Could I think of the federation as like nations giving each others' citizens a visa, or is that too off the mark to use as a metaphor?
I think it's too far off. It's more like countries joining European Union - they are still individual countries, but they share stuff with all other countries that are part of the union/federation.
I think it kinda works, but it misses the mark in that you don't need to 'travel' to another server to see the communities and posts from that server.
It's more like every instance is a post office, and when you make a post or comment at your local post office, they also send it out to a bunch of other post offices. So when you rock up to your local post office (instance), you can see all the activity at that post office, but also all the activity that has come in from federated post offices.
Could I think of the federation as like nations giving each others' citizens a visa, or is that too off the mark to use as a metaphor?
I think it's too far off. It's more like countries joining European Union - they are still individual countries, but they share stuff with all other countries that are part of the union/federation.
I think it kinda works, but it misses the mark in that you don't need to 'travel' to another server to see the communities and posts from that server.
It's more like every instance is a post office, and when you make a post or comment at your local post office, they also send it out to a bunch of other post offices. So when you rock up to your local post office (instance), you can see all the activity at that post office, but also all the activity that has come in from federated post offices.