Asklemmy

Honestly im loving the experience and even though its getting big because of all the reddit drama, im loving the small communities feel that it has for now. I have to say though that navigation cross instances its being a bit of a headache and i hope it gets better, much better. At least it should notify me that i am not able to see the rest of the comments on a post because of some settings of the instances / my account no? Or am i missing something?

So far, I am enjoying the experience. Full disclosure - I had an account on lemmy.ml a year or two ago that I deleted because I was not using the platform. I'm more engaged this time around. The only technical issues that I've noticed seem to be tied to the rapid growth in the user base and the administrators seem to be making adjustments as growth continues.

I haven't had any difficulty subscribing to communities that interest me and there seems to be enough content being generated to keep me interested and engaged. Generating content has been easy so far and I am enjoying myself.

The instance system seems nice - I like my instance and there are some good local communities. Some of them seem to replicate communities on other instances, but I don't mind having more than one community to check when I want to distract myself with a specific topic.

Its somewhat confusing, but I guess thats to be expected on a new site.

not great. reaching my feed or finding communities requires multiple clicks, like why is the local community selection the default in the community tab, it's just stupid. collapsing comments requires more mouse movement and clicking in a different location every comment because of name length, very dumb. communities are too small and not reliable news aggregators yet, not sure why we couldnt just have subreddits move their culture over and agree of a server, or at least set up bots with RSS feeds from news sites or popular stuff in the mean time. lacks customizability for visuals and usage in general. i'd like to have it autocollapse or autohide posts i've already seen, but now i just see the same threads from 2 days ago. user and community pictures in every post on my frontpage are visually noisy. and more and more issues. the devs definitely need help with creating a reasonable browing experience.

Just did it.

Decent experience, still new and getting used to it. Let's see how it goes! I wish for the best for lemmy!

I like it here.

The content isn't here yet, the UI needs a review, but its funcional and cool.

We just need to get everyone here and endure the growing pains as lemmy matures.

It seems that there's some missing middle-management link conversion that someone needs to release.

If someone makes a post saying (and I'm making up links here, don't click them) - there's a new reddit-equivalent community at https://lemmy.world/c/whatever come join! ....that's only telling us half the story.

So newbies click this link and oh they have to create a lemmy.world account? What about if they already created a lemmy.one account? Do they need multiple accounts? We know they don't, but they don't know that yet.

Even experienced users can't make use of that link at all, and this is the crux of the issue. Every link given out has to be some sort of !whatever@your.instance variant. And you have to manually search for that or manually enter it. It's 2023 and this renders your hyperlink unclickable and that much trickier to use.

On mobile I assume it's even harder, or even mobile-to-desktop or desktop-to-mobile.

There needs to be a one-click way to subscribe to communities using the instance you're logged into without all the back and forth.

here's a cohertly sound Answer.

1. What happens to the communities/comments/accounts if a Lemmy instance goes down? Do they just disappear?
   When a specific Lemmy instance goes down, local users won't access their accounts, communities, or comments until it's restored. The data seems to "disappear" but it's not lost if the instance comes back online. Content copies exist in other federated instances but the original data is tied to the creating instance. BTW, you can backup your toots, comments and anything else on your account on your current instance and start again

2. Can people on other instances use your username? Could others tell which is which in comments/posts?
   Yes, usernames are instance-specific, so the same username can be used across different instances. However, usernames include the instance, making identification clear. For instance, 'username@instance1' and 'username@instance2' indicate different users.

3. How can people afford to host an instance? Aren't there costs to hosting a server?
   Indeed, hosting an instance involves costs for server, bandwidth, and potentially maintenance. Individuals hosting instances usually cover these costs themselves or use donations or sponsorships.

4. Is there anything stopping corporate interests from hosting a Lemmy? I fear that these corporate instances will be the only ones that can handle large traffic and we're just back to Reddit.
   Theoretically, a corporation can host a Lemmy instance. But federated platforms like Lemmy ensure that no single instance controls the entire network. Even with a popular corporate instance, users can choose other instances or create their own, allowing diverse moderation policies and community norms.

5. Can an instance go from fully federated to partially without telling its users? How would they know?
   An instance changing its federation policy can impact the available content and the reach of users' posts. Although there's no built-in notification system for such changes, a responsible administrator should inform the community, potentially using the instance rules listed in the sidebar or other official communication channels. Users may notice a change if they stop seeing content from certain instances, or if their posts aren't visible on instances they used to federate with. Such a shift in federation policy could also alter the dynamics of moderation and community interaction on the instance. you can see what instances is blocked on /instances. and /modlog shows all moderations.

Long time Reddit user and I find Lemmy easier to navigate. I’m used to Mastodon so maybe that’s a factor.