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
If we were to use a different term, I’d probably go with something like “provider”, like “email provider” or “internet service provider” or “phone service provider”, you’d have a Lemmy provider. Providers tend to be associated with mostly interoperable things so it fits alright.
Anything else is a wild misuse and abuse of technical terms that have actual meanings. Discord already murdered the definition of “server” with calling their spaces “servers” banking on user ignorance and familiarity with the term to sell them on a completely different kind of service.
Bigger instances run on several servers, maybe even distributed geographically. They’re definitely not proxies. Host could work but it’s a bit nondescript. Hub doesn’t really sell the decentralization aspect. Even server doesn’t quite do it anyway, since thanks to Discord people now associate that with isolated spaces anyway.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It would be simpler if users didn’t need to understand the details of federating to join in the first place.
“Format” or “initialise”? “Directory” or “folder”…or maybe “drawer”? It’s already termed “instance” for a few years now by the Devs, so…
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