You’re welcome!

Check out our baseball community’s sidebar for your favorite team. Try searching !baseball@fanaticus.social (and give it a minute if someone on your instance hasn’t already found us).

Fanaticus is a sports-only instance. We’ve ported over a game bot and have created communities for all the major sports teams. If you’re interested in moderating one of the communities, just ask!

Maybe you can convince people that run US sports communities on general instances to move to your instance? 😁

I’m sure trying! Content is king though so that’s what we’re focusing on with the game bots.

We’re out here! I’m an admin at fanaticus.social. We’re a sports-only instance. We’re the instance /u/Garrathian was talking about.

If you miss your sports and want to discuss them, come on over and check us out. We have all the major sports and their teams’ communities set up and have ported the game bot (for baseball right now) over. We’re planning on having the game bots ported over before the start of the other major sports’ seasons.

We’ve only ported over the MLB game bots over to lemmy right now (because it’s the only sport in season) but we’ll be porting the other major sports bots over before the season starts! One of our users created communities for all the major sports teams in preparation for this. If you’d like to mod any let me know!

So, I’m new here, but I’m still struggling to see the advantage of smaller and more focused instances.

One benefit of focused instances is that we can sort of insulate ourselves from de-federation conflicts amongst the larger, user-focused instances. I’m not sure if you we around for the beehaw.org defederation from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works but those were 3/4 of the biggest instances and those users can no longer interact. Users from lemmy.world were basically blocked from all new content on the communities they were subscribed to on beehaw.org and vice versa.

I host a sports-focused instance fanaticus.social where all we talk about is sports. It’s a non-controversial topic (most of the time) and because we’re focused on that one topic, users from all the instances like beehaw, lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, can still interact with and create content for sports without worrying about losing access to the communities they’re a part of. That’s the major advantage as far as I see it.

I don’t care about user registration counts because most of our content comes from users on general instances. In the future we will probably disable registration altogether. I have only left it open for now to reduce the friction for new fediverse users if they happen to find our instance first and want to make fanaticus their home instance.

Hi, I’m an admin at fanaticus.social. Sorry for the inconvenience! Game bots are an important way for us sports fans to interact with one another during games but I understand how annoying they can be if you don’t care about the sport.

from plemmy import LemmyHttp

# must include protocol e.g. https://lemmy.world
pl = LemmyHttp("INSTANCE_NAME_HERE")

username = "USERNAME_HERE"
password = "PASSWORD_HERE"
pl.login(username, password)

fanaticus_communities = [
    "tampabayrays@fanaticus.social",
    "orioles@fanaticus.social",
    "nyyankees@fanaticus.social",
    "torontobluejays@fanaticus.social",
    "redsox@fanaticus.social",
    "minnesotatwins@fanaticus.social",
    "clevelandguardians@fanaticus.social",
    "whitesox@fanaticus.social",
    "motorcitykitties@fanaticus.social",
    "kcroyals@fanaticus.social",
    "texasrangers@fanaticus.social",
    "astros@fanaticus.social",
    "angelsbaseball@fanaticus.social",
    "mariners@fanaticus.social",
    "oaklandathletics@fanaticus.social",
    "braves@fanaticus.social",
    "miamimarlins@fanaticus.social",
    "phillies@fanaticus.social",
    "newyorkmets@fanaticus.social",
    "nationals@fanaticus.social",
    "buccos@fanaticus.social",
    "brewers@fanaticus.social",
    "reds@fanaticus.social",
    "chicubs@fanaticus.social",
    "cardinals@fanaticus.social",
    "azdiamondbacks@fanaticus.social",
    "sfgiants@fanaticus.social",
    "dodgers@fanaticus.social",
    "padres@fanaticus.social",
    "coloradorockies@fanaticus.social",
]

for comm in fanaticus_communities:
    print("Getting community: ", comm)
    commRes = pl.get_community(name=comm).json()
    if commRes and commRes['community_view']:
        commId = commRes['community_view']['community']['id']
        print("Blocking community: ", comm, " communityId: ", commId)
        pl.block_community(True, commId)
        print("Successfully blocked community: ", comm)
    else:
        print("Failed to find community: ", comm)

In the future, we are planning on adding the game bots for the other major sports as well (they’re not in season now) but hopefully that will be a nice jumping off point for you.

Shameless plug for !baseball@fanaticus.social (check out our sidebar for the team-specific communities). We’ve got the game bots ported over and are working on improving them and adding new features.

I agree with !matt@lemmy.world though, the Venn diagram of sports fans and tech-savvy lemmy pioneers is pretty small. You can help by posting and commenting to attract more users. More content == more users (eventually).

Hi! I’m an admin of fanaticus.social. I’d like to apologize for the game bots disappearance. It’s back now! I made pinned a post about it, which you can read here.

We’re working hard to iron out the kinks in the game bots but I apologize for the inconvenience. I was on vacation last week and because of a bug, the choice was between keeping the fanaticus servers up or putting the bots to sleep.

The live game threads were some of my favorite parts of Reddit too. I can’t do anything about the small user base but porting the game bots over to lemmy and posting content is the best way I could think of to start attracting users.

Hi I’m an admin over at fanaticus.social! We’ve been hard at work porting the game bots over to lemmy. All 30 MLB teams have their bots configured and running now and we’re working on rolling out the sidebar bots, adding some new features, and porting the other four major sports bots to lemmy as well.

Check out the sidebar in !baseball@fanaticus.social for links to your team’s community.

Who’s your team? Check out the sidebar on !baseball@fanaticus.social Fanaticus is a sports-only instance which helps keep us insulated from any defederation drama. We’ve got all the communities set up just waiting for our fellow fans to join us! We also have game bots and are actively developing new features.

If you’re interesting in modding your team’s community, just post in there asking. The community may seem bare right now but why a little TLC you can make it a home for your favorite team.