I'm one of the people who has very recently tried Lemmy and decided to drop Reddit. Initially because I will no longer be able to use SyncForReddit, but now also because I just like the vibe a lot more here than Reddit.

I'm not a massively technical person, but I understood the broad concept of federation - different instances/servers that sync to form a big conversation/forum of sorts.

I heard a lot of people joining and saying positive things about lemmy.world, so I signed up there.....and that's it.

But, am I using it right? Is the idea to sign up in one place and use it to participate across the LemmyVerse/FediVerse? Or should I be seeking out lots of niche instances of interest?

I hear lemmy.world is the biggest instance. What if most people end up here, does that defeat the purpose? Is this inevitable?

You need a critical mass of users, so a quiet instance with few posts is not attractive. If I search for Xbox, there are lots of empty places or places with 3 posts. If there's one big one (often ends up being in lemmy.world) that's where I'm subscribing.

How are you using Lemmy, are you participating in a bunch of instances or just one?

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[–] Ignacio@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I'm on kbin.social. When I browse the tag "All", I can see all Lemmy communities that federate with kbin.social and all kbin magazines that federate with kbin.social (including those belonging to kbin.social). It's very seamlessly, and at some point you don't realise you're commenting in a post from a different server. But you can also browse those communities and/or magazines you're subscribed to, in a similar fashion to Reddit.

[–] Floey@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I generally scroll through either local or everything sorted by "New Comments". That's why I'm replying to this two month old post, because someone else did, so it rose to the top. Feels like a combination of Reddit and a classic forum where you'd have posts that would get bumped by activity.

[–] walden@sub.wetshaving.social 2 points 1 year ago

2 months old?! Oops.

[–] snailwizard@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So theoretically you should be able to make one account and view a majority of content. This is barring of course any instances or communities defederated from your home instance.

There’s merit in making a community for your interest on your home instance even if you’re subscribed to it on a different instance, for reasons like outages and a diversity of content. Lemmy being bigger than other instances just means there’s more content available here, but if you like the layout of kbin or Mastodon or what have you better you can still see it all.

Plus, just because two instances are federated doesn’t mean the users actually see all the information exchanged. You have to actually opt into it which is cool- ie if an instances particular community is problematic you can just block it and sub to the rest.

Edit: got so wrapped up in my TED talk I forgot to mention- I’m currently trying out Lemmy, sh.itjust.works, and kbin.social until I can settle on one (hopefully kbin gets an app soon lol.)

[–] Overzeetop@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

tl;dr: don't make a community on your own instance unless you intend for it to be a divergent population or discussion from one that already exists.

There’s merit in making a community for your interest on your home instance even if you’re subscribed to it on a different instance, for reasons like outages and a diversity of content.

I'm going to disagree with you on this point. Communities of (nominally) identical purpose probably shouldn't exist in an ideal fediverse. Because these communities are not linked it fractures the user base and/or requires a great deal more work on the human side to manage. Example: 3 communities about Akron, Ohio. If you want to know what's happening in Akron, you have to subscribe to, and manage, three distinct community feeds. Participants won't all be subscribed, so people with interest in the dog park on one community won't get input from people who have dogs on other communities. If I want to put up a flyer for my band which is giving away free beer for coming to our show at the city festival, I have to put it up on all three communities separately and then monitor all three threads for activity.

Alternatively, the ability to create alternate communities of the same focus is not a necessarily a bug. If I'm on an instance which hates beer and dogs, I would want to create an Akron community where I don't have to hear about those drunkards parading their precious fur babies around town like the own the place. I can say all the negative things I want to about beer or dogs while discussing important festival events like the goldfish-bowl-pingpong-ball vendor who always has the most vibrantly colored fish stacked in their prize bags.

While this is a made up example, there are two reddit subs for the game Elite Dangerous and it's the best for the two player bases because they have split along the lines of PVP/Seal Clubbing and Co-op/world generation and, generally, fucking hate one another. That's a good reason to have split instances here on the fediverse.

[–] Captain_Jimmy_T_Kirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I've made accounts on a handful of the bigger ones, just to have them. If one is inaccessible for any reason, it seems like a good idea to be able to log into other instances.

As for where I'll spend most of my time, it'll probably be in whichever is the most open and least likely to defederate others.

[–] knowncarbage@lemmy.fmhy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

I looked at a few instances a week or two ago and decided on fmhy as they seemed, by name, prepped for Reddit users. I then subscribed to a lot of communities often on other instances or kbin. I've found that my local feed is not what I want, lots of piracy & porn, and my subscribed feed has a lot of repetition as a lot of communities are cross posting stuff. Also uploading media seems broken.

I've created an account on a smaller instance with a local feed that is fairly quiet, inoffensive and a little more niche, which makes for a pleasant homepage. Switching to the 'All' feed gives a nice overview of the lemmy & kbin world.

I think I'm gonna avoid the subscribe button for a while and watch, post, comment & vote instead. The entirety of lemmy & kbin is about the size of a medium subreddit at the moment. I think the 'All' feed with some sorting options alongside the search and alert system may be a better way to navigate the current landscape than subscribing to 1234 communities with liberal use of copy & paste.

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