(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
[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 [https://lemmy.world/post/15786] 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
@ulu_mulu@lemmy.world [https://lemmy.world/u/ulu_mulu] :
https://imgur.com/a/uyoYySY [https://imgur.com/a/uyoYySY]
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0006c2db-13c6-406e-97e7-6e274fddf355.png] #
About Lemmy.world Lemmy.world is one of the many servers hosting the Lemmy
software. It was started on June 1st, 2023 by @ruud@lemmy.world
[https://lemmy.world/u/ruud] , who is also running https://mastodon.world
[https://mastodon.world], https://calckey.world [https://calckey.world] and
others. A list of Lemmy servers and their statistics can be found at FediDB
[https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy] # 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.
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1cd03dea-443b-4a92-ba87-5b45561200fd.png] 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. !Netherlands@lemmy.nl. 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/ [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’.
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d49e3218-fcee-4dc6-8879-7b5a4986da4d.png] It
will open up the following page:
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b03c9fb1-69ba-43b5-985f-97c3820e146a.png] 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 [https://mastodon.world/about] - 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.
[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/bf81a5f5-997d-42e0-8544-5051cf9657d7.png] 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
[https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/users/02-media.html] on formatting etc. ##
Commenting ## Moderating / Reporting ## Client apps There are some apps
available or in testing. See this post [https://lemmy.world/post/465785] for a
list! # Issues When you find any issue, please report so here:
https://lemmy.world/post/15786 [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
[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.
Since we have quite a few new users, not everyone might be familiar with how Lemmy and the instances work. So I’m gonna link @ruud@lemmy.world’s excellent guide to Lemmy here also.
If you have any questions you can always post them here or you can post them in the lemmy.world !support community.
Two quick-tips:
if you want to tag a user, start by typing an @ and the first letters of the name and you will be presented with a drop-down menu to select users.
if you want to link a community, start with an ! and the first lketters of the community name and you can choose the community name from a drop-down list.
These 2 features don’t work on all mobile apps (yet).
While your choice of instance does matter, don’t fret too much about it, especially in the beginning. Try to get to grips with how a decentralized network works first. You can always switch to another instance later.
Try to be somewhat active, it makes the network more valuable for other members and is crucial in breaking through network effects. The threadiverse won’t replace reddit instantly, but it’ll keep growing slowly, just as the fediverse at large has been doing, regardless of sensationalist journalists proclaiming it’s dead every so often.
Defederation and blocking are integral tools of the network, don’t feel (personally) attacked if an instance blocks yours.
Searching on the wider network isn’t as easy, since if an instance hasn’t federated with another yet it won’t find them unless you do a targeted search which will start up federation.
The software isn’t mature yet and there are still loads of issues. It’s also mostly built by a small team and volunteers, so don’t expect it to be as slick as reddit is, which is a large company by itself. There are still a lot of federation and synchronisation issues, there can be quite a delay between posts showing up on different instances, and so on. On the other hand: you’re part of a community-built project!
