cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/853004
Hello there, and welcome to the Fediverse! Let’s get you started.
This post was created together with many users, intended to help you have an easy start! It has a simple language, and it includes many useful links.
For your first day here
Hello, newbie user! Lemmy is just like Reddit, but better. Ha-ha. Seriously. But let’s not overwhelm you for now.
This very neat starting guide was written by our beloved admin, @ruud. To avoid confusion, start reading it from the Quick start guide section.
If you’re new to Lemmy, this post will also help you perfectly.
kbin users can check out this amazing starting guide instead. This is also a nice guide.
Finding Communities on Lemmy/kBin
If you finished reading your starting guide, it’s time to go find your new favorite communities! Check out these dedicated services:
number1, 2, 3, and 4, and 5! Go have some fun! :DFor your second day here
Hello again! You’re less of a newbie now, and you found some amazing communities! We can start talking about the Fediverse. I hope you didn’t forget to read the rules for lemmy.world!
kBin.social’s rules are in this link.
The Fediverse
You must’ve realised that we addressed Lemmy and kBin users differently. And what is this Fediverse people keep talking about, anyways?
Lemmy and kBin are two different platforms, and they can perfectly interact with each other! This means that they are a part of the federation. And they are only two members of the vast Fediverse.
What is the Fediverse? video by Framasoft to get a good understanding with visuals!
As a great lemming once said: Fediverse is basically like a group chat, but for websites. This means that federated websites all agree to share their content with each other, constantly, at the same time.
Follow this link to view a list of all Lemmy instances.
Follow this link to open the Fediverse Observer. It is set to show kBin, but you can navigate your way through the site to show any Fediverse platform you’d like.
For your third day here
That’s it! What else do you want? Go have some fun and keep learning along the way! ;)
Appreciate the post. A fellow refugee with some questions…
So I have chosen Lemmy.world. I know I can browse cross instance and post wherever but I have some confusion with this too.
Each instance will have its own let’s say “news.” Some will be more popular than others of course but will likely have similar content. I then sub to “news” on whatever instance. But there’s still hundreds of other “news” out there with potentially different, but likely similar content. Isn’t this fragmentation bad for community?
Also, let’s say I am in instance xyz and that’s where I’ve registered my account. All of a sudden the admins no longer want to run things and shut it down. All those communities are gone? What happens to my user account?
I think federated content is great, but this is my first interaction with a service using it. Please help me understand what this ultimately looks like long term.
Edit: sorry this triple posted. I kept getting errors so I hit submit again… and then again. Deleted the duplicates
Hi!
To answer your question, or, Now Lemmy Explain:
- Isn’t this fragmentation bad for community?
It’s hope that eventually different cultures will develop within different communities with similar contents, so if you don’t like, say, the culture or mods of one of the news communities, you can just as easily move to another news community with a culture that you felt is better, whereas on reddit, you don’t really have that choice.
- All of a sudden the admins no longer want to run things and shut it down. All those communities are gone? What happens to my user account?
They are gone, just like normal forums, except for copies stored in instances federated to yours.
Currently, Lemmy, unlike Mastodon, does not have any way to transfer community/accounts to another instance. For Mastodon, most admins made promises to let the users know at least 30 days beforehand if they were ever to shut down their instance, but these should eventually be implemented.
- Please help me understand what this ultimately looks like long term.
None of us knows, but we should be trying to build something great here.
They are gone, just like normal forums, except for copies stored in instances federated to yours.
So once an instance is federated by another, those posts also live in the 2nd instance as sort of a backup?
Part of what I enjoyed about reddit was that I could find things that are 10 years old with a quick google search and still expect them to be there 10 years from now. If all this can go away at any moment, it sort of just feels like a chat room or something. Im not saying that is a bad thing, it just makes it difficult to build long term communities and a strong user base long term if its possible.
Do most people browse within their “local” or “all?” When browsing “all” I see some duplicate content from communities in other instances which I guess is to be expected. Again, not a bad thing - but if I have to search 15 other “news” to see discussion on something I am interested in, isnt that kind of cumbersome?
Enjoying the site so far, dont take my comments as criticism. Just doing my best to learn how to use this type of site and get the most out of it I can. Appreciate the replies from you all.
So once an instance is federated by another, those posts also live in the 2nd instance as sort of a backup?
When you are browsing a federated community from your home instance, you are essentially interacting with your home instance’s copy of that community, which will be sync’d to the instance of the federated community.
Think of it like email essentially: If someone sends you an email, but deletes their own email account, you will still have that message history, but you won’t get more emails from that account.
it sort of just feels like a chat room or something.
Lemmy is not Discord, the messages are persistent and structured in nested threads just like reddit or traditional forums, so they will be organized and searchable.
Besides, any website, including reddit, can go away at any moment, but that doesn’t mean they will.
Do most people browse within their “local” or “all?
You can do both, or, you can just subscribe to communities that you felt are interesting.
“All” is useful in that even if your home instance has relatively low activity, you can still comfortably browse content everywhere across Lemmy/Kbin.
But if I have to search 15 other “news” to see discussion on something I am interested in, isn’t that kind of cumbersome?
You don’t have to look at all of them, just the ones you find interesting.
Yup all makes sense. Appreciate the insight into how things work.
I know its probably frustrating to have people come in and go “well reddit does XYZ” all the time, so its nice to get an explanation. Truthfully, I think a lot of us just needed a little kick start to get off that site to something new.
Itll take some time to get comfy and learn how it all works, but so far things seem great. Enjoy your day.
You too.
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Is this some kind of viral marketing campaign?
Is this why I see multiple technology communities when I search? I was trying to understand what the differences were
I guess maybe the way to think about it is that each instance is like a “mini reddit” with its own content, admins, mods, userbase etc.
You still have access through your instance to any others that exist and can participate in those others as well. But, your home base is where you registered. At least thats my understanding so far
Its wanted to have multiple communities on different instances. as it is adding some protection of cencorship to it because the users can still see other news and if everyone says “China bad” but only your instance doesnt talk about => you know your instance is pro china and wants to cencor stuff.
Very s basic question…what do these icons mean? Also is there any way to “hide” a post so it doesn’t show in your feed again? Besides blocking the user?
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Hello!
My attempt at a stupid question is: Do you need an account on every instance that hosts a community that you want to interact with (e.g., upvote, post, reply)?
So I have seen the phrase “it does not matter on which Lemmy instance you register, and you only need to register on one". All Lemmy instances show identical posts and comments, and let you follow all users and communities.” in many guides. This makes me think I should be able to upvote and reply on any post or community as long as I have an account on a federated instance. However, atleast while using the Liftoff! App, if I try to upvote a comment from a post link via beehaw while logged into Lemmy.one or Lemmy.world for example I get an error “this post was linked via beehaw. You are not logged in there.”
This seems to indicate that I need a beehaw account if I want to interact with posts there and contribute. This in turn makes it seem like I’ll need an individual account on every instance that has a community I want to be a part of.
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Thank you for the quick reply!
1-way defederation is interesting, but it seems like could it be used as a tool to try and force users on to one instance as then they get the most access to everything. Though I also see that it’s useful in cases of abuse or brigading. Lots to get used to, but it’s quite fun.
Thanks again for answering!
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A question I’m not seeing asked is about the communities.
I see in plenty of explanations that I can “interact” with communities on different instances. Which is great! But for the life of me I can’t figure out how to subscribe to a community on a different instance (I’m on lemmy.world and want to subscribe to a community on lemmy.ml). It was mentioned in another comment that you only need one account on the fediverse, but when I view a community from a different instance it asks me to sign up or sign in.
Am I unable to subscribe to a community on a different instance? Is it a flaw in the app I’m using (Connect for Android)? Am I supposed to log in to my account, but just select a different instance? There’s lots of communities not hosted on lemmy.world that I was a big part of on Reddit.
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Oh, let’s go with something easy, like lifeprotips. Or Androidapps since it’s at the top.
I was using this list as a reference guide. Might be my fault not understanding the app yet either
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Hmm. It didn’t work on connect so I installed jerboa real quick in case it was the app. Still nothing pops up :/
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So searching by the address you provided didn’t seem to work on either Connect for Android or Jerboa, but the search function in Jerboa seems to be able to find it just fine! It tells me “Pending” after I press subscribe, but progress is progress haha. And I’m assuming the federation aspect means it might just take a minute for the back end workings to recognize my request.
The more you know! Thank you so much for the quick response and everything you’re doing to help get this new wave on its feet
If I click on a link pointing to an item somewhere on the Fediverse, is there a way to make sure it opens through my Lemmy account?
I found it very easy to use. I’ve only used it with Connect for Lemmy but so far so good!
I’m having trouble creating a community and I don’t know why. Trying to create a new community on lemmy.world but when I attempt to submit the community information, the button spins for a second and just stops without anything changing. No error messages (i fixed the errors the site showed)
Tried making a new community on Connect for Lemmy, but there’s no option to create communities.
I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.
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I have a question: I’m using lemmy.world on PC without any add ons. When I try to look at the “all” section the order of the posts is changing so fast I can’t read/click on anything, so it’s basically unusable, like every time something is posted it shows up immediately in the top of the feed.
It’s better in my “subscribed” section because I’ve only subbed to like three things, but it’s still moving at a frustrating speed. Is there a way to make the post order hold still? I get unreasonably aggravated when I’m reading something and it moves.
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Ah, perfect, thank you!! 🤩
CopyPasting https://lemmy.world/home/data_type/Post/listing_type/All/sort/Active/page/0 works too!
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The community grew a lot!
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And as extra homework, I’m someone from kbin.social
Most of the communities are on lemmy.ml instead of lemmy.world. Which has better communities currently?
That’s the nice thing about the fediverse, you can have an account on one and participate in communities on both!
do you automatically get an account on the fediverse when you create an account on either?
Well an account on a lemmy instance is an account on the fediverse, since Lemmy is a part of the fediverse. That all is to say that you should only need a single account on a single Lemmy instance (just pick one that you like the vibes of) and you’ll be good to go. For example I come come from lemmy.sdf.org but I’m able to post over here outside of that instance and subscribe to kbin communities.
Going back to the email analogy, it’s like how users on Gmail can chat with users on outlook and with users on other email providers without any issues - they all work together (mostly) seamlessly!
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