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.
You can do either. Think of threads as Reddit posts, with threaded replies etc (kbin, lemmy). Think of posts as Twitter tweets (Mastodon), replies are @ a user.
Do you know how I can save a thread? In Reddit I’d save a post or a reply that has some useful info. With all these tutorials I’d like to have them saved (threads and replies).
E.g. I went to post a photo from Safari (desktop) and the popover with the upload button hides the moment my mouse goes into it, so I can't upload the photo.
To be honest, I’m still confused where I am. I think I’ve got already 5 logins before I found out that you can subscribe to ‘magazines??’ Which look like subreddits that migrated.
But I think i found the way to subscribe to these ‘subreddits’ with only this login. For those interested. Here is the list with links of ‘subreddits’ on lemmy
Click on any of the links/subreddits/magazines?that you are interested in, then click on ‘sidebar’ and it displays an address to copy, e.g. !todayilearned
Copy that address and paste it here in kbin in the search (on top) but without the “!” at the beginning (like this: todayilearned@lemmy.ml)
It then gives you the option to subscribe to it and you are in!
I might have some steps wrong but it worked for me. Good luck everyone!
I still don't get it. If I go to the link I'm asked to log in but my existing login isn't good. I have to create a new login? I'll have logins all over the place.
But you don't have to log in on a different instance in order to receive and reply to posts. That's just a repository for similar communities on different servers.
You could create backup accounts, but what you're looking for is to just click on whatever link looks fun and then grab the address from the chosen community's sidebar, come back, and do a search for it here without the ! at the start
It's a small annoyance and I'm sure it's one of the things that will be made easier eventually, but kbin and lemmy sites each have to be told the other exists in the first place before they'll know there's even a community to subscribe to. Thus the having to perform a search using a destination name you already know is real
Hit the little magnifying search icon in the top right, paste in "indieheads@lemmy.ml" without the exclamation point, and it should pull up the community so you can subscribe.
Not sure why the ! messes it up, but this above has worked for me!
lemmy.directory is attempting to show all communities from all instances (federate all instances? I'm not sure of the terms yet). they're doing a decent job so far I think
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.
I have to tell you I agree with what you’ve said here. As a Reddit refugee and a regular mastodon user, I signed up for kbin this morning and don’t have a clue what’s going on here. I get the fediverse (or at least I thought I did), but am struggling with this. I don’t seem to able to do even simple things. What’s up with that?
If you read all of my posts on this thread, I think I gathered some useful information for newcommers from reddit.
If you manage to find your way around after reading my comments, it might be very useful to make a post gathering everything you did until you landed on an acceptable user experience. I intend to do it myself but after flailing about for hours, I'm tired and hungry right now. Maybe we should both do it so more people have a chance to read them.
To some extent. I've come across a lot of new people who think having one account on the fediverse allows them to log into any other platform. "I wanted to check out Mastodon but when I tried to log in with my beehaw account it said I wasn't registered!"
I can see how that might result from the general style of the answers people are getting when they ask how to start using this system. Things like "it's like email" or "it doesn't matter which one you sign up on as every instance can see the other instances they are federated with" can very well lead to the impression that a single user account works on all instances sharing the protocol.
I still think the reason for this is people are actually asking about the user experience rather than the way the protocol works. When they are answered with the above, instead of "go to the largest instance you can sign up at and start asking questions" and "if you go to a small instance it'll be very quiet and you'll get the feeling that all of this is really hopeless".
First and foremost, and I know this freaks out the decentralization first users who value that above the lively environment, people should be directed to where everyone else is if we want any sort of widespread adoption. Even if people flock to one instance, the decentralized nature of the protocol will still act as a safeguard against monopolization because once people learn the ropes, it's trivial to migrate to another instance which doesn't have whatever that is you don't like about your first instance.
This is what's confusing to me. I feel like need all these accounts to be a part of all these disconnected communities and I really have no sense of direction on how to start curating the fediverse to my interests.
Even something simple as knowing when someone has replied to me in a thread somewhere is very difficult without having to go back through my own profile and checking out every thread I've ever commented on
Exactly, and this is fundamentally a User Experience question which should be answered with directives rather than explanations of how the protocol works.
At least on kbin, you can go to your notification settings and turn on comment and post reply notifications which are turned off by default for some reason.
That really should have been clarified, I did not know you needed to actively turn on notifications. How am I supposed to keep a reply chain going otherwise?
You only need a number of different accounts if you want to interact directly with them. In theory you could have just the one and see everything in some capacity. I ended up with a dozen as I was exploring and seeing what worked for me, and finally ended up on a kbin and Calckey account because I like some compartmentalization. Oh, also Pixelfed, but I rarely use that one.
But as far as how to start, there's no real algorithm showing you things so you'll need to do a little bit of work to get what you're looking for. Here you follow communities, but if you wanted to venture to Calckey/mastodon follow hashtags of things that interest you. Follow people who you think you'd gel with and then unfollow when they turn out to be boring later on. I never liked twitter, but with some work I've had a great experience on mastodon/Calckey. But that's the nice thing about the fediverse, you get to choose what content you see and how you want to see it.
As far as notifications go, on kbin there's a number next to your username up top when you have a notification. If they're not showing up, check your settings to make sure you have the ones you want turned on.
Ideally I think there would be a separation between your identity on an instance and the data on other servers you use. Or, at the least, some kind of "landing page" where you can then click and be brought to the server you want to use.
I keep musing over making something like this; perhaps I should...
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.
You'll only need to make accounts elsewhere if you want to use a different platform in their style. You can see mastodon/Calckey content from here on kbin, but if you want it more in a Twitter style, it's best to do it from there instead of here. I like some compartmentalization, so I have both a Calckey and a kbin account.
But for seeing Reddit like posts between kbin and Lemmy, you only need the one account.
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!
Are there any Android clients available? I'm a reddit refugee as well and a little overwhelmed, but definitely like this idea so far but concerned that it's not as user friendly from the beginning as Reddit is.
Simplicity is going to be what becomes the next Reddit, look at how simple the predecessors have been, fark > digg > reddit > twitter
Not yet, but I'm using the mobile site as a PWA and it works pretty well. It does take a little bit to wrap your head around decentralized but once you do it makes the rest of the fediverse easier if you explore elsewhere. The other thing is both kbin and Lemmy are in early days with a very small number of independent devs, so there will be rough edges and outages and things that need to be fixed like the early days of Twitter. Remember the fail whale? 😅
Glad to do what I can! I know the fediverse can sometimes be hard for people to wrap their heads around and/or dealing with new software, and we all had to learn at some point or another.
It'll be a little rough in the beginning, but I truly believe we're onto something great here.
They both talk to each other, so it's a large part which feels more comfortable to you as the content is the same. Lemmy has been around for slightly longer, but kbin has some features not over there, like the ability to interact with Mastodon (Twitter)
I’m new to kbin and beehaw. I created an account in both, but I’m trying to see what space I want to make primary and delete my other. I like the layout of kbin, but I understand beehaw better. With kbin, I can’t tell how to see communities in other instances and subscribe to them. I can easily tell that on beehaw. Here, I get the feeling I’m only seeing local content. I can’t easily tell what instance someone else’s post came from.
Are magazines like communities? Can I see only the communities I’ve subscribed to, what instance they’re in, and browse only that content? I have a lot to learn.
You can follow the same content on Lemmy on kbin. So if you search for @community@beehaw.org (or wherever.tld) you can find what you're looking for and follow it. Same with @user@instance.tld
Magazines on kbin are communities on Lemmy. But you should be able to filter between subscribed and all. From all you can find other communities/magazines that you can follow.
For anyone who is confused about filters as I was until about 4.7 seconds ago, the filter you want isn't the funnel icon across from top/hot/newest etc., it's the to-do icon along the top right next to your username.
Here from Reddit as well, created two magazines that I was looking for and weren't a thing yet. Im confused though, I joined from kbin but can users from Lemmy and other places interact with my kbin magazines? Can I follow Lemmy "sublemmings"/communities from my kbin account?
Yes to both your questions. You can follow Lemmy and they can follow us. Search for @community@instance.tld or @user@instance.tld and follow from there.
Yes, you definitely can! Find the community you are interested in and grab the subscribe link from the community sidebar. Paste the link into your search bar on kbin and the community will pull up so you can subscribe. If it is a Lemmy community you need to change the ! at the beginning of the link to @ and you should see the follow button.
Is there a way to get an even more compact view of the site? Previously I used Reddit is Fun and I really like being able to see 10-15 posts at a time and a solid wall of text in the comments. I turned on compact view here and made the text as small as possible but I still only see 3 posts at a time maximum with a lot of wasted space around them.
As far as I know, starting with ! is a Lemmy only thing. I haven't seen it elsewhere on the fediverse. Starting both with @ is how it's done everywhere else.
@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.
Add comment