sounds like you are sort of mixing up community location and community discovery. This is sort of the case right now because instances have a list of local communities but I think that it is best that they are separated. For example on Reddit I don't generally find new communities by scanning the entire list of communities. I usually find them when someone mentions a related community in a comment of a community that I am already in. Or when I stumble across a community when searching the web. When you discover and subscribe to communities this way it doesn't really matter where they are hosted or if they are grouped. You can organically discover things that interest you over time (although I agree that it can be a bit slow to start).

I guess it's the point of the fediverse as far as I understand. Kind of like being members of a bunch of old school forums. Unfortunately for me it's not really what I'm looking for, and I like the unified aspect of reddit.

@_finger_
We can have both generic instances and instances around a particular topic.

We already have a few lemmy dedicated to a particular community like latte.isnot.coffee and startrek.website

My thoughts are what if the instance admins or mods are pricks? What if the instance shuts down?

I think the power of the fediverse is that there is redundancy with the communities on different instances. I feel like it's a very human need to have everything neatly organized and in its place, but the internet is all about redundancy to ensure no single points of failure.

The fediverse mimics that by creating a web of small related communities, spread out over multiple instances, ran by different people, rather than a giant single community for one thing, on one instance, run by one person.

This is good but at the moment the user base isn't big enough to support splitting interests like that.

AI and machine learning tech instance over here looking for members. ran themed communities BEFORE reddit and slashdot, doing it again.

Would be nice if it was "divided" by user types too. Imagine a post about a new Marvel movie and you could view a shared comment thread but also filter to remove "marvel-fans", or see only "cineasts", without leaving the thread. Could lead to more bubbles, but could also make it really easy to see what other bubbles are thinking.

Hopping between instances would have to be simplified significantly.

I think it will more of less follow that path naturally in the years to come, if it ever catches on. You can already see this happening with some instances (ie lemmy.ca mostly devoted to canadian topics, etc)

You have to remember that the amount of lemmy servers exploded in the past week or so. We're pretty much figuring this out collectively

Wouldn't the risk be though, that an instance devoted to music, for example, would mean that all music discussion would fall under the control of a single mod/team, opening us up to the kind of controlling shenanigans Reddit was pulling?

And were the instance to go down, it would take everything on that topic with it.

I realise that people would still be free to make their own community on any topic on any instance, but if instances were topic themed, they would likely soon dominate any "independent" communities on that same topic.

All that said, I still have a limited understanding of the fediverse, so perhaps it's not an issue.

So sort of like what the forums of yore were like? You’d have a website for a dedicated, broad topic (like a video game franchise or a brand you like), then subforums for topics in it (specific games in the series or specific products by the brand)

I think, in time, those will come organically. Maybe those communities won't be purpose built to be dedicated to a single topic, but despite federation I wouldn't be surprised if instances popped up with rules about topics discussed. Still federated, but communities within themselves will be regulated somewhat.

I'm not sure how to feel about this, maybe it's just the time I spent on reddit has jaded me, but there's divisive topics that I'm not sure would do well if housed within the same instance without coming down to name calling and unsavoury behaviour. A reddit example, early days r/lowsodiumcyberpunk2077 and r/cyberpunk 2077, both held extremely differing opinions. An even worse example because politics got into the mix, r/thelastofus and r/thelastofus2. If mods keep on top of it with good rules set in place and are enforced, could be good.

I'm not sure either if forcing topics to newly deployed instances is a realistic path, either.