Just joined Lemmy today. From what I understand, there are different Lemmy instances that host different communities. I supposed that to interact in a community hosted in a certain instance, I would need to create an account for that instance. Ended up creating 10 different accounts.

  • empireOfLove
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    2 years ago

    Instances talk to all the other instances through federation. You only need one account on one instance- from there you can then go to communities on other instances by linking !community@instance.tld (e.g !memes@sopuli.xyz) and/or looking them up in the Communities tab and interact with those communities from your home instance.

    • DonjonMaisterOP
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      2 years ago

      Thank you very much! I actually found the documentation for Lemmy. It explained and answered all my questions (for the moment). Feeling kinda stupid for posting this; makes me want to delete it 😅.

      • empireOfLove
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        2 years ago

        No need to delete! Someone may appear with the same question and search the instance, and find your post instead of getting lost and giving up hope.

    • sinnerdotbin@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      For the most part as highlighted above, yes only one account/instance and you can engage with anything that instance federates with.

      However there are already cases where large instances have defederated from others, in which case you will not be able to engage if your local has been defederated from a community you want to access.

      For this reason it is a good idea to have multiple, but use one as a primary.

      • NightOwl
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        2 years ago

        I was on beehaw before and didn’t like that losing access to lemmy.world so found lemmy.one. It’s good to diversify.

      • sinnerdotbin@lemmy.ca
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        2 years ago

        I’ve also found it useful to have multiple to compartmentalize the subjects I subscribe to on each and limit what I see when I am in different “modes”.

        • NightOwl
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          2 years ago

          Makes it easier to see was is active in communities local to that specific instance too.

    • SeeJayEmm
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      2 years ago

      Is this actually working for anyone on lemmy.one right now? I have been unable to subscribe to any community/magazine/etc… that’s not already federated to lemmy.one for almost a week now.

      I’ve tried searching by URL. I’ve tried searching by !name@server.

      Nothing works, it just sits there. I’ve hit search multiple times. I’ve tried to be patient and just come back later and try again. I get there’s growing pains, and I’m guessing this server is getting overloaded. If that’s the case, the admin posting in Meta “hey we’re aware of the problems” would be nice.

      • jonahMA
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        2 years ago

        I’m not aware of the problems, so I can’t make such a post. Looking at this now and searching by URL for magazines on kbin and communities on lemmy instances both seem to work as expected, so I can’t reproduce what you’re seeing.

        I am aware of issues with lemmy.ml, searching for communities that are hosted on that server will often fail the first few times, and subscribing to communities that are hosted on that server often shows that subscriptions are “pending,” so if that’s where you are searching for communities I can see why it’d be an issue. Federation is a two-way street, so if lemmy.one can’t fetch remote data then it won’t work, but I’ve seen many other reports of people subscribing to remote communities just fine, so I don’t think there’s any issues we’re seeing on our end.

        • sarahcanary
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          2 years ago

          I had the same issue though only on jerboa. The website search works fine.

      • sarahcanary
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        2 years ago

        I am on lemmy.one. Are you using jerboa? I posted a similar experience using jerboa and someone suggested logging in to the lemmy website instead and using the web search function to add communities not already connected. That totally works!

        • SeeJayEmm
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          2 years ago

          I have the same problem on both. Seems like the !name@server nor the full url ever populate. What I am finding is that after some time, if I come back and just type in a partial name (to search federated communities) it’ll show up.

    • Wish_you_were_a_beer
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      2 years ago

      Except a lot of times some comments don’t show up depending on which instance or platform you’re visiting from. The only one that’s showing all comments for me in my (very limited) testing is kbin.social but there’s no mobile app for that (yet). So on lemmy I’ve been jumping around between some accounts to try and see which one will show me most of the content

    • stewie3128
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      2 years ago

      We don’t have a good sense of which instances are going to be durable long-term yet.

      Additionally, If you only have one instamce, you’re signing up for that server’s bespoke curation of the Lemmyverse.

      I currently have (I think) 5 accounts spread across Lemmy and Kbin for these reasons.

  • bankimu
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    2 years ago

    I too have a few, had to move around because I don’t agree with the rules.

    For example I almost settled on lemmy.one, but unfortunately they do not show downvotes (nor allow you to downvote). (I cannot fathom why many people like this - probably they want to comment but don’t want to criticize.)

    Oh well, I suppose a good thing is that no one can downvote this comment no matter if they disagree, think that this is offtopic (which I hope this is not), etc. /s

    Anyway I now settled with lemm.ee if you want to know - so far so good.

    • YuzuDrink@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      IIRC, there is research that people tend to “pile on” when they see downvotes, but not when seeing upvotes. So by disallowing them, you kind of keep all posts on the same playing field? Not that I support the decision, so I don’t actually care enough to properly look it up; but I imagine that’s the thinking, more than personal fragility.

      I could imagine if there were a karma system that downvoting would also reduce your own karma, do keep people from just aimlessly downvoting everything as much? But that’s just a thought experiment, not a suggestion. 😅

      • NightOwl
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        2 years ago

        I use down vote as a I disagree with your take button, so do see merit in not being there. Also seen in the past where some tech suggestion is just downvoted, but nobody left an indication as to why. So it might also push people to actually explain why something is incorrect so those who come across the comment later can see why.

        • VioletRing@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          Do you know what goes in to reputation points? Do downvotes have a negative effect? Genuinely asking.

        • CoderKat@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          Last I saw, kbin’s reputation was broken. Used to be that boosts and upvotes were swapped for Lemmy compatibility and the reputation counter hadn’t yet been updated to account for that.

          • lividhen@kbin.social
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            2 years ago

            It might still be, I’m not sure. I have no idea what it is counting in the first place though 😅

  • IDe
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    2 years ago

    I mean it is a good idea to squat on a couple servers in case your main one goes under. 10 might be a bit much.

  • Tyrannosauralisk@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    On one hand, you only need one.

    On the other hand, it’s early days: we don’t really know whats going to be stable in the long run, which communities will be co-opted by the admin going rogue, which will wither until they stop being hosted, etc. So I grabbed accounts with several instances. If they all fail its no big deal, I’ll make more elsewhere then, but no harm having several either.

  • Ataraxia@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I mean you might as well in case something happens in one instance you have your username and profile ready. I like to hop between instances especially if one is slow or if it starts getting flooded with spam.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years ago

    Considering that not every instance is federated with every instance, redundancy is a good thing.

    But 10 seems a bit hard to keep track of tbh.

    Pick one of them to use for a few days. Once you get a feel for things, then worry about the others.

  • AVeryCleverName
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    2 years ago

    I have two because Jerboa’s “switch account” feature pretty much enticed me to make another account on programming.dev so I could more easily browse that instance’s communities.

    I hope Lemmy implements more cross-instance features, like being able to browse communities by their parent instance.

  • Efwis@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    You don’t need an account on every instance. As long as the instance is federated you can pull the content to just one account. For example my main account is on lemmy.zip but I can search and join communities on other instances from my account on this instance