Since it seems to be a common question for many new users.

  • eddanja@lemmy.world
    27·
    1 year ago

    Think of instances (lemmy.world, kbin.social, sh.itjust.works, etc.) like planets. Each planet contains cities (or subreddits communities). Most of these planets are federated meaning that if you were born on one planet (have a login) then you can travel and participate the galaxy of cities and planets. If a planet defederates, then you can no longer travel there if you were not from there.

    • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
      9·
      1 year ago

      I think that still confuses people. It may be simpler to relate it to email. You are on one email domain like gmail.com or yahoo.com and can email other servers. Bad servers that are sending spam or hate speech can be blocked.

    • Ophy@lemmy.nz
      5·
      1 year ago

      What is the major difference between something like Lemmy vs Kbin, etc., compared to just two different Lemmy “planets”?

      Also, how do other platforms in the fediverse fit into this analogy? Something like Mastodon, would that be considered another galaxy? Is there any travel between these or do they require the birth of a new fedinaut within that galaxy to interact with those worlds?

      • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 year ago

        Mastadon is like a galaxy of federated planets that can speak/travel to Lemmy planets when they want to, but lemmy can’t really understand anything they say to each other and can’t really travel to their planets (mastadon is ‘people’ based like twitter, whereas lemmy is ‘subject’ based like reddit)

        I dont know how kbin fits into this analogy. I think it basically is the same as lemmy and can talk/travel to lemmy but also only understands some mastadon

      • formatc@sh.itjust.works
        6·
        1 year ago

        The best you can do right now is recreate it on another planet. Hopefully someday there will be a way to migrate (or a way to export/import).

      • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        Sign up for a new account at a different instance. While you can transfer your account to another instance in Mastodon, you can’t do it for Lemmy right now.

      • Doods@infosec.pub
        9·
        1 year ago

        Local shows posts posted on your planet, All shows the entire federation (galaxy).

      • DontTreadOnBigfoot@lemmy.world
        7·
        1 year ago

        If I understand correctly, local only shows your planet and you can participate fully.

        All shows the entire galactic federation (though you may only get to sightsee other planets, but not talk to the locals without getting a visa (login credentials for that planet))

        • jcg@lemmy.world
          6·
          1 year ago

          Not quite right. All would be the entire galactic federation that allows free entry with your planet, like the countries in the EU. There is no way currently to see the entire galactic federation, and probably never really will be because of the enormous amount of data that would need to be kept on a single instance.

        • jcg@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          Not quite right. All would be the entire galactic federation that allows free entry with your planet, like the countries in the EU. There is no way currently to see the entire galactic federation, and probably never really will be because of the enormous amount of data that would need to be kept on a single instance.

      • ThatGuyFromMichigan@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        Local view only shows posts hosted on this instance (planet). So only communities hosted on lemmy.world for example.

        All view would include posts from other instances as well.

        • Lzwzli@reddthat.com
          2·
          1 year ago

          So should I have accounts on more than one instance? Which instance has the most communities?

          • TeaHands@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            No, where did you get that idea? If you want to view as much random content from everywhere as you can just browse by All. If you want a more curated experience, stick to your subscriptions. Local is sort of a weird limbo unless you’re on an instance that has a dedicated topic (like the Star Trek instance, for example).

            • Lzwzli@reddthat.com
              3·
              1 year ago

              Ok got it.

              One interesting thing I found is I have a reddthat.com account and also a lemmy.world account. Using Jerboa, somehow browsing with the reddthat.com account is faster than using the lemmy.world account even if I’m browsing lemmy.world communities.

              • TeaHands@lemmy.world
                2·
                1 year ago

                Yeah as far as I understand it, reddthat will have a local-but-regularly-updated copy of the community and that’s what you’re seeing when you view it from there. So makes sense that it would load a lot faster. The problem is that with all the strain .world has been under, we had some issues federating new posts and comments out so they weren’t actually making it to other servers local copies.

                I know this recent upgrade was supposed to help with that part. Lots of growing pains at the moment!

  • Silviecat44@vlemmy.net
    10·
    1 year ago

    already done. My instance has pinned an infographic explaining how it works and many others have done similar things

  • Altair@vlemmy.net
    8·
    1 year ago

    More effective would just be making the site easier to use for newcomers, particularly tackling the onboarding and community discoverability.

    Some straightforward ways I can think of would be apps assigning users randomly to a good general instance (like lemm.ee, vlemmy.net, or lemmy.one) that isn’t extremely overloaded when registering

    and integrating lemmyverse.net’s functionality into lemmy itself, cuz not being able to see a list of all communities and their true member count/activity in Lemmy itself is a huge blow to user experience.

    • InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t go as far as automatically assigning users to (random) instances, as some people might really want to use the one they’ve selected for a number of reasons. OTOH, the registration page could offer alternatives (“instead of registering here how about one of these instances, that is currently looking for more users and will have lower loads/latency”, etc.). The default could lead people to some other instance, but always with the option to stay where you are. Of course it would only suggest instances that are federated with the one you’re trying to join (if the admins removed the others there was a reason for that…) or even having admins fill in a list of “preferred instances” that could have a higher priority in the suggestions list?

      • Altair@vlemmy.net
        3·
        1 year ago

        They’d of course be able to select instances, I just meant having a random good one selected by default when registering.

        By good I mean one that’s not too massive, isn’t defederating popular instances, and isn’t a questionable one that’s likely to be defederated itself.

        And I don’t think they should explain too much, new users are easily scared away.

        • InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          Indeed. The more frictionless it is, the better! Even giving the impression of some complexity will drive people away.

  • ANIMATEK@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 year ago

    wefwef is virtually the same as Apollo. I just needed to export my r/s to c/s and ready.

    Edit: corrected the name.

  • Rikolan@lemm.ee
    3·
    1 year ago

    Personally I found that thinking of Lemmy as a bunch of Discord servers really helped. Both have servers and “channels” inside them. Perhaps “The office” meme of “Corporate wants you to find the difference” would be fitting?

    • SmallAlmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      7·
      1 year ago

      No, don’t do that. Discord messed up the definition of a “server”, you shouldn’t use the platform as an example, it will be confusing pretty quickly.

      • Rikolan@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Hmm, perhaps you’re right. When it comes to explaining the fediverse itself, that’s definitely a no-go. I figured it’s just visually easier to grasp it when thinking of Discord.

  • at_an_angle
    3·
    1 year ago

    How exactly is a rainbow made?

    How exactly does the sun set?

    How exactly does the posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work?

    It just does.