cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/853004
Hello there, and welcome to the Fediverse! Let's get you started.
This post was created together with many users, intended to help you have an easy start! It has a simple language, and it includes many useful links.
For your first day here
Hello, newbie user! Lemmy is just like Reddit, but better. Ha-ha. Seriously. But let's not overwhelm you for now.
This very neat starting guide was written by our beloved admin, @ruud. To avoid confusion, start reading it from the Quick start guide section.
If you're new to Lemmy, this post will also help you perfectly.
kbin users can check out this amazing starting guide instead. This is also a nice guide.
Finding Communities on Lemmy/kBin
If you finished reading your starting guide, it's time to go find your new favorite communities! Check out these dedicated services:
number1, 2, 3, and 4, and 5! Go have some fun! :DFor your second day here
Hello again! You're less of a newbie now, and you found some amazing communities! We can start talking about the Fediverse. I hope you didn't forget to read the rules for lemmy.world!
kBin.social's rules are in this link.
The Fediverse
You must've realised that we addressed Lemmy and kBin users differently. And what is this Fediverse people keep talking about, anyways?
Lemmy and kBin are two different platforms, and they can perfectly interact with each other! This means that they are a part of the federation. And they are only two members of the vast Fediverse.
What is the Fediverse? video by Framasoft to get a good understanding with visuals!
As a great lemming once said: Fediverse is basically like a group chat, but for websites. This means that federated websites all agree to share their content with each other, constantly, at the same time.
Follow this link to view a list of all Lemmy instances.
Follow this link to open the Fediverse Observer. It is set to show kBin, but you can navigate your way through the site to show any Fediverse platform you'd like.
For your third day here
That's it! What else do you want? Go have some fun and keep learning along the way! ;)
So once an instance is federated by another, those posts also live in the 2nd instance as sort of a backup?
Part of what I enjoyed about reddit was that I could find things that are 10 years old with a quick google search and still expect them to be there 10 years from now. If all this can go away at any moment, it sort of just feels like a chat room or something. Im not saying that is a bad thing, it just makes it difficult to build long term communities and a strong user base long term if its possible.
Do most people browse within their "local" or "all?" When browsing "all" I see some duplicate content from communities in other instances which I guess is to be expected. Again, not a bad thing - but if I have to search 15 other "news" to see discussion on something I am interested in, isnt that kind of cumbersome?
Enjoying the site so far, dont take my comments as criticism. Just doing my best to learn how to use this type of site and get the most out of it I can. Appreciate the replies from you all.
When you are browsing a federated community from your home instance, you are essentially interacting with your home instance's copy of that community, which will be sync'd to the instance of the federated community.
Think of it like email essentially: If someone sends you an email, but deletes their own email account, you will still have that message history, but you won't get more emails from that account.
Lemmy is not Discord, the messages are persistent and structured in nested threads just like reddit or traditional forums, so they will be organized and searchable.
Besides, any website, including reddit, can go away at any moment, but that doesn't mean they will.
You can do both, or, you can just subscribe to communities that you felt are interesting.
"All" is useful in that even if your home instance has relatively low activity, you can still comfortably browse content everywhere across Lemmy/Kbin.
You don't have to look at all of them, just the ones you find interesting.
Yup all makes sense. Appreciate the insight into how things work.
I know its probably frustrating to have people come in and go "well reddit does XYZ" all the time, so its nice to get an explanation. Truthfully, I think a lot of us just needed a little kick start to get off that site to something new.
Itll take some time to get comfy and learn how it all works, but so far things seem great. Enjoy your day.
You too.