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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ruud@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

(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 @ulu_mulu@lemmy.world : 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 @ruud@lemmy.world , 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. [!Netherlands@lemmy.nl](/c/Netherlands@lemmy.nl). 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. See this post for a list!

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.

top 50 comments
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[-] Migillope@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

What is the philosophy behind downvotes? Downvote non-productive/bad faith comments or downvote things you do not like?

[-] TheSmartDude@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Let's hope it's the former.

[-] twistypencil@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

How does lemmy mark a post as read? I want to scroll past posts and have them automatically marked read, and then not show them to me again. Every time i open lemmy I'm seeing the same posts I've seen many times. Yes, even when I am not sorting on 'active'

[-] ulu_mulu@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I made a picture to try and explain a few basic concepts (hopefully) in a simple way, if you think it can help, feel free to link it in the guide, if not it's ok :)

https://imgur.com/a/uyoYySY

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[-] ekZepp@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago
[-] Aeri@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

I'd really like to have the ability to disable embedded images in comments. I want to see only text, not 50 memes, RES had this as a feature.

[-] TheSmartDude@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago
[-] GamerBoy705@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

On the default Lemmy web UI, no. But some apps aggregate an account's votes and call them "Score", so it does exist but not many can see it.

[-] TheSmartDude@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That's good, since opinions can be posted without fear of mass down-voting.

[-] rjc@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Is there a way to turn off auto-refresh on the homepage's posts? Sometimes its cool to drink from the firehose, but other times you're trying to read titles of posts and they refresh and scroll off faster than you can keep up with. Would be great to have a auto/manual toggle for refreshing.

[-] RarePepeCollector@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As someone who used voat for awhiel here are my tips:

  1. USE this platform, don't use reddit. USE this platform and give it content. Content is basically the same as oxygen you can't deprive it, POST often and comment OFTEN.
  2. Don't dwell on reddit too much. Voat's only active communities were about shit posting on reddit (they had a /v/MeanwhileOnReddit and a few banned communities and that was it, nobody used any other communities). Find your favorite community and build it. Build just 1 ideally, anymore is too thin. I am building up https://lemmy.world/c/frugal
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[-] OwenEverbinde@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to test whether I could post a comment here.

[-] OwenEverbinde@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

And a reply?

[-] computersaysno@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

that info graphic was great! thanks for posting this

[-] grus@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I've seen repeated accusations that lemmy is tankie/red-fash, especially when it comes to those that control it - mods/admins/w/e. How true is this?

[-] PorkrollPosadist@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you ask a liberal what "tankie" means you will get a response that sounds a lot like if you ask a conservative what "woke" means. The two main developers are communists, trying to collectivize social media. It is very shocking. ๐Ÿ™„ They develop the software transparently, out in the open, along with many other contributors. They also operate lemmy.ml, the very first Lemmy instance. Dessalines has a collection of essays he's written on Github. If you are concerned about his beliefs, I would go straight to the source rather then taking third hand rumors on face value. As for the rest of the network, each instance (such as lemmy.world) is operated independently. The whole point of federation is to decentralize control over the network.

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[-] BuckarooButtsnarf@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

In my haste to sign up I jumped into Lemmy.ca, as I followed a favorite subreddit there. Now I'm feeling like I would prefer a more general instance. Can I switch from lemmy.ca to Lemmy.world? Outside of the local view does it even matter?

[-] goldgate@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As far as I know, yes. It's like asking can I switch from Hotmail to Gmail? Make an account on Lemmy.world, and you should still be able to follow your favorite community hosted in lemmy.ca

[-] PorkrollPosadist@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Some Fediverse platforms (e.g. Mastodon) allow you to migrate your account from one server to another. By doing this, you keep your account details, post history, subscriptions, etc. and your followers get redirected to your new account. Lemmy does not currently support this, but it may someday.

[-] KingScoob@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Great write up, I appreciate this as I get stuck into Lemmy.

Does the 'local' tab just refer to posts from your home instance, eg; .world?

[-] ruud@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago
[-] scottyb1001@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

RIF transplant. Happy to be here. Thank you for the tutorial looking forward to start playing catchup

[-] Dick_Justice@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is great, thank you! I plan to send it to a friend - it's much better than any explanation that I could come up with.

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[-] ccunning@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

On Reddit subreddits are self moderated. Are communities on Lemmy self moderated or does all moderation happen at the instance level?

[-] Just_A_Human@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Is there any phone app for Lemmy? Or would it be different websites for different Lemmy worlds?

[-] Lev_Astov@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I just found this list of apps: https://join-lemmy.org/apps Also, why want an app? I never understood when the website is fine.

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[-] too_much_too_soon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Are there any more guides for Moderators and about editing communities? e.g. can images and banners be edited after creation? Where exactly are the mod tools options to found as a moderator? I'm very new to this and there is very little that is obvious to me.
This basic guide is very helpful but where can I find more? thanks in advance

[-] luis123456@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you for this guide! Helped me alot!

[-] Devendra@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago
[-] Spitz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Also, I know it's typed out somewhere, but I can't find it and couldn't understand it anyway. Could someone explain to me as if I'm technologically useless and just a bit dense generally, how to connect with communities on other instances? Something about copying links and pasting them somewhere? I'm on jerboa if that means anything.

[-] ge_generation@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You can search for communities, and in the list you will get communities on other instances.

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[-] griffen62@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The FediDB site does not list lemmy.worlds hosting location, what country is the site hosted in?

ETA: I'm inclined to think the Netherlands based off of some quick googling, but confirmation would be nice.

[-] ruud@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Hosted at a Hetzner datacenter in Germany. I am in the Netherlands

[-] ChromaticMan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

On what kind of server are you hosting it? I guess it can get pretty expensive with the increasing traffic.

Also what happens to my account when you decide to pull the plug? Are all accounts created on this instance deleted?

[-] ramblechat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is what worries me - an instance creator terminates the instance for whatever reason, then all the accounts and posts are gone. Or the creator could hold the instance hostage - "Hey guys, costs are building up and I'm going to have to shut it down unless people donate"

[-] AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Afaik there has been talk of making a "server migration" procedure for an account. So if an instance is getting the axe in a month, everyone has time to migrate their stuff to another instance. Though this is not the case as of now.

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[-] pizzazz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Hi, thanks for the post. I migrated here immediately after Boost started not working well any more.

[-] ulu_mulu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What does "Subscribe Pending" mean?

I clicked the Subscribe button on !guildwars2@lemmy.ml but I get that yellow pending button instead of the green "joined". Is it because of the heavy load?

Not a big problem, I can read and post there, but I was curious.

[-] ruud@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Can be heavy load, so just wait or re-try (cancel and then subscribe)

[-] ulu_mulu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Ok, thanks!

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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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