I created a repo on GitHub that has a table comparing all the known lemmy instances

Why?

When I joined lemmy, I had to join a few different instances before I realized that:

  1. Some instances didn’t allow you to create new communities
  2. Some instances were setup with an allowlist so that you couldn’t subscribe/participate with communities on (most) other instances
  3. Some instances disabled important features like downvotes
  4. Some instances have profanity filters or don’t allow NSFW content

I couldn’t find an easy way to see how each instance was configured, so I used lemmy-stats-crawler and GitHub actions to discover all the Lemmy Instances, query their API, and dump the information into a data table for quick at-a-glance comparison.

I hope this helps others with a smooth migration to lemmy. Enjoy :)

  • Barbarian@lemmy.reckless.dev
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    1 year ago

    You’re awesome man! This is direly needed. I’m just wondering how on earth to publicize this before the madness that hits on Monday.

    Any chance you could find a place to fit this in the join lemmy site and do a pull request before then? I know it’s a lot to ask, but it would be huge.

    • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I see TypeScript and get scared. Personally, I do think that the join-lemmy.org/instances page should link to:

      1. My table comparison https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
      2. The Lemmy Community Browser (to find communities across all instances) https://browse.feddit.de/
      3. The Lemmy Map https://lemmymap.feddit.de/
      4. The federation’s lemmy page (with another table comparing instances) https://the-federation.info/platform/73

      Can anyone with TypeScript experience make this PR for us? Here’s the relevant file:

      • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You thinking just a <ul> with the 4 links in it and a header of some sort? Mock or description or anything?

        • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          I think at the top, just above the “Recommended” <h2> add:

          For a more detailed comparison of Lemmy instances, see:
          
          <ul>
          <li><a href="https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances">Awesome-Lemmy-Instances on GitHub</a></li>
          <li><a href="https://the-federation.info/platform/73">the-federation.info Lemmy Instances Page</a></li>
          <li><a href="https://lemmymap.feddit.de/">Feddit's Lemmymap</a></li>
          </ul>
          
          After you create an account, you can find communites across all instances using <a href="https://browse.feddit.de/">Feddit's Lemmy Community Browser</a>
          
          <h2>Recommended</h2>
          ...
          
      • Barbarian@lemmy.reckless.dev
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        1 year ago

        abraxas said he was a typescript vet just earlier, maybe we can coax him into having a look? xD

        Worth a shot at least.

        EDIT: Just shot him a message

        • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Unfortunately I also have very little free time. If you’re not in a hurry and nobody does it before me, I can take a look. Wish I could set a reminder in Lemme. Anyone code the remindme bot yet? LOL.

          !remindme 1 week

          EDIT: Well shit, yes the deadline for a lot of things is next monday isn’t it. Lemme see if I can squeeze in a little time tomorrow morning or evening, if one of my jobs isn’t overwhelmingly crazy, I might be able to. It’s just adding a few links in the “Lemmy Servers” body text? Any UI standard?

          I’m a TS vet, but green on lemmy UI design.

            • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Updated my original message. If I can make time, I need a little more precise info about what/where on the links. It looks like a short enough PR as long as I know exactly what the links should look like

      • smartwater0897@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I think it’s better with less choices for beginners actually. I remember a lot of people didn’t get started on mastadon because they were afraid to pick an instance.

        It’s almost so it would be good if this could just be a checkbox “pick a good instance for me” and it would pick a medium populated instance from the list.

    • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      About 300 active users every day

      Underselling it? 431 currently logged in at time of this comment and it hits 600 concurrently logged in at peak time basically every day. The statistic this repo uses is also:

      **Users ** The number of users that have been active on this instance this month

      By that metric I think Hexbear is still the largest lemmy instance. It would be the third on this list if you only count daily concurrent login peak.

        • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I see, so it’s commenting accounts per hour. Would be interesting to see what the commenting accounts per month is to more accurately compare to this list. Although this list doesn’t make it clear whether they are using accounts that have commented or accounts that have simply participated via logging in and voting, I would personally include any voting account as “active”.

    • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Instances aren’t added manually. They’re discovered using lemmy-stats-crawler.

      As long as your instance is federating, active, and the API is reachable then it will make it onto the list.

      Edit: It looks like your instance’s API isn’t reachable, which may be why it’s missing:

      Please fix the availability of your instance’s API.

  • pyarra@vlemmy.net
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    1 year ago

    I also recently just created my instance vlemmy.net, I dont mind anyone joining and creating their community’s there. Dont really have any restrictions either. Would be nice to learn some new things from our internet friends

  • honk@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    How do you check wether nsfw content is allowed?

    Because my instance (feddit.de) doesn‘t allow pornographic material. I guess that doesn‘t exclude all nsfw content. But the column header is called adult and it makes it seem like „adult content“ aka porn was allowed.

    *edit fixed typo

    • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      It doesn’t say porn, it says adult. The legend describes how it’s determined

      Adult “Yes” means there’s no profanity filters or blocking of NSFW content. “No” means that there are profanity filters or NSFW content is not allowed.

    • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      how do you do that? Is there a guide anywhere for how to setup mastodon seeing lemmy or lemmy seeing mastodon?

      • Claude Gohier@mastodon.xyz
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        1 year ago

        @maltfield
        You can follow users or communities from Mastodon.

        The magic of ActivityPub.

        Just search for the user or community’s url in mastodon, You can then follow from the result.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    It would be nice for those elsewhere on the fediverse to know when an instance is aligned with or run by the same people as an existing mastodon or other kind of instance.

    Pretty sure nothing conventional is exposed for that sort of information, but it could be useful in the future. Maybe a general description field that can contain that sort of information.

  • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Shooting for this. It’s not beautiful but it’s not ugly:

    Gonna have to dance around the i8n library for this PR, but it shoudl be possible.

    • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Manually maintaining is not realistic.

      If your API is read-only and you’re blocking bot traffic from querying it, you’re doing it wrong. Please be nice to the bots. And also users that use VPNs, privacy plugins, etc. You’ll false-positive block them, and that’s not very nice.

      • _NetNomad @ DXC@forum.dxcomplex.com
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        1 year ago

        definitely agree. I don’t control our host’s policy but i will pass that along. some bot traffic is allowed- we were on the join-lemmy site two days ago and i have a bot running this very minute- i think they’re still just trying to dial in the right balance between two much and not enough security

  • smartwater0897@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Great work! Can you include the instance description in this list also?

    Also i would love to see country but that’s doesn’t seem to be included in the Lemmy app. I guess you could do a ip lookup on some service to see country if you really wanted to.

    • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I think the description would be too long and clutter the table. I’d be down for descriptions on-hover, but I’d have to switch platforms (from GitHub markdown) for that afaik.

      You can also get the country from this list. I don’t know how they do it (maybe IP lookup)