Hi, new user coming from Reddit, as many. Trying to orient with Lemmy, I realize that I still don’t understand the idea of instances well enough. Or maybe the fediverse. So there are plenty of instances, and each is supposed to be dedicated to a topic, but this is a very fluid definition. Anyhow, how do I search for instances? I mean, if I’m in Lemmy.world, I can click “instances” and I get the list of instances that are relevant. Sure, I can use google for that, but my logic tells me that there should be a more organic way.

And this leads to another question, how can I browses communities on other instances with my already existing account? What about platforms such as mastodon where I’m supposed to be able to browse and submit and such?

And finally, is there a search per community possibility?

Sorry, I’m still confused about these.

  • Kresten@feddit.dkEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    To answer your question regarding what an instance is.

    Think of e-mail. Imagine you use Gmail.com, your email would probably be a_new_sad_me@gmail.com. You can send emails to everyone, even someone@outlook.com. You send and read emails you receive on gmail.com. You can’t log onto outlook.com with your gmail login, but you can still email outlook.com.

    I’m not sure I understood your post properly, so I just tried explaining instances. Let me know, if you’d like me to expand my analogy.

    • a new sad me@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m not sure I understand that email analogy, especially where it ends. My Gmail account does not allow me to access others users mail box. So what is the mailbox in that analogy?

      And for that matter, what is outlook here? Another instance or another platform? To communicate with a mastodon post I need to get the link from there somehow?

      (I admit, I’m confused as hell)

      • Kresten@feddit.dkEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Your mailbox is lemmy.world You log into lemmy.world You send emails from lemmy.world You read the emails you receive on lemmy.world

        The only website you ever use is lemmy.world (gmail in the analogy)

        Outlook.com, gmail.com, protonmail.com so on, they’re all examples of singular ‘instances’ of e-mail. Lemmy.ml and lemmy.world are examples of lemmy ‘instances’. You choose one instance, and that’s the one you use for all your communication. There are apps available, but they still communicate through your instance, similar to e-mail apps built-in in phones.

        Not sure how else to phrase it. I’m sure someone else can do it better than me though.

        To communicate with a mastodon post I need to get the link from there somehow?

        I still haven’t figured this out.

        • a new sad me@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Hmmm… I understand the analogy, but I’m still not sure I accept it. I mean, with emails I need to actively search for specific people elsewhere. The basic idea is not to discover new users and such. I don’t think it is only semantics and the reason is exactly the reason I’ve placed my original post. My intention with it wasn’t clear enough, probably.

          To crystallize my question: what’s the point of making theme-based instances if I cannot browse specifically these instances for their local community. E.g., my account is registered on lemmy.world, and I see an instance dedicated to sad things. If I want to browse specifically that instance, see what sad communities I can find there. How can I do that? And if I can, how does that works with the statement I saw on the beginner’s guide that it doesn’t mater which instance I register on?

  • CoachDom@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    So, the way it works: Instance is a server your account is created and hosted on. Within the instance you registered with, people create communities - just like subreddits. You can search for communities within your instance but also from other instances. When searching for a community of interest, make sure to check option All. This will result in showing you communities from across various instances. You can participate, comment and post in the communities from other instances just as if they were created in the instance you are registered in.

    One exclusion is when the instance you are registered with decided to defederate with some instance. For example Instance B is promoting illegal content so your instance decide not to federate with it. Then you won’t be able to access the content on Instance B.

    Makes sense?

    • Spzi@lemmy.clickEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      the instance you are registered with decided to defederate with some instance

      This might explain why I can’t find communities which allegedly exist, or why I can’t choose my home instance in the android app to log in.

      It might. I’m not getting any error which clearly states the malfunction is due to defederation.

      How does one achieve clarity? Is there a map, which shows which instance is (de)federated to which other instances?

      • CoachDom@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Sure you can!

        If you scroll all the way down in a desktop browser, click into Instances. On the right it will tell you what instances are defederated.

  • Kresten@feddit.dkEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    To answer one of your questions-- you can browse communities by opening the ‘communities’ tab at the top of the website of your instance (if you use lemmy.ml, then it’s on that website), then you can press ‘all’ and see all communities federated with your instance (these are the ones someone else on your instance already follows).

    If you’d like to search up communities, you should try browse.feddit.de. I used that to find equivalents to the subs I used to follow. Protip, if there’s multiple of communities with the same topic, then just follow them all. Just them of them as mailing lists with moderators attached.

    Please correct me if I’m wrong

  • Threen@aussie.zoneEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    And this leads to another question, how can I browses communities on other instances with my already existing account? What about platforms such as mastodon where I’m supposed to be able to browse and submit and such?

    I would recommend this

    I have also found some interesting communities on !newcommunities@lemmy.world

  • Kory@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Hello and welcome!

    Your questions regarding the fediverse and lemmy in particular, I’d like to point you to https://lemmy.ml/post/1204463 and https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/introduction.html

    Your questions about how to find communities, I’d like to point you to the Lemmy Community Browser: https://browse.feddit.de/

    I also recommend reading through Lemmy Support since these questions have been covered a lot in the past couple of days and you will find many and more detailed answers there. I don’t mean to discourage you to ask questions though, but it will also help to make yourself familiar with the new platform.

    Enjoy your stay!

    • a new sad me@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Hi, thanks for answering. But I still have some questions.

      First about reading through Lemmy support, I wanted to do that. I’m sure that my question was asked before. So I wanted to search within the community, but I don’t seem to be able to. Am I missing something? (I used a browser on Lemmy.world).

      About the link for search community, it does answers my question, actually. Suppose there is an instance “Lemmy_for_being_sad.ml” and I want to see/search what communities there are on it, how çan I do it? The only way is to go to that instance?

      And also about mastodon. I saw in several places that there won’t be a problem to comment on mastodon using a Lemmy acount. But, how do I get to that mastodon post to begin with?

      I tried to look through the join-lemmy guide before opening the account here, but I couldn’t figure that out.

      Or maybe I’m asking the wrong question?

      • Kory@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I think what you mean by searching through a community is not implemented yet. Keep in mind that Lemmy is a young service and many features are still in development. What I was referring to was opening https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy_support and then scroll through the posts to see if there are some about the topic. Cause that way you will find posts around the same topic but that are worded differently so you wouldn’t have found them anyway :).

        I’m not sure how it works on Lemmy.world since I’m on Lemmy.ml, but here I can click on Communities and it shows me all available communities and I can subscribe to them. When I search for communites on other instances, I either discover them by reading “All” posts, or I search the community browser for my interests, for example “books”. So I’m going the other way round, I don’t check what communities an instance hosts, I look for what I’m interested in regardless where it’s located.

        Can’t comment on Mastodon since I don’t like Microblogging very much, but - without trying to confuse you - there is another service (fork of) like Lemmy, that has an easy to understand Mastodon integration: kbin.social

        Keep asking, we will figure it all out :D

  • PriorProject@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    You’ve gotten some good ad-hoc answers here, but here are some sticky posts that might help more:

    • On getting started in general and federation: https://lemmy.world/post/37906. This is aimed at lemmy.world users, but except for the support community link at the end, it’s mostly broadly applicable.
    • On finding communities to join: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/61827, including links to the major external community browsers that are essential to finding stuff that you’re the first user on your instance to discover.