The official lemmy documentation isn’t very user-friendly I believe!
No need to get into how the fediverse works for now - suffice to say there are a bunch of other servers with existing communities set up, and you can connect to them from here with your startrek.website account.
Searching them from this website is a tiny bit tricky - if you’re the first person here to search for it, it won’t show up because that server hasn’t connected to this server.
Searching communities
Go to https://lemmyverse.net/communities, you’ll see a long list sorted by the most active.
Joining communities
Joining take a bit more than a “subscribe” button, but it isn’t too hard.
Under the community name, there’s a string with an exclamation mark. For example, the top “Technology” community has “!technology@beehaw.org” under it.
Copy that string.
Now replace the exclamation mark in front with “startrek.website/c/” and paste it in your browser.
So for the same community ( !technology@beehaw.org ), it would be:
startrek.website/c/technology@beehaw.org
Remember to remove the exclamation mark!
If you’re the first person to connect, the subscriber stats are all wrong (and some posts may not load). Subscribe and give it 10-15 minutes and refresh. I’ve seen subs jump from 6 subscribers and 0 comments on every post, to 300+ subscribers and 20+ comments on each post.
Once you subscribe, other people can find the community more easily on the “All” page here. So you’re getting more content, AND you’re helping others find more communities!
Here’s a few I like:
startrek.website/c/newcommunities@lemmy.world > to see what new communities others have created
startrek.website/c/greenspace@beehaw.org > gardening focused
startrek.website/c/android@lemmy.world > there’s probably an iphone one too
startrek.website/c/news@beehaw.org
startrek.website/c/maliciouscompliance@lemmy.world > if you liked /r/maliciouscompliance
startrek.website/c/anarchychess@sopuli.xyz > if you liked /r/anarchychess
startrek.website/c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
I don’t like this. It is strange, and new, and…
wait a second…
I have a couple of new questions. I wasn’t sure if I should start a new post, or risk being a necromancer and resurrect this post. I’m going with necromancer. It’ll be something cool to add if I ever write my memoir. Unless it’s against the rules, in which case, sorry about this.
My questions: why do some folks here have an @ before their usernames? And, why don’t I have an @ before my username? Background: I haven’t signed up for anything in the Fediverse or Mastodon except for startrek.website.
Second question: how do I format an @ with the username in a comment or post in order to notify that person. I’ve learned that replying to someone’s comment or post alerts them.
We’re still learning how all this works, ourselves…are you by chance visiting from a Mastodon account?
I don’t have a Mastodon account. I might get one at some point, but not yet. Right now, startrek.website is my only Fediverse account.
I’m viewing your post via Mastodon. This is what how your posts look to me. I don’t think you see the @ symbol for yourself.
@Nmyownworld @ValueSubtracted you should be able to @ reply to someone by typing out their entire fediverse username. Mine would be @FreezePeach.
For people on StarTrek.website you’d type @username@startrek.website
@ValueSubtracted@startrek.website @FreezePeach@twit.social
Thank you both for taking time to answer my questions. Much appreciated. This time I didn’t let your names autofill. I typed out just your names after the @. Let’s see what happens.
edit: Lol. Nothing happened. I learned something else today. Re-edited with autofill.
@Nmyownworld I got your message (post? Toot? There’s so many ways to refer to these messages across the fediverse)
@ValueSubtracted@startrek.website @FreezePeach@twit.social
Okay. Thanks! I don’t see an @ symbol next to your or Value Subtracted’s comments here. However, your name does show as John :mastodon:
Using someone’s Fediverse username. Okay. I’m going to experiment here, using your names with the @. Wow. I see formatting I hadn’t seen before.
edit: I also see more information, ValueSubtracted@startrek.website rather just @ValueSubtracted. Is that because it’s my comment?
@Nmyownworld you will see more options, formatting and otherwise, when you are typing your posts in your fediverse client. Your client may be a website app like lemmy (there’s few lemmy apps right now so most people are using the web) or it might be a mastodon client or other fediverse client.
Okay. I’ve learned a little bit, enough to ask questions. Where should I go to post my questions/thread about waves hand all this? At this point, my questions are very ELI5, with answers (hopefully) in the form of tiny, manageable bites, not walls of text. So far, I know I signed up for and can post on a Community, Star Trek specifically, LLAP. And, that the Fediverse is not a new name for the United Federation of Planets. And … yeah, that’s about it.
This is as good a place as any. We’re all learning as we go.
Thanks. I just hit the wrong button and lost my reply to you. Shaka, when the walls fell. Giving it another go.
I’m deciphering an image whose original post I’ve lost in a sea of Lemmy links I’ve been reading and bookmarking. Image link is below. So, Lemmy is an umbrella for instances (servers), which in turn can host (I’m not sure if host is the right term) other instances? Is Star Trek an instance like a mini-reddit, or an, I don’t know what to call them, an instance like a subreddit within the mini-reddit?
The image I mentioned:
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0006c2db-13c6-406e-97e7-6e274fddf355.png
Yeah, so the terminology can get weird, and the Reddit comparison is tricky Because you have to imagine multiple Reddits (the platform, not subreddits) for it to really work.
Servers and Instances are used pretty interchangeably - each one is privately operated, and you pick the one you want to sign up on - startrek.website is one of these instances.
Each instance can host its own “Communities” - there are like subreddits. We’re hosting three right now, /c/startrek, /c/daystrominstitute, and /c/risa.
The neat-but-complicated part is that each instance can communicate with other instances, so if you want to subscribe to a community on a server other than the one you signed up for, you can (within reasons, as there are mechanisms for instances to isolate themselves or block other instances from communication if they choose to do so).
So yeah, you can look at startrek.website as a mini-reddit with three Trek-related subreddits…but you can also use it as a springboard to subscribe to other subreddits on other mini-reddits.
Thank you for the response. One more question. For today. I don’t want to be exhausting.
From your explanation, I get why Risa in the screenshot below shows in the lower left corner as startrek.website/c/risa because Risa is hosted by startrek.website. edited Star Trek to startrek.website where applicable because I had an “a-ha!” moment of getting it.
https://i.imgur.com/VqLtssM.jpeg
In this next screenshot I took, does technology@beehaw.org, as an example, show (in the lower left corner of the image) as startrek.website/c/technology@beehaw.org because beehaw.org or technology@beehaw.org is an instance of startrek.website? edit – hmm. The links in this paragraph show as clickable hyperlinks. The Risa link in the previous paragraph did not.
https://i.imgur.com/WmyADsP.jpeg
I took both screenshots while logged in to my Lemmy Star Trek account. I’m currently only subscribed to Star Trek.
I believe it’s because of federation. Beehaw.org is a “symbolic” subdomain of startrek.website since you’re accessing from your account at startrek.website.
Okay. So if I had joined a beehaw.org site, and pulled up this Star Trek site, then the web address would show as beehaw.org/c/startrek.website.
Correct
When I use startrek.website as my instance I get different search results than if I log into a different instance.
From what I can gather this is because startrek.website has yet to be federated with lots of other instances.
I think I should be able to connect to other instances and communities through the search but nothing happens if I put the address in the search in the way it says in the documentation.
Since today I do get some search results from lemmy.world, beehaw.org and lemmy.ml I think.
Is it just a matter of waiting for it all to propagate and connect or am I doing something wrong? I’m using jerboa on android.
We’re still learning the ins and outs of Federation, but I think it’s mostly just a matter of waiting. Here’s what the official documentation has to say about it:
If you search for a community first time, 20 posts are fetched initially. Only if a least one user on your instance subscribes to the remote community, will the community send updates to your instance.
So Federation should continue to improve over time.
Thanks, I really like the whole idea of Lemmy and this instance. it’s quite exciting being present for the start of it all. It took a while for it to compute in my brain but I’m getting there.
We are boldly going!
If you’re interested in a little more behind the scenes info on how this works, (and since I want to make a test post to see how it shows up in Lemmy):
Since there’s no central clearinghouse for content in the distributed Fediverse, each instance broadcasts its users’ new posts, but only to other instances that need to see that content, generally because they host at least one user interested in it.
So you’ll see times when your instance won’t have received any older content before its first user followed the remote account. After that, the remote instance knows to start sending content to your instance, to that user really, but then your instance knows about the content.
In other words, your instance begins its subscription to the remote account by having any user begin to follow it.
It’s wonderful to see you here!
This is horrible, you only see 8 posts on a “sub reddit’s” main page with a 4k desktop (it’s 16 on reddit) It’s only using half the width of the screen. This is clearly visually geared for mobile with like zero concern for desktop users. This is not somewhere I’ll visit everyday like I did on reddit
I mean it hasn’t even been a day. Give it some time to change, customize, re-org, etc. before making scathing opinions.
Frankly it’s going to take some getting used to, but reddit also took some getting used to back when I went from forums to Reddit back in the day.
Not to mention the creation of browser plugins and apps once people really get active in this community. Reddit was over 15 years old and had loyal users, this is like a day old, it’s going to be a bit rough around the edges.
