I’m really confused. I want to learn how this website works. Would love to know more tips if you guys have any!
Instances are where the communities are hosted. Think of them like several different reddits with the subs spread out among them
I might be talking bullshit here as I’m also pretty new to this. But I believe an instance is the server (basically like Reddit) where all the communities (Subreddits) are located. These instances can federate with other instances to grow in a decentralized fashion. Every instance can impose site-wide rules (e.g. beehaw disabled the downvote button, I believe, so you can’t downvote anyone in all of the communities that belong to the beehaw instance).
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong!
Yep! It’s a bunch of reddits that all talk to each other, and each one can have whatever communities (subs) it wants.
Every instance can impose site-wide rules (e.g. beehaw disabled the downvote button, I believe, so you can’t downvote anyone in all of the communities that belong to the beehaw instance).
That’s true for those on beehaw. But if I look at a thread hosted on beehaw from another instance I can downvote. Since I’m looking at a copy/synced version of the thread and I don’t have downvotes disabled.
Still though. It limits the abuse of downvotes to an extent.
Here’s an example screenshot. Note the downvotes are there.
Example 2 from beehaw no downvote button
Cool, thanks for the clarification! I’m still trying to get the hang of the FediVerse. I’m liking it very much so far!
communities are exactly like subreddits but instances are servers run by different individuals, think of them as small reddits but all able to talk to each other, that is why it is called federated
Oh, got ya! What about different links for lemmy? For example, the ones that end in .ee or .ml? Are those instances?
Yup! Those websites are the instances which are the infrastructure and interface by which you can access communities - each of which is hosted on a specific instance. An instance is essentially the collection of all the communities it hosts and all of the users signed up through that instance.
Simplified way to look at it:
Instance is like a server, it hosts your account and some communities.
Communities are like “subreddits”. It has to created / operated on one of the instances, but is accessible to all federated instances (which is largely the norm).
An analogy is email. You can choose your email provider (Gmail, Protonmail, Fastmail etc) and you will have an unique email address based on that provider (e.g. someguy@gmail.com is different from someguy@fastmail.com), but you will have the ability to send emails to anyone (unless you are blocked).
Something to add: when looking at the Reddit analogy, there is a really key difference to understand. While reddit.com is somewhat equivalent to a lemmy instance (eg lemmy.world), it’s important to understand that, while there is only one reddit, there are many many lemmy instances.
This means that when you talk about a subreddit (called a community in lemmy), you automatically know that the subreddit is a community located on reddit.com. If you talk about r/memes, it goes without saying that you are talking about reddit.com/r/memes.
When you shift to lemmy world, if you just talk about /c/memes, that may not be enough info to know which /c/memes you’re referring too. Are you talking about lemmy.world/c/memes? Or lemm.ee/c/memes? Or one of the hundred or more other communities named memes on another Lemmy instance?
Ok… so you’ve created an account on an instance. I’ll use lemmy.world as an example because that is where this discussion is hosted. Your account info is stored on lemmy.world servers. You are subject to the rules and administration of lemmy.world. Your “local” feed consists of posts made on lemmy.world communities.
BUT lemmy.world is also “federated” with many other instances. Take a look. The list is huge: https://lemmy.world/instances . This means that if you are on lemmy.world and choose to browse “all”, you will see communities and posts not just on lemmy.world, but also communities and posts on other federated instances. You can also subscribe to those communities so that they show up on your “subscribed” (aka “home”) feed. Note that there are complexities here around which content you will see from federated instances. At a high level just know that you don’t automatically see all content from other instances… you should put a pin in that topic and learn more about it once you have the general layout down.
Lemmy.world is also “defederated” with some instances as well, which means that their content and users are blocked from lemmy.world.
The ‘instance’ is the ‘server’ that you made your account with.
Your ‘instance’ is ‘lemmy.fmhy.ml’.
A community is essentially a subreddit. As far as I know, there isn’t really an official term for it yet. I have been calling them ‘sublemmys’.
Why not just call it a community?
The official term IS community.
sublemmy is probably not a great term, since it references lemmy rather than being a generic threadiverse term
You’re right but let’s not confuse the OP
the term sublemmy confuses the issue because it makes it harder to understand the idea that an instance isn’t just lemmy, which is another big question people have about the fediverse: what’s kbin, how does it interact with lemmy, how do i see things on mastodon, etc
Instance of lemmy like lemmy.world, lemmy.ml or beehaw.org are the servers which host the software running lemmy. Communities are the hosted on those instances.
It’s pretty obvious if you go through the docs.
