Lemmy

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1149454

Don't exactly know the best way for this to be made. I'm guessing a special page built into the platform might actually be the best way. It'd just provide a list of all communities the instance federates with in order of ascending age.

Or, maybe more easily, an admin run community for people to post about their new communities?

It's easy to discover communities on my instance via the dedicated page in the hamburger menu. But let's say I want to follow a community on another instance, such as !lemmy@lemmy.ml . I might have found its name mentioned in a post or comment. When I click on the provided link, I'm thrown on that instances web page, from which I of course can't subscribe.

So what I instead have to do is to copy the description of the link and paste it in my instance's search bar. Which isn't easy, since it's a link, so there isn't even a straightforward way to select the link text without clicking the link. This seems very unintuitive and makes the process of joining a whole bunch of communities tedious. Is there a better way?

My email at the moment

Image Description: A screen snippet from an email client showing 18 emails reading "- has applied to join lemmy.blahaj.zone". The usernames have been manually edited out. of the image snippet.

From what i can gather, it could be beneficial to, for example, have an instance which would become the main place to get videogame content on Lemmy. Most communities would be for specific games or AAA companies, but it could also have c/general for asking questions or topics which are non specific to any community, or c/meta, which would work as a place to discuss the state of the instance.

Overall, nothing that different from the actual status quo, but this way, we could consider instances as hubs for certain topics, which would then specialize with the /c/s within said instance. Instead of having 7 c/technology across instances, we could have @Tech.no and subdivide it into c/topic1, c/topic2, etc. (was supposed to come up with smthing but came empty handed shut up i dont browse that sub) .

What im mostly seeing here is that popular instances themselves are not different from reddit. The most popular instances on lemmy are beehaw.org and lemmy.ml, which have the same m.o, if you will, of reddit. Which is good, theyre popular for a reason, but in a way, theyre competing with each other. Not financially, but there will be overlap between certain /c/s.

Of course im not asking if its possible. Its just a matter of running the server and having the right infrastructure. My question is if you think its feasible to decentralize lemmy from the main instances, or even a good idea in the first place. Maybe you think its ok the way things currently are? Or maybe what i said is supposed to be the goal and im just late to the party? What are your thoughts?

This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.

However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.

You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.

Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.

• Switching from a consumer to a creator: I realized that if I want more people to engage w/ content, I have to be the change I want to see. I interact w/ content more regularly as a result
• Update settings so that 'Sort Type = New': There isn't as much content as Reddit just yet, and so the default 'sort by active' threads results in seeing the same threads for too long in many communities. Changing my view to 'new' highlighted new content more clearly, and seeing others make the effort to create new conversations encouraged me to try to comment on their content.
• Try the desktop/mobile/app versions: The experiences are different across the multiple platforms. Find out which one works best for your workflow

I am relatively new to Lemmy, although I’ve had my account since before the current Reddit uprising and migration. I want to create a community for pen lovers, since that was one of my favorite subs over on Reddit and there’s not one here.

I was able to go to the main page on Lemmy.ml and choose to create a community. I put in the sidebar text, an icon, a banner, etc., and pressed “Create”, but I keep getting a popup telling me to “Match the requested format” over name at the top. I’ve tried “pens”, “!pens”, “c/pens”, “/c/pens”, and “https://lemmy.ml/c/pens”, and nothing seems to work. Any idea what it’s asking for?

(And yes, I did a Google search and fell down several rabbit holes, but came up empty for an answer.”

There is no way for an instance like lemmy.ml to know about all lemmy servers, because there’s no central server keeping track.

-- https://lemmy.ml/comment/447791

I was reading the above comment and it made me think about the relays and how they could help lemmy/kbin/other Group software. Relays were a solution the microblogging sector of the fediverse used to jumpstart instances, which would have an empty federated feed making it difficult for local users to find new users to follow.

The way I envision it working would be a community relay would be an AP server with a Service or Application type Actor. This actor could receive a copy of a community's Create message and could then Announce that community to its followers. Lemmy/kbin instances could follow relays to be alerted of new remote communities and notify the relay about their own new communities.

In this way, users/instances could learn about new communities across the fediverse in a participatory way without relying on a central authority.

We all know about how Reddit closed-sourced back in 2017 and will be killing off third-party apps this July, what will Lemmy.ml do to avoid facing the same fate? Reddit started off like this (open, aiming for freedom) and it all went downhill from there.

I've seen lots of discussion on reddit of users trying to get others to join Lemmy and the prevailing reply is that it is too difficult to navigate and comprehend. Having to answer multiple questions and wait for manual verification is combersome and is limiting growth at a time when nothing should be standing in Lemmy's way. Combine this with server/instance selection analysis paralysis, and you get my point.

The linked mastodon blog post sums up my thoughts, but the TLDR is essentially this:

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't let dreams of decentralization interfere with the greater goal of achieving the network effect.

We should all be telling people to go to lemmy.ml and sign up. The devs should be too, and they should rethink/remove the questions and waiting period. Hell, just put a captcha. Discussions about servers and analogies to email as an example of federated service we all already use is a waste of breath. We shouldn't have barriers to entry.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I've just found kbin.social and find it has superior signup options. It's just: make an account (email/password), or sign up with Google or Apple. No server talk. Upside is the layout is nice and it acts as a Lemmy instance (threads) as well as a mastodon instance (microblogging). Only downside currently is that their android/iOS app is in development and isn't ready yet, so desktop only.

https://github.com/ernestwisniewski/kbin

https://kbin.social/

I think this might be the better recommendation for newbies at the moment.

Every time I look at reddit or twitter they're designed to be filled with the most vile or annoying posts imaginable to keep you scrolling and this place just... doesn't have that. It's relieving to not be inherently angry just scrolling through new posts

I've heard many people saying that the front-end looks old and needs more work, but I've never heard someone describe how it could look better. To me, it looks perfectly fine. I wish it had a card layout similar to libreddit, but aside from that, I think it's nice. If people want a completely different look, then there's lemmyBB, and there will probably be other front-ends in the future. However, we should hear opinions about which styles people want.

Rule #2 is possibly our most important one:

Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.

Learn to disagree without being rude or disrespectful.

It can be difficult sometimes, since western social media thrives on collective outrage, and they knowingly ingrain this into us for years. But please do adhere to this rule, and it will make this place much more enjoyable.

We will not hesitate to issue temp bans (usually a day or two) for those who make everyone's experience unpleasant.Hit the report button if you see this behavior.

Thanks!

Lemmy is booming

I have never before received so many reactions and comments on my Lemmy posts before, so it's obvious to see, that there are many new members here.
Welcome to all the new! And I'm looking forward to see more of you here.
Cheers!

I know it's possible to follow communities on lemmy from a mastodon account, but I was wondering if it's possible to do the reverse, and subscribe to a mastodon user? I wanted to try and get a combined feed from both platforms - I prefer lemmy, and given it works one way I was hoping it might work the other?

@lemmy I just realized that you can submit posts to any lemmy community from any mastodon / fediverse account. This is pretty cool!

I'm genuinely so excited to see some of the more focussed communities blossom on this platform as they have on Reddit over the years. Which are your favourites and which do you think could succeed here?

Just joined, and well, I'm thinking ill stay. Ive been looking for a good reddit alternative for a while now. devs, you've done quite some good work here.

I think there's a bug somewhere :)

Crossposts are a great way to follow posts from one community to the next, and discover more user contributions. I would love to see that on Lemmy.

I have a question about communities. Are communities server-specific, for example, is the "Gaming" community on lemmy.ml different from the one on, say, beehaw.org and will I need to join both?

We are happy to see that many of you are exploring Lemmy after Reddit announced changes to its API policy. I maintain this project alongside @dessalines@lemmy.ml.

Lemmy is similar to Reddit in many ways, but there is also a major difference: Its not only a single website, but consists of many different websites which are interconnected through federation. This is achieved with the ActivityPub protocol which is also used by Mastodon. It means that you can sign up on any Lemmy instance to interact with users and communities on other instances. The project website has a list of instances which all have their own rules and administrators. We recommend that you sign up on one of them, to avoid overt centralization on lemmy.ml.

Another difference compared to Reddit is that Lemmy is open source, and not funded by any company. For this reason it relies on volunteer work to make the project better, whether it's programming, design, documentation, translating, reporting issues or others. See the contributing guide to get started. You can also donate to support development.

We also recommend that you read the documentation. It explains how Lemmy works and how to setup your own Lemmy instance. Running an instance gives you full control over the rules and moderation, and prevents us developers from having any influence. Especially large communities that want to use Lemmy should host their own instance, because existing Lemmy instances would easily be overwhelmed by a large number of new users.

Enjoy your time here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or in the Matrix chat.

When reading posts sorted by date, I often have the timeline import a whole bunch of old posts from one community at the top. This is annoying since I basically have to reload the page, otherwise all relevant content is gone.

The new sort is pretty important, since Lemmy doesn't have a lot of posts anyways.