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Lemmy.world starting guide (lemmy.world)

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

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(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.

(page 2) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

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

So can I not have my home page only be the communities I subscribe to by default?

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

You can change the default to 'Subscribed' in your Settings (click your name in the top right, then Settings

Don't forget to Save your changes.

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

Do you need to do anything else to go into effect? I set to All and sort type hot which is saved in settings but when going to home it reverts back to local and active

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

So I think I've spotted a problem with how Lemmy's federation actually works. I can give you several examples, but I've spotted that there are several 'Technology' communities that originate on different servers. They're definitely different 'communities' because they have quite dissimilar subscriber numbers. That's potentially going to cause a lot of confusion going forward - I really don't want to have to subscribe to two or three of everything...

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

What does pending subscribe mean?

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

Thanks for making this post! It answered a lot of my questions, but I still have a few more. So I made my account with this server, Lemmy.world, and I can connect with any other server/community I want to with this account. Awesome. What happens though if this server were to be taken offline? Would my account still exist? Is there anything that would be lost aside from the content on this server?

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

What does create remote post or comment mean? Does this mean we can post onreddit from here or something?

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

When I'm on the homepage, I click "All" then sort by Hot. I get a nice list of posts from all over which is really good. But after a few seconds new posts take the top slots of hot and makes just scrolling through unusable. Is there a setting I'm missing for how to keep it from refreshing until I actually hit the refresh button?

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

Hi, thanks for the post. This bit confuses me: "Please note that a server only starts indexing a server/community once it has been interacted with by a user of this server."
How does a user interact with a server for the first time, for lemmy.world to start indexing it?

[-] zachimusprime44@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

goodbye reddit, hello lemmy!

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

What is the ideal resolution for a community banner so as not to unnecessarily 'weigh it down' with a super high-resolution image?

[-] TheInsane42@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Would it be an idea to add the alternative interfaces in this post?

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

New users: this instance is too large, please join a smaller instance.

[-] deniz@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

please add turkish language

[-] 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

[-] 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.

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

I will watch the costs, and actively ask for donations when needed. But we have some reserve from the mastodon.world donations and also I've already seen Lemmy users donate.

When this server is deleted, the accounts on it go as well. But as with the mastodon server (which has 164000 accounts now) I'm looking to adding levels of admins, of which at least 1 will get 'the keys' (registrar/dns/hosting/OS) for continuity. I have already promised on Mastodon I won't shutdown. If I ever get tired of it I'll transfer to another admin.

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

That sounds like a good idea! Do you have a link where people donate?

[-] 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.

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

Thanks! It's not finished yet but keep checking back.

[-] 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.

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

Yes, I got that. But how do you connect to them?

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

If you open the community on our host (so it will read https://lemmy.world/c/communtityname@somewhereelse on the address bar for the communityname community owned by the somewhereelese instance) there should be a "Join" button on the sidebar.

[-] 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?

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

Is there some way to stop Lemmy from refreshing under my nose. I'm trying to click a link, or read one and it just scrolls away.

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

What is the difference between Lemmy ML and WORLD?

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

Hi, thanks for making this instance and post! I think one of the main things that prevented me from grasping the fediverse when I tried mastodon out earlier was not knowing about the common Activitypub protocol. The e-mail analogy that was being used didn't quite click for me, so I'm happy to have a much better understanding for this go around! Here's to greener pastures!

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

Great initiative!

[-] RealFknNito@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

So if an instance 'defederates' another instance, it effectively means all content from them is blocked while using the instance which defederated them?

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