**Please use upvotes and downvotes to reflect relevance, not whether you like or dislike a post. If you disagree, share your opinion instead of downvoting. That’s not what downvotes are for. **

I’ve been thinking about a forum built around shared subjects, not popularity.

Spaces and subjects would both work as reusable tags. A space called History could be associated with a History subject, as well as narrower subjects like Ancient History or Oral History. They can share a name without being the same thing. A thread could carry multiple space and subject tags, and both kinds of tags could be reused across the network. Nobody would own “History” as a directory.

There’d be no karma or vote-based ranking. Likes and dislikes could be cosmetic, but they wouldn’t affect scores or visibility. The goal is to avoid vote brigades and keep popularity from being mistaken for quality.

Lemmy uses upvotes and downvotes to score and sort posts, which can create some of the same popularity dynamics as Reddit. This design would try to make thoughtful discussion easier to find by removing that mechanism, though no system can guarantee quality on its own.

Federation would work at two levels. Nodes could choose what to receive, and spaces or subjects could also isolate themselves from selected sources. No one would control what can exist across the whole network, but each node or community could choose what it sees.

I’m also considering optional paid moderators. For the node I host, I’d choose moderators for their ability to judge discussion on its merits, using clear rules rather than popularity or agreement with a majority. Other nodes could choose a different moderation approach. My node’s approach would be merit.

That would need safeguards like public guidelines, explanations for important decisions, and appeals. Judging merit can be subjective, so the process should be open to scrutiny.

It probably wouldn’t appeal to everyone, and that may be fine. I’d rather have a smaller community that understands the ethos than chase growth at any cost.

What problems do you see, especially with moderation, discovery, and preventing communities from becoming echo chambers? Obviously “anti-echo-chamber” and federation don’t completely mesh with each other. but the idea here is that one competent node should be enough to carry the network, other nodes exist primarily as backups more so than being communities.

 FEDERATED NETWORK
shared protocol, content, and discovery
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
┌────▼─────┐ ┌────▼─────┐
│ NODE A │◄──────── federation ───────────►│ NODE B │
│ │ │ │
│ Chooses │ │ Chooses │
│ what to │ │ what to │
│ receive │ │ receive │
└────┬─────┘ └────┬─────┘
└──────────────────┬──────────────────────────┘
│
shared content graph
│
┌───────────────────┼────────────────────┐
│ │ │
┌────▼─────┐ ┌────▼─────┐ ┌────▼─────┐
│ SPACE │ │ SPACE │ │ SPACE │
│ History│ │ Books │ │ Science │
└────┬─────┘ └────┬─────┘ └────┬─────┘
│ │ │
│ contains │ contains │ contains
▼ ▼ ▼
┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐
│ TOPIC │ │ TOPIC │ │ TOPIC │
│ History │ │ Fiction │ │ Biology │
├──────────┤ └──────────┘ └──────────┘
│Ancient │
│ History │
├──────────┤
│ Oral │
│ History │
└────┬─────┘
│
│ Topics are reusable tags.
│ A space and topic can share a name,
│ but they are different things.
▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│ THREAD │
│ │
│ Tagged with multiple│
│ topics and visible │
│ in relevant spaces │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│
comments and replies


FEDERATION AND FILTERING
┌──────────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────┐
│ Nodes can choose which │ │ Topics can choose which │
│ nodes or topics to │ │ sources to receive from │
│ receive from │ │ or isolate from │
└──────────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────────┘

PARTICIPATION
┌──────────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────┐
│ Cosmetic likes/dislikes │ │ No karma or vote-based │
│ do not rank content │ │ ranking │
└──────────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────────┘

OPTIONAL MODERATION
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Nodes choose their moderation approach. The host node │
│ selects paid moderators for merit-based judgment, using │
│ clear rules, explanations, and an appeals process. │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘