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Lemmy.world starting guide (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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 @[email protected] : 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 @[email protected] , 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. [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]). 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 3) 50 comments

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I changed the screenshots in the picture to a light theme, I saw someone saying buttons are difficult to read on dark, could you please replace it in the guide? thanks :)

https://imgur.com/a/fiLOmI7

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Done

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Is the registration closed on lemmy.world? It does not seem to go through when signing up. I know you can choose another instance but I just thought it could be confusing when sign-up still looks open and is encouraged in this guide.

Edit: Resolved. Apparently there was some delay in the server. Got the verification email now. While I was retrying without the email, on the sign-up and login pages, the loading wheel just kept spinning. But all is fine now. Thanks!

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years 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?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

What is the difference between Lemmy ML and WORLD?

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Thanks for all the info i feel like i finally understand. Hopefully people figure out how to migrate because a federated network of sites is much better and its about time everyone moved on from reddit!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

How do i unblock someone? It was an accident

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

In your settings, there's a Blocks tab.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Hope that someone creates a Lemmy view much like old.reddit - way too spread out for me right now. Please, someone build this. :)

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Can I change my @handle (not display name)? I messed up.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

We've just published a polish translation of this, with some minor changes; https://szmer.info/post/356383

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Thanks so much for this guide.ive used mastodon in the past, but it's been a while. I'm not really a fan of the short-blurb content and prefer a forum-format, so here I am!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Does anyone know if it's possible to use the show_read_posts filter of the API? I see that it's implemented, but I can't find the option anywhere in the web UI.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Is there a way to collapse this post or hide it now that I’ve read it? It seems to be the first post in my feed, always.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Firefox on android doesn't let me login to lemmy. I have AdGuard installed and the add-on switched on. What could be the solution?

Edit: I haven't solved the problem, but after some time trying some things here and there, I think I know what's the issue. I have both Chrome and Firefox installed. I was using Lemmy on Chrome, so I tried to login in Firefox, and the issue started. I logged out on Chrome, and tried here on Firefox, it worked. TLDR: you can't have the same account logged in on both Chrome and Firefox.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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...

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

It's not that dissimilar from what happens already on Reddit with lots of subs with similar names and topics.

Eventually, the best ones will prevail.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah this is exactly how Reddit was back in 2010. It was the Wild West back then and similar subs fought to survive. Eventually the one with the best content will win out!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

This is not a problem, it's a feature. It is comparable to reddit having some subs about the same topic, only with different names. Just give it time and it will sort itself out. The best community(ies) will prevail. Subscribe and post and create content for now. Let's kill reddit.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Having this pinned means I have to scroll past this and the other one e v e r y s i n g l e time I go to my homepage in the Mlem iOS app 😂

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

How‘s the Mlem app? Does it by any chance hide the comment if you just click on it? That’s one of my favourite UX features on Apollo, not sure if the original crappy Reddit app had this too. I know that you can hide a comment by pressing in the “-“ button next to the person’s alias, but it’s tiny

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

it’s ok so far, but unlike Apollo where you can get it to show the post title only it seems like it wants to expand everything. so there’s a lot more scrolling involved atm

you can collapse comments in thread, but not collapse the OP if it’s a huge long one like this

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

@ruud Can a Mastodon user vote on a Lemmy post?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Good question. You could try by starring a post from Mastodon, see if the upvote goes up?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

@ruud that worked! though it looks like Lemmy apps require a lemmy account, so I might need to have two of them.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Good to know. Haven't tried checking out Lemmy communities from my Mastodon main, or Mastodon toots from my Lemmy main yet. So far for me, Lemmy is Lemmy, and Mastodon is Mastodon, and never the twain shall meet. In theory, the Federated aspects should offer some interesting and useful features.