Reddit refugee here - stumbled across Lemmy as it was mentioned in a comment on Artifact but intrigued by this format and communities!
Looking for tips as a brand new user to get the most out of it - any advice is welcome! I’m using Mlem which seems to be working pretty well so far.
This is not complete by any means but this is what I did (recently):
- Explore around: Currently there’s an influx of new user and communities (subreddits) being created. Total users has doubled (give it take) in 10 days. Active monthly users has increased 6x in the same 10 days
- Try to engage: For many (most?) of us this is a brand new place. Not so long ago it felt rather quiet (I remember taking a look a few months back and thinking “It’s a cool idea but there’s not enough content”) As a forever lurker, this has been easier said than done. The vibe I get (YMMV) is from early Slashdot / Slashdot clones, only much more vibrant. I haven’t seen something similar in a really long time
- Missing content? Either you wait (keep exploring) or become proactive. Even if you intend to hand it over down the line, create/start building any community you are missing. For those that are joining after you, it’s reassuring having a moment of “Hey, here there’s also interest in $RANDOM_THING”
- Be aware of size: Recently I was taking about this. Some "not so large subreddits " have 10x users subscribed as users in the whole “lemmyverse”? “lemmy ecosystem”? (I’m still not sure how it’s named)
- The system is quite new and has had a sudden explosion in popularity. Be prepared to see some rough edges here and there.
A couple of things that might be odd to get your head around:
- Instances: Although you can think of instances as a “whole reddit” they all work together. Both of us are on different instances and I’m commenting on your post. I’m not even sure without scrolling on which server resides the post
- Fediverse: The collaboration is not constrained to instances alone. I was engaging (from Lemmy) with a post originating on a different platform (kbin) and checking how it looks on a third platform (Mastodon). The analogy might be bad, but think of commenting from Reddit on a post originated on digg and checking how you see/comment on it from Twitter.
But the most important part, enjoy your time here
It is the users who provide value to these platforms. If you like it here, provide value and contribute! Posts, comments, create a hobby community that you want (that doesn’t exist here yet pls).
Some tips:
- If you have a question about how Lemmy works, first search in the documentation, in !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml or !lemmy@lemmy.ml and with a search engine
- if you didn’t find an answer, ask in !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
Also, some useful places to find new instances:
Finally, try not to lurk and have fun :) (edit: lemmy_support is better than lemmy for support)
If you’re on your own instance it’ll be very quiet until you start adding sub-lemmys (lemmings?)
You need to paste the entire link into your instances search bar and subscribe from there. Otherwise you’re taken to the instance it’s hosted on and need to log in.
Thanks! So I signed up to an instance and I can then filter by all and the option to ‘subscribe’ to lots of other sub-lemmys is available - still not really sure how it all works but definitely getting served a lot of activity!
If you know of a community and you can’t find it in all, paste the whole URL in the search field ( https://lemmy.ml/c/linux ) and then you can subscribe.
This indicates your instance there’s someone interested in this community and it’ll start getting future content
Only the first user would need to do this, for those after, the community will show when searching in all
Edit: autocorrect
Is there a way to see all the communities from another instance?
You can visit the actual instance, e.g. lemmy.world and then check out communities at the top. Not sure if there’s a better way yet, someone let me know if so!
Edit: I visited beehaw.org, which seems to be a relatively large fediverse site (I’m new, don’t judge), and their communities tab lists communities they host locally and others they are federated with. You can subscribe to any one of them through kbin by pasting the full address of the community (which looks like communityname@hosturl, usually listed on the right hand side column in the community) into kbin’s search bar.
Also the notifications for comment replies are turned off by default on kbin. Actually, all notifications seem to be off. It detracts from the new user experience as people don’t realize their comments have been replied to. Turn on your notifications in your settings!
I’m wondering this too. And if there’s a good way to see what instances there are in the first place.
I’m quite sure I understand how the overall “fediverse” system works on a technical level, and I think most people are quite capable of understanding the architecture of the system.
What people are confused about when they ask how this works (and are answered with useless email analogies and metaphors as to how the architecture is set up) is the user experience of finding curated content similar to a way they are used to getting on centralized systems.
I don’t think most people are confused about what federation is or how the underlying protocol works, nor do they need the details unless they are interested in creating and hosting their own instances. What people are wondering is how they can recreate a reddit-like (or twitter like, in the case of mastodon) experience, while the decentralized nature of the system seemingly makes it impossible.
