this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!

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Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)

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Context: I made a poll on PieFed about the new post flairs (so if you are one of the few hundred people who have a PieFed account, follow that link and answer there). Unfortunately Lemmy has neither polls nor post flairs, so this post is to open up the discussion to the wider Fediverse, or rather the subset of it that encompasses Lemmy + Mbin + PieFed, which is called... what exactly?

Is Threadiverse too traumatic & tainted by association with Meta's (all but entirely defunct) Threads? Is The Verse too cool/poetic/nerdy (but niche) to be understood? I highly advise against Lemmyverse bc mainstream normal people are far less tolerant of tankies than we who are here are willing to put up with. Simply listing the software available sometimes is the best option - like the Interstellar app supports all of Lemmy + Mbin + PieFed, but most support at best 1 or 2 of those - but usually is too long to say and does not roll off the tongue, plus will just keep growing as time goes on. Is Forumverse thus the least bad of the available options, or perhaps you have a better idea? πŸ’‘

Anyway, the start to a listing:

  1. Threadiverse
  2. Forumverse
  3. (The) Verse
  4. Lemmy + Mbin + PieFed
  5. Something else?

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[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 31 points 1 week ago (4 children)

As the creator of Mbin I'm also calling it Threadiverse.

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@melroy@kbin.melroy.org NodeBB here, agreed.

It really is the most succinct nickname to describe the type of software we are... and I feel that outweighs possible association with Threads.

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 6 points 1 week ago

I follow you now :)

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you for weighing in, this is quite helpful! πŸ™

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Lemmy Federate also says this:

1: Threadiverse refers to Fediverse software that implements "FEP-1b12: group federation". For example, Lemmy, Mbin, Guppe, NodeBB and others...

Maybe try to get a piefed namedrop there?

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[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 points 1 week ago

Threadiverse is by far the best name for it.

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[–] otter@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've been using threadiverse, but I prefer forumverse

It's immediately clear what it's referring to, and it leaves it open to other compatible platforms once they implement activity pub nicely. Being able to subscribe and post to official support forums from the forumverse would be a cool promo point

Also people refer to many things as "threads". Conversations, comment sections, discord has threads. Forum is much more clear

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 8 points 1 week ago

I used to prefer "Forumverse" as well. But people don't seem to want to use it?

While "Threadiverse" seems to predate Meta's Threads here on Lemmy, see e.g. https://szmer.info/post/349217 and this comment from Ada https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/93840 from 2+ years ago. Tbf I did find a reference to Forumverse from 2 years ago as well, but then virtually nobody uses it again until essentially db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com rediscovers it a handful of months ago.

So "Threadiverse" has some history behind it, except then Meta ruined the association for many people. But... we here on Lemmy were using it first!!?

[–] ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Personally I dislike anything with -verse involved because big companies have run it into the ground and then some.

The boring, dry ways of describing them work best in my opinion.

Federated forums is the driest, most technical and to the point but not very telling.

Swap out forum for link aggregator and you have similar, arguably even more technical (certainly more of a mouthful).

Connected/linked forums might be more approachable, more readily conveying how these are separate forums but networked together.

Cross-forums may work as well to the same end, but not sure how immediately understandable cross may be in this context and outside of gaming spaces.

Whatever the case I kind of think this has things backwards. What's more important than describing and talking about the backend tech is pointing people to any of the sites built with them that have anything of interest to them to bother with. I can't think of anything online I've ever gone to or used because someone told me it was using Apache, Nginx, phpBB, or like an Open Source Web Server or using such and such CDN.

The reason why is simple: next to nobody talks like that. The only people that might are deep in web dev.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

This is the correct but boring (but correct) answer.

Welcome to the cross-faggregatorverse

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[–] _NetNomad@fedia.io 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i think threadiverse is the move. partly because it's already in regular use and partky because it's very self-explanatory. forumverse could have some legs to it now that more traditional forum software like nodebb and soon flarum support federation now, maybe it could refer to the broader category containing traditional forums and the threadiverse, but i feel like leaving out the "fedi" part kinda defeats the point (threadiverse at least partially maintains it by being a pun on it). maybe fediforums is the way to go?

it's a whole 'nother can of worms but ironically in my experience the "verse" part of threadiverse is more offputting than the "thread" part because people think "metaverse," but that's just anecdotal and the term fediverse itself already has too much momentum to easily fall out of fashion

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[–] wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io 13 points 1 week ago

A quorum of forums.

Threadiverse

[–] celeste@kbin.earth 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Forumverse, I guess.

(Though I'm always in favor of silly word combos, there aren't many good ones. I like Piebin, but how do you get lemmy in there? Plebin? No thanks.)

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I'd like to see more proper forum features in.fedi software. Give me the full forum experience

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[–] omgboom@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] Snoopy@piefed.social 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Well, if you look at the sidebar of !fediverse@piefed.social i included NodeBB. πŸ˜…

In this post too πŸ₯Ή

Forumverse : for any news and features about Lemmy, Mbin, NodeBB, PieFed

So it can't be Lemmy,Mbin,PieFed. And i'm adding flarum.

However, we can create separate category :

  • aggregator link : lemmy,mbin,piefed
  • forum : nodebb, flarum
  1. Thank to Meta, i don't like it...
  2. My favorite one, it remind me of forum era
  3. Abstract and beautiful. Poetry, bible and verb. Something we have never see before 😊.
  4. i'm against. Link aggregator shouldn't be tied by a software name but a global concept as thread of forum. If i have 6 softwares...do you write them all ?
  5. linkagg lousy but pratical. Bad name are the best. 😎

I think we should redo the post, but, for now, let's see where it go 😊

Edit : added answer

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[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 7 points 1 week ago

The linked linkers, because we're link aggregators that link together.

[–] creamlike504@jlai.lu 7 points 1 week ago

I've always liked threadiverse, since it describes what's unique about this aspect of the Fediverse.

I've been calling it threadiverse because that is what I saw most other people call it.

Really all it is is "ActivityPub groups" or if that is too technical, "fediverse groups".

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Forumverse makes the most sense but it really doesn’t roll of the tounge.

Hence I prefer Lemmyverse or Threadiverse.

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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Threadiverse kinda captures it, but it also calls association with Threads (by Meta), like if it's the parent of it, while in fact it's not even part of it.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

That's unfortunate, because some of us were using that term before Threads existed.

[–] Skunk@jlai.lu 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Oh shit my vote made 100%, I didn’t know I was the first to vote.

The Verse it is then 😁

Le Verse in my corner of the world.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 4 points 1 week ago

Maybe we are poetic!? :-P

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[–] youronlyone@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago (5 children)

When the first Reddit migration happened, the migrants called it #Threadiverse and has always been that way. Although some tried to change it (Threads was not around yet, or public, IIRC), it didn't work, the migrants prefer Threadiverse so it stuck.

Changing names in the Fediverse is not easy since it has grown humongous already. Back in 2008 it was simply called #Identiverse. Then a few years later it morphed into the #Fediverse (this was before ActivityPub, yes, the Fediverse is years older than ActivityPub).

Back in 2021/2022, we tried to change the name "Fediverse" because Twitter migrants and the Press/Media were whining too much about it. Even though we reached a consensus, the we were far too small compared to the number of new people.

The people who kept on complaining about the name "Fediverse", when they were asked to participate in the disucssion and polls, they did not. When they were presented with the new name, they either ignored us or started whining again. 🀷🏽

Anyway, if there's a huge population involved, it's not going to be easy.

Now, I'm not discouraging you, rather, I shared our experience in the hopes that you'll find a better way. Because personally, I'm not so fond of "Threadiverse", haha.

If you use, for example, the lemmyBB interface, it's no longer "threadi", it's a forum. 😝 (I know, lame reason.)

Oh! One thing that came out of trying to rename the Fediverse, people don't want "-verse" anywhere because it's overused. Multiverse. Metaverse. Fediverse. Threadiverse. Benverse. Omniverse. Panverse. Whoverse. Trekverse.

[–] youronlyone@fedia.io 7 points 1 week ago

Hmm… I like the -ville suggestion. #Threadiville perhaps?

  • The #Fediverse is the "universe".
    • The -ville is the "local group".
      • The various software are the "galaxies".
        • The instances are the "planets".

So:

  • Fediverse
    • Threadiville local group
      • Mbin galaxy
        • Fedia IO planet
      • Kbin galaxy
        • Kbin social planet
      • Nodebb galaxy
      • Lemmy galaxy
        • Lemmy World planet
    • Microville local group
      • Mastoforks galaxy
      • Pleroma galaxy
    • Writingville local group
      • Plume galaxy
      • WriteFreely galaxy
      • Ghost galaxy
    • Faceville local group
      • Friendica galaxy
      • -key forks galaxy
    • CMSville local group
      • Hubzilla galaxy
      • Drupal galaxy
      • Wordpress galaxy

😁

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[–] macfranc@poliversity.it 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@OpenStars In the past we had gotten into the habit of calling the set of thread-based environments #threadverse, but the advent of the terrible Meta service has polluted this denomination.

Personally I would use the expression #topicverse

@fediverse

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[–] irelephant@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Bc a network of forum boards?

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[–] arakhis_@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I need ad-like branding on what Mbin and PieFed are.

Im too lazy to look it up

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

They both have features that Lemmy lacks.

Like PieFed has polls, post flairs, hashtags, categories of communities (basically multi-reddits), which are user customizable and shareable, and a lot more. Though lacking quite a bit of polish such as post and comment previews, and very little to almost no official app support (though an API was recently released and Thunder is being tested, and Interstellar already supports it). It's newer than Lemmy, but written in Python rather than the difficult Rust language, so in many ways has already surpassed Lemmy in terms of features (and even Reddit in some ways too, especially since the only new features there for the last decade were solely aimed at increasing profits rather than good experiences for the users).

Mbin's primary distinction is also supporting federation not only with Lemmy (and PieFed) but also Mastodon. And it has a different interface that some people prefer to Lemmy's. If you want both the Threadiverse/Forumverse/Whatever and Mastodon integration with a single account, this is the only option atm.

Both PieFed and Mbin are entirely separate implementations of the ActivityPub protocol, so whether you actually use them or not it is worth celebrating that Lemmy is now not the only one that implements this forum/thread/basically Reddit replacement style (other notable implementations include Friendica a Facebook replacement, and Mastodon an X/Twitter one, Pixelfed I think an Instagram one, etc.). Especially with Lemmy's association with "tankies" that tends to drive many people away (e.g. 100% of the people that I've ever told about Lemmy irl; and Reddit's r/RedditAlternatives is filled with stories of people who don't want to come here bc of all the BoTh SiDeS sAmE rhetoric that we allow here, plus Lemmy is somehow more authoritian than Reddit even, having a modlog but no modmail, no notification of a moderation event, no ability to discuss bc it simply says that a "mod" did it, and you don't have a right to even so much as be told that your content is now removed! instance admins have much more freedom here, it's fantastic, but actual users only have what manages to trickle down from them, and the software itself very much reflects an authoritarian mindset, even in comparison to Reddit).

Btw, fuck spez.

TLDR: Lemmy isn't the only game in town, yet we need a name that is both distinct from other Fediverse tools (Mastodon, Friendica, Pixelfed, Loops, etc.) while also being inclusive to the other Reddit replacement tools, currently Mbin and PieFed, but in the future including Sublinks, and who knows what else?

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 4 points 1 week ago

no ability to discuss bc it simply says that a β€œmod” did it

this is actually an option for instance admins to choose

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[–] arakhis_@feddit.org 4 points 1 week ago

thanks this helps alot :P

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago

Mbin "Lemmy but also Mastadon"

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've been calling them "Redditlikes" or "Reddit replacements" in ordinary conversation. We won't need terms like that forever, though.

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[–] Madbrad200@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Gonna be the odd one out here and say that all of these names are kinda stupid, but Lemmyverse is probably the best of the bunch.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 4 points 1 week ago

The word itself sounds nice, but is the least inclusive.

That's like saying that all of these conversations that we all have are on Lemmy.World? Sure, it's between 50 and 80% true (users and the most active communities, respectively, including this one we are in now), but it misses a ton of nuance and detail there.

PieFed, Mbin, and now nodebb, with others on the way (flarum, perhaps Sublinks) also exist.

So why call this all "Lemmy", when that's only a part - granted, by far the majority portion - of the whole?

[–] hilliard@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is that bc of this being a post aggregation? Then wouldn't it be an "aggreverse"?

[–] hilliard@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)
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[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Lembipie. What else?

(And why does this particular subset need a name, anyway? The plus combo is easier to get the point across with)

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[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (6 children)

What about "Fedivotes" or "Votiverse?" Upvotes and downvotes are pretty key distinctives to this form of social network.

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[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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