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).
How do I subscribe to a lemmy community from kbin? I’ve tried searching and waiting like on lemmy and it still doesn’t show up.
Is there a certain format? I tried fill url, !community@instance, community@instance
@community@instance.tld
that’s a more common way across the fediverse and also how you follow people, including those on other platforms like Mastodon and Calckey, etc.Huh, that is strange. I wonder if that one isn’t federating for some reason. I can find
@canada@lemmy.ml
but@canada@lemmy.ca
turns up nothing. Neither does https://lemmy.ca/c/canada 🤔Edit: I forgot there are issues with federation right now because of the cloudflare check. It should only be temporary. See Ernest’s post
Thanks, hopefully that’s it. Kbin seems nicer than lemmy but I need some of the communities from lemmy! I was wondering if lemmy.ca was defederated from here or something but good to hear that isn’t it.
I’ll check back in a few days.
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!
Use this! https://browse.feddit.de/