I’ve noticed a lot of people complain that niche communities aren’t really all that present here or are difficult to find. Having some consolidated in specific instances is very helpful for discovery as well as spreading the federation around.

I started with literature.cafe (and am sticking with literature.cafe, obviously! That’s not going anywhere!) But last night I was looking at potential domains and was curious about what an art focused lemmy instance could be potentially called. I managed to snag lemmyloves.art for very very cheap, but I came to the realization as the morning came that not only is making an instance only as useful as the people who desire to use it… I currently pay for my own out of pocket and if I’m making another instance alongside this one it needs to be able to last long term.

I have the time, energy and ability to build the instance and manage it with similar principles that literature.cafe currently has (albeit slightly different to address the needs of art) but it’s just a matter of knowing if people will actually be willing to use it and if support for it would be a possibility. I can pay for literature.cafe out of pocket right now no problem, but hosting another instance that I feel very likely may need to be scaled up later on is kind of iffy thing for me to commit to right now. As well as the likelihood of it needing a team as well, knowing if there would be anyone interested in helping moderate as well would be helpful as well

Just generally curious what peoples thoughts are. I think back to the lemmy dev ama and one of the devs saying they wanted a “ravelry” focused instance to spring up lmao

  • anolemmi@lemmi.social
    22·
    11 months ago

    This is how Lemmy should be, with the majority of the content being hosted on themed instances. Easy to browse if you want to focus on something, otherwise use Lemm.ee or other “catch all” instances if you want a more /all experience. Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml shouldn’t host well over half the content I see. Easy targets for DDOS and then their users are screwed AND their hosted content stops federating.

    Spread out is the way to go, it’s the whole point of the fediverse.

    lemmyloves.art seems like a name that could catch on. I’m sure if it became a prominent art community on Lemmy people would donate to support the upkeep.

    • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeOP
      8·
      11 months ago

      Hm, seems like my idea may have to wait for next month. I checked and unfortunately don’t have the initial cost for paying for a new VPS budgeted for this month AND the current cost of this instance.

      • Die4Ever@programming.dev
        4·
        11 months ago

        I don’t get what you mean here? A separate cost for a VPS and an instance? You know it’s possible to run 2 Lemmy instances in the same VPS? You just have to change the docker config to use a different port

  • hitagi (ani.social)@ani.socialEnglish
    11·
    11 months ago

    I like the idea. I think we need more niche-interest instances like lemmy.film, lemmy.studio, literature.cafe (yours), startrek.website, ttrpg.network, slrpnk.net, ani.social (ours), etc as their respective admins understand the needs and issues of their communities better. Also we already have so many generic and tech instances to choose from.

  • Loulou@lemmy.mindoki.com
    6·
    11 months ago

    Hello !

    I have set up a server (lemmy.mindoki.com) and I’m dedicating it to the arts.

    I’m a big Moebius fan so I made a Moebius community where I post things (it’s all quite new to me) but more art communities would be very nice!

    It’s an okay beefy server with 4TB for content (I’ll add more if needed).

    What do you think about setting something up there? You’ll have full control of course.

    Cheers

    Loulou

    • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeOP
      2·
      11 months ago

      Oooh heck yeah! That solves that issue. I’d love to help out over there! I like the name, it sounds super cute :)

      If you need any help on the technical side of things/admin stuff I can help if you want. Lemmy is annoying as fuck to set up and manage sometimes 🫠 I’d def say if you’re hosting files locally consider enabling conversion of images to webp for using less storage space and consider the potential of object storage in the long term as well as limiting upload sizes alongside using a blocklist to block some of the worst of the worst fediverse instances (there is some nasty mastodon instances out there, like genuinely.) I have my matrix link in my bio (I think?)

      • Loulou@lemmy.mindoki.com
        2·
        11 months ago

        Thank you ❤️!

        Yes the technical side have been not without complications and I still haven’t figured out the email part (I’m at OVH). For image sizes I thought 4TB could host 50.000 images of max size (20MB if I got that number right) so a good start. Bigger images (scans) would need more but drive space isn’t that expensive so for now I think it’s kind of reasonable. Gotta setup a backup system though…

        Yes, I will gladly accept a Blocklist, we can try to hash out the “rules” too (no fachos, hate, evil …).

        What about making a meta community over at mindoki?

        • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeOP
          1·
          11 months ago

          I can help you figure out the email stuff, it’s really really frustrating to get working with lemmy but not impossible. I’ll DM my matrix chat link. And yeah, I’ve noticed some of the complications and I suspect it’s similar issues I’ve had myself as well on a VPS. There’s specific settings you need to do if you are using a VPS that has reverse DNS set to the lemmy instance domain sometimes.

  • mbryson@lemmy.ca
    5·
    11 months ago

    I have no way of helping, but this is a great idea. Art by nature supports collaboration, and so having an instance wherein users can be local to other mediums or discussions on the same instance as a whole is a wonderful idea!

  • And009@reddthat.com
    4·
    11 months ago

    A great idea indeed, I’d imagine it being the home for all sorts of artist including music, video and even writers.

    Could be one stop shop for creatives and welcome every kind of content as long as it’s unique, maybe needs a way to filter out some abusing content

      • And009@reddthat.com
        3·
        11 months ago

        Cafe has the potential to be a art sharing place as well. I think what’s important is to create a creative and accepting community that loves sharing work, knowledge and critique.

  • s_s@lemmy.one
    3·
    11 months ago

    I think this would be great.

    But, you’re going to be hosting a lot of images.