Going forward, the moderators of Community Search Tips will strongly encourage posts to use the URL of a community when linking to that community. We won't get upset at you for using the other methods; we just feel that the full URL provides the best user experience, especially for users of small instances.

This is a bit of a meta post, but please feel free to comment on it if you like.

Background

There are several ways to link to a community in Lemmy. The two most common you will see are these:

• URL Method. This involves using the URL found in your browser's address bar when you are visiting the community. For example, https://lemmy.world/c/transformers
• Shorthand Method. This method uses an exclamation point in the address, which tells Lemmy to load the remote community through the instance you are currently logged in at. For example, !transformers@lemmy.world.

We had previously thought that both methods were interchangeable, but we have since learned of some issues with each.

URL Method Drawbacks

You have probably already encountered the main drawback with the URL method. When you follow a URL to a Lemmy community, you visit that community at the remote instance. You can still see the content there, but you can't comment, upvote, downvote, or subscribe to the community from this page. To subscribe, you'd have to go back to your home instance and follow the instructions we've laid out here.

You can see an example of that below. Here I've folled the URL to https://math@lemmy.sdf.org, and I cannot subscribe to the community because there is no subscribe button present.

At most you can view the community and its content. You can still return to your instance, search for the community using the same URL, and subscribe to it there.

Shorthand Method Drawbacks

1. The Error Page

As inconvenient as the URL Method is, the shorthand method can introduce even worse problems. In Lemmy, a community isn't linked to your instance until at least one user has searched for that community on the search page. This necessary step causes a serious problem when using the shorthand method on a site where that search hasn't happened yet. If you try to follow a link that uses the shorthand method to a community that hasn't been searched for, you will receive an error response.

This is much less of a problem on sites like lemmy.world, where tens of thousands of users have searched for communities already. As you can imagine, however, smaller instances and newer instances haven't necessarily searched for the vast majority of communities out there, making this problem much more pervasive on those instances. To make matters worse, the error page is cryptic and doesn't explain what the problem is or how to solve it.

2. Incompatibilities with other services

This site is primarily focused on Lemmy, but other projects in the Fediverse, such as Mastadon, can -- and do -- interact with Lemmy communities. We can't test the shorthand method in all of these products, but we have received reports that it won't work for Mastodon users, and I suspect there are other projects out there that would run into the same problem. (Note that I did test this for kbin, and kbin can follow the shorthand method.)

Conclusion

We feel that the drawbacks of the shorthand notation have more severe consequences for user experience than the inconvenience of using the URL method. Neither approach is perfect, but a community link that leads to an error message completely defeats the purpose of the content in this community. We hope you agree.

We have confidence that the error will eventually get fixed. Until that time, please use the full URL when linking to communities when making posts to Community Search Tips. Thank you!