People need to realize you can use alternatives
Yeah I have been finding it hard to wrap my head around this federation part.
I tried subscribing to a specific feddit.de community using Jerboa and I haven’t been able to yet. Not sure whether I’m misunderstanding something or whether that’s not possible.
Jerboa doesn’t let you create an account. Just do that step on the web first.
I joined lemmy.world and it took 2 minutes.
I have an account and I’m logged in. I’m posting this from Jerboa. But it’s not a feddit.de account. Maybe I’m missing something.
Jerboa search only finds communities that at least 1 person on your instance subscribed to, to find new communities from other instances easily I like to use https://browse.feddit.de/
Then when you find a community, go to the web version of your instance (don’t worry it’s (mostly) mobile friendly) and type !name@instan.ce (don’t forget the !) Then you can subscribe there. Close and reopen Jerboa and your new community will show up in the list. The Jerboa devs are working on fixing this.
True, Federation is a key part in decentralization
I think they should make a video guide to lemmy and link it on the join page.
And I thought I had choose the wrong one…
Hello from lemmy.ca
Well, hello from feddit.de! Since I’m a german user I thought it’d be only logical to register on a german instance. While new registrations are semi-locked, the criteria for being let in are quite easy to pass and they are mostly in place to filter out spam. Got my account approved right on the next day
The documentation explaining how fediverse works is so bad. It’s so long and convoluted anyone new just can’t be bothered reading it.
I recognize it’s easier said than done obviously and I don’t have a good solution to propose; but if there was a way to make the app UI more user friendly it might help the understandability of the fediverse and subsequently lower the barrier to entry. Unless someone can figure out how to make it more seemless of an experience, it’s gonna be hard to get massive traction
bro’ i didn’t even knew that there was a documentation
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/index.html
No, one will read that
We need a way simpler cheat sheet to get people in and leave that documentation for later
Someone posted a good infographic about the fediverse over on kbin in RedditMigration (another complicated wrinkle in this whole fediverse thing) that did a great job explaining this whole fediverse thing.
If only I could link it.
Edit: jerboa editor doing me dirty
Docu-what now?
Seriously, if the average user needs to understand distributed systems to play in the fediverse pool, they are going to land back at Reddit. Just get people in the door (any door) and fight the technical debt that creates later.
Sure, it’s a shit plan. But, it’s the only way to really capitalise on the current moment. With both Twitter and Reddit blasting away at their own feet, there is a real opportunity for something better to step up. The fediverse can be that thing. But, not if people end up gatekeeping it. Less Stallman style, “RTFM!” And more, “hey, welcome. Let’s get you set up.”
Well, that’s my point. We need a cheat sheet easy to read that gives most of the necessary information to create an account and use different instances and how to post from one to another.
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/index.html is good but way too much for newcomers
Idk what’s going on, I just know I’m ready for open source options. I’m signed up here and mastodon now and plan to use the duration of the reddit strike to learn more about these platforms, delete my activity on others, and slowly build communities so I’m not reliant on others for news and learning.
I don’t think it’s too difficult to figure out. Seems more like a matter of shifting activity to keep people engaged. I’m far from tech literate, though.
Yeah. It needs to be explained much better. Compare it to email or something
lemmy.ca - Hailing from beautiful Nova Scotia! 🇨🇦
I like lemmy.world, because anyone can create their own community.
I’m in lemmy.world. they have an associated mastodon as well.
I joined mander.xyz because it has a lot of science oriented communities and that’s why I’m here. Super happy to have found it.
As someone who intentionally joined a different instance, the biggest issue is the “federation” doesn’t allow cross-authentication. Clicking a link to another instance moves me to that instance where I’m not logged in. Authentication should really be cross-instance.
I agree with you
I think this occurs because people haven’t gotten used to linking to communities on other instances properly.
They usually post the direct link like beehaw.org/c/technology . Instead they should start using the federated link which is more instance agnostic like this: /c/technology@beehaw.org . This link will load the community from your instance.
deleted by creator
assuming the servers are properly federated you should be getting a link that is still on your server. i mean, you got to this lemmy.ml link alright at least
wait, i think i get what you mean, like if you get an external link while not browsing on your instance? you should just be able to paste that link into the search function to find your instance’s version of the post
If I click the link you provided, my browser takes me to Lenny.ml. There I am not logged in and my credentials from feddit.de are not working. So I cannot post there.
I think it only works if the link points to a community on another instance. Like !memes@lemmy.ml . Maybe this is the intended behavior.
The downside is, you can not visit an instance and view the local communities and their post and interact with them. This makes it a lot more attractive to join the instance where the communities are you want to frequent.
Edit: the link to the community does not work either for me. But I am kind of sure, that there are links that work as intended and make you just view the community from your own insurance…
You can subscribe to those communities on your instance, and then interact with them.
Yeah, I can manually search and find communities, but hyperlinks move you to the other instance (on a webpage; browsing within an app like mlem seems to work)
links that you find while browsing on reddthat.com will send you to other instances? that’s super odd, I’m not getting that behavior with midwest.social or lemmy.ml, using mobile or desktop firefox. just pasting the links into the search to find your instance’s version of the post is a bit of a janky workaround but it should work. you might try posting in https://reddthat.com/c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
From my instance, I’ve been crossing to other instances fine to post, upvote, etc.
Can you elaborate on your experience a bit more? I can’t say I have had any issues as you’ve described. If something doesn’t look right, or isn’t working the way you expect, it might actually be a bug.
This is something I also find strange. If I click a link to an instance, I want to view their content and not visit their homepage, where I am not logged in and cannot do anything.
Solution: change servers
Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.
Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.
How’s it work if I get banned from one instance? Yet I can still comment in that instance I got banned from? No clue how that works
If you get banned from your home instance, you’re banned everywhere.
If you get banned on a different instance, you can no longer post/comment/vote in communities there but otherwise you’re fine.
stupid beehaw 3:<
Beehaw kind of seems like a problem child. Like, the first thing I saw about them is that they were de-federating.
Just joining in, and what will happen if the instance you created your account on decides to stop running. Does your account just dissapear?
Yes. But it is easy as hell to set up on another instance or even throw up your own.
I applied to 3 instances when I decided to join and lemmy.ml was the only one that responded so there’s that.
It’s also that lemmy.ml is the instance I’ve seen posted everywhere when it’s brought up, so naturally people would just sign up there instead of finding somewhere else.
If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.
That isn’t guaranteed, though. The other day I wanted to create a new community and was browsing instances on join-lemmy.org/instances for an instance that was compatible rulewise. The one I picked evidently wasn’t a good pick (burggit.moe). Trying to advertise my new community, I found out it was defederated from beehaw (and likely others) and got insulted as a pedophilia sympathizer …
Randomly assigning new users to instances would make a substantial fraction of people very unhappy.
