cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/2212

Quick post to answer some basic usage questions that can throw off new users.

Where should I register?

The age old question of fediverse. The answer is pick an instance that is not right-wing and you should be fine.

https://join-lemmy.org/instances makes this very easy. Once you find an instance, just go to its /signup endpoint. For the instance you're reading right now, it would be: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/signup

Do I need to create a profile for each instance?

No! Each instance can access each other instance, unless it's been defederated because its admins are toxic (this is why I told you not to join right-wing instances earlier).

I joined an instance, but the community I am interested in is in a different instance

No problem. Simply add the instance domain at the end of the url endpoint.

For example, say you're in lemmy.ml and you realized that stable_diffusion is in lemmy.dbzer0.com. To access it, simply add @lemmy.dbzer0.com at the end of the url after the community name. So:

https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]

Or to put it differently, you can access any community, in any instance by adding /c/ (The requivalet of reddit /r/) and then [email protected]

If this doesn't work, then it's likely this instance is not yet federated with yours. To solve this, you need to search for it. See the next section.

But how do I even find the community I want to if it exists in any of hundreds of instances?

Use the search, it's really good to find the community you're looking for.

Note that if you search for an community in an lemmy instance your own instance doesn't yet know about, it won't find it. You need to give it more precice instructions to find it, which require the whole "address". To follow our example above, you would put [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) in your search field.

When searching for a community in a new instance, it might take a few minutes to take effect. The first search will not return anything, but if you search again after a couple of minutes, it should appear.

Community? Instance?

An instance is a lemmy server hosted by someone. it has its own set of users and communities. lemmy.dbzer0.com is an instance. You can access (almost) every instance from any other instance.

a community is like a subreddit in reddit, or a channel in discord. It's a topic in inside an instance. stable_diffusion is a community inside the instance lemmy.dbzer0.com.

In more plain terms, consider a lemmy instance like a street, and a community like a number on that street. When you write [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) you are giving the exact address and number to search for.

I keep seeing the same posts

In you're in a smaller instance and you've subscribed to communities in other places, you might have set up your default visibility to not show them.

Switch your view to Subscribed/Hot to get a similar view like the reddit frontpage.

Switch to All/Hot to get a similar view to reddit /r/all

You can store this setting permanently as default in your user settings

Pro-Tips

• Use relative links

Also see

• Lemmy.world starting guide

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/24569

I know people are confused about how fediverse works and how to use it. This is an attempt to compile a list of beginner's guides made by some amazing people on this topic.

• Unsunny's Guide - An easy to read guide aimed at redditors migrating to Lemmy or Kbin
• Lemmy.world Starting Guide - A beginner's guide to Lemmy by the admin of lemmy.world instance.
• db0's New User Guide - A guide for new users on Lemmy made by head mod of r/piracy.
• Michael Altfield's Guide - A guide on finding Lemmy Communities (Lemmy version of Subreddits)
• r/KbinMigration's Guide - Redditor's guide to how Kbin works

I will update this list if any new guide is made so you can save this post for later. Also, if anyone has any good guide to add post it in the comments and I'll add it here.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37906

(I'm creating a starting guide post here. Have patience, it will take some time...)

Disclaimer: I am new to Lemmy like most of you. Still finding my way. If you see something that isn't right, let me know. Also additions, please comment!

Welcome!

Welcome to Lemmy (on whichever server you're reading this)

About Lemmy

Lemmy is a federated platform for news aggregagtion / discussion. It's being developed by the Lemmy devs: https://github.com/LemmyNet

About Federation

What does this federation mean?

It means Lemmy is using a protocol (Activitypub) which makes it possible for all Lemmy servers to interact.

• You can search and view communities on remote servers from here
• You can create posts in remote communities
• You can respond to remote posts
• You will be notified (if you wish) of comments on your remote posts
• You can follow Lemmy users/communities on other platforms that also use Activitypub (like Mastodon, Calckey etc) (There's currently a known issue with that, see here

Please note that a server only starts indexing a server/community once it has been interacted with by a user of this server.

A great image describing this, made by @[email protected] : https://imgur.com/a/uyoYySY

About Lemmy.world

Lemmy.world is one of the many servers hosting the Lemmy software. It was started on June 1st, 2023 by @[email protected] , who is also running https://mastodon.world, https://calckey.world and others.

A list of Lemmy servers and their statistics can be found at FediDB

Quick start guide

Account

You can use your account you created to log in to the server on which you created it. Not on other servers. Content is federated to other servers, users/accounts are not.

Searching

In the top menu, you'll see the search icon. There, you can search for posts, communities etc.

You can just enter a search-word and it will find the Post-titles, post-content, communities etc containing that word that the server knows of. So any content any user of this server ever interacted with.

You can also search for a community by it's link, e.g. [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]). Even if the server hasn't ever seen that community, it will look it up remotely. Sometimes it takes some time for it to fetch the info (and displays 'No results' meanwhile..) so just be patient and search a second time after a few seconds.

Creating communities

First, make sure the community doesn't already exist. Use search (see above). Also try https://browse.feddit.de/ to see if there are remote communities on other Lemmy instances that aren't known to Lemmy.world yet.

If you're sure it doesn't exist yet, go to the homepage and click 'Create a Community'.

It will open up the following page:

Here you can fill out:

• Name: should be all lowercase letters. This will be the /c/
• Display name: As to be expected, this will be the displayed name.
• You can upload an icon and banner image. Looks pretty.
• The sidebar should contain things like description, rules, links etc. You can use Markdown (yey!)
• If the community will contain mainly NSFW content, check the NSFW mark. NSFW is allowed as long as it doesn't break the rules
• If you only want moderators to be able to post, check that checkbox.
• Select any language you want people to be able to post in. Apparently you shouldn't de-select 'Undetermined'. I was told some apps use 'Undetermined' as default language so don't work if you don't have it selected

Reading

I think the reading is obvious. Just click the post and you can read it. SOmetimes when there are many comments, they will partly be collapsed.

Posting

When viewing a community, you can create a new post in it. First of all make sure to check the community's rules, probably stated in the sidebar.

In the Create Post page these are the fields:

• URL: Here you can paste a link which will be shown at the top of the post. Also the thumbnail of the post will link there. Alternatively you can upload an image using the image icon to the right of the field. That image will also be displayed as thumbnail for the post.
• Title: The title of the post.
• Body: Here you can type your post. You can use Markdown if you want.
• Community: select the community where you want this post created, defaults to the community you were in when you clicked 'create post'
• NSFW: Select this if you post any NSFW material, this blurs the thumbnail and displays 'NSFW' behind the post title.
• Language: Specify in which language your post is.

Also see the Lemmy documentation on formatting etc.

Commenting

Moderating / Reporting

Client apps

There are some apps available or in testing:

• Memmy (iOS/Android) https://github.com/gkasdorf/memmy/discussions/13
• Mlem (iOS) https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
• Jerboa (Android) https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa

Issues

When you find any issue, please report so here: https://lemmy.world/post/15786 if you think it's server related (or not sure).

Report any issues or improvement requests for the Lemmy software itself here: https://github.com/LemmyNet

Known issues

Known issues can be found in the beforementioned post, one of the most annoying ones is the fact that post/reply in a somewhat larger community can take up to 10 seconds. It seems like that's related to the number of subscribers of the community.

I'll be looking into that one, and hope the devs are too.