Yeah… linking was hard for me to figure out.

For a user, you hit the @ sign then start typing, then you may have to wait a bit and it will make a list of every user that matches that partial string that you typed, and you have to select it from the list for it to convert into the actual link - e.g. @bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone.

For communities, I’m only recently learning this myself, it’s the ! sign and then the same process - e.g. !technology@lemmy.world.

You can hit the view source - icon to the right of up & down votes, left of reply - to see how it translates into, but that’s a LOT to try to remember, while the above is a lot easier process. The web browser UI isn’t really intuitive though - e.g. there are no buttons for either of those, and a bunch of other stuff doesn’t work all that well either when you click it, plus beware of clicking the formatting help button b/c it won’t open a new tab or anything - even though you can ONLY access it from within an EXISTING reply, nonetheless by default it will obliterate all of the text that you have typed so far and navigate to another page. None of the other options do that… but despite how there is basically zero distinction wrt its icon color or placement that might hint at that fact, that one behaves fundamentally differently from all the rest of them. So, if you are struggling, note that it may not be your fault: Lemmy is still in its infancy, and a lot of this isn’t as “polished” as it may one day become.

I still love it 100-fold better than Kbin’s interface. I did not think that I would, but I do.

Tbh, I feel less bad for Ernst the more time that goes by. At first I thought he was a GREAT dude, to take upon himself that whole concept of entirely re-envisioning the whole Lemmy code, and I definitely get that he was handed a bunch of lemons by life, but he also was the only one who decided what to do with them. e.g. he could have allowed a couple of other admins onto the kbin.social instance, even if he retained full & total control of the code side of things. I would not dream of trying to tell him what to do but… I also have the same rights, and since I no longer trust his word, him having broken it far too many times, I don’t think I will ever go back, even if everything that he hoped to do with Kbin ends up being done. He’s made his choices, and I do not respect them, though meanwhile everyone will move on regardless - which I do agree is really sad, especially after such an auspicious beginning, and along with everything I am saying I really truly do wish him the best, but… I am no longer willing to hold my breath anxiously awaiting that to happen anytime soon.