Do you like the Mastodon approach of consistent branding for different instances?
It makes it easier to understand what this is and that they are interconnected, but I think I enjoy unique branding/themes more in practice now that I am actually using the fediverse.
I do think there does need to be an amount of consistancy in branding so it's more apparent that these things can talk to eachother.
Something like many Reddit subs do with the snoo, where they took a common, recognizable icon and customized it for their instance would have worked well if there was a similar icon for instances to latch onto, but we're past that point now.
I mean there's the Lemmy mouse mascot guy, but yeah instances are already pretty established
Some sort of icon/logo representing the fediverse on every site could be useful, or maybe different symbols for microblogging, threadiverse, etc. and the site includes what it has at the top or bottom somewhere, prob too late for that
I like the different instances having their own branding but i like the option to switch back to the normal theme. I also like when users put their own spin on the services logo instead of using something unrelated.
Yes. Having the OPTION is great.
I like what we have here on Lemmy with the multiple different frontends.
No. I think it works to hide the distributed nature of the fediverse, and works to make things that are inherent to a distributed model seem uncanney and broken.
It also strips some value out of the 'local' experience, communicating that each Mastodon-based website is the same as any other, and presenting something that looks like a dumb terminal, rather than a stand-alone website.
Ultimately, I think it's bad for the fediverse.
Actually one of the reasons I like misskey derivatives and their diversity.
My kneejerk reaction coming from the '90s is that if I wanted the same branding for everything, I'd just use Apple or Gnome. At the same time, constructing brand image on top of a third-party base that is in development and can change over time can be difficult, or just "not worth the $RESOURCE". So I'm currently in the position that something like "universal Mastodon view with brand accents" would be the most fitting thing for the Fediverse.
I think the sane approach is: the developers offer one good theme and branding that is the default setting and works well out of the box. And instance administrators can then either be lazy and leave that in place, or (better) go ahead and tweak their place to their liking. Decorate it, make it unique if they like. I think it shows how much effort someone put into something. But on the other hand, you often can't mess with 20 different free software projects and change the CSS code just for the sake of it. I think it's also fine to just leave some things on a good default setting.
They specifically make it harder to change that logo tho, its on purpose, its not in the ui settings by design, wouldn't be hard to implement (every other image can be changed from admin settings)
I like that about pleroma, can't seem to login to any mastodon apps with it tho, thought it worked with that api, at least the web interface has tons of customizability
It took me embarrasingly long to get a feeling for how Mastodon was supposed to work across instances, and what it means that lemmy, madtodon etc are part of the Fediverse.
I think the "join mastodon" or "join lemmy" rhetoric just obscures how things work. IMO it would be better to describe Lemmy and Mastodon as ActivityPub readers, similar to how there used to be RSS readers.
Absolutely. I think there should be sane defaults, and whoever deviates from them should know why they're doing it.
I like consistent branding because non-technical people get confused when they have one billion different names for everything when you could just say "join a Mastodon instance"
On theming, akin to Linux, I don't think there's much room for breakthroughs, or at least they'd be harder to achieve, being more a case of picking the "flavor" you want instead. Furthermore, I think this applies to UI as a whole in social medias, federated ones included.
Now, one thing that annoys me and I think that falls on branding is how most of the federated platforms don't have proper names. As I follow communities and people primarily by RSS, I like things to be organized, and having to figure out how to fit "names" like kbin.social (RIP), lemm.ee, feddit.uk and the sort is a bit of a migraine. "<.<