We have gotten a lot of new signups over the past few days, and we’re all very excited to have you joining us! You’ll find that people are more than happy to help you get started and learn how to use the site.
If you feel up for it, you can introduce yourself or ask questions below!
We have put together some resources to help new users get started:
You can also read:
- A quick overview of Lemmy
- A detailed guide on how Lemmy works
- A quick overview of ‘the Fediverse’
- Learn about the non-profit that runs this site
These guides were published very recently, and we will be updating them over time. If you find that something is confusing or missing, please let us know and we can improve them further.
For an organized list of Canadian communities (provinces/territories, Cities / Local , Sports, Schools, BuyCanadian, CanadaPolitics etc.), see this post on [email protected]. You can also ask about communities in places like [email protected].
We also encourage you to check out [email protected], so that others can help you / learn from your questions.
Welcome to Lemmy :)
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Hi! Great to be here, thanks! First Lemmy post ever, too.
I’m sure I’m not the first one in this Reddit exodus to mention this, but can we assume maybe there’s an interest in refining the Lemmy experience to be a bit more streamlined and user friendly? As in, simpler to navigate and less dependent in tech-saviness.
For example, I had some confusion just to create my Lemmy account, or even download and sign-in to the Jerboa app. There’s many Lemmy related pages and apps, which can be quite confusing and discouraging for most users showing interest in moving over. And I do consider myself tech-savvy, so I’m sure most people I know would just give up on it.
I know this is a somewhat sudden and unexpected move, and the last thing I want is to create unnecessary pressure on Lemmy, as these things take time, naturally.
Anyways I wish you well, and lots of success. I’ll try my best and make this platform my main reddit-like one.
I use both iOS and Android to access lemmy, I think Boost on Android is the best app, and I use mlem on iOS.
I had issues with jerboa when I switched over, I don’t think I would recommend it to newcomers.
Kichae did a good job of explaining some of the limitations, and I also agree with you that there’s more we can do for user-friendliness while still respecting decentralization.
One of the things we’ve done is put together the guides above, which I’m hoping can help reduce confusion on how this new platform works and what the differences / benefits are. If they DO help, then one solution could be to share the guides around and hope that it acts as the first introduction for people. There are a lot of confusing resources out there (ex. that infographic that gets posted around), so I’m hoping that over time we can improve these guides over time to be as helpful as possible.
We’d love some feedback on the guides if you have a chance to go through them! In particular, these seem relevant to the areas you were confused about:
- Quick overview of Lemmy (goes over account creation)
- Where to find mobile apps (discusses why there are multiple, and how to pick one
- Quick overview of the Fediverse (goes over why decentralization is key to the Fediverse, and important for fixing the problems with old social media)
In addition, if you have any thoughts on the order of the guide pages and areas that are still confusing
The Lemmy software itself is also open-source, and there’s often discussion about what can be improved. Similarly, there are a few other Lemmy compatible projects in the works that are doing things slightly differently, such as Piefed and Mbin. As you get settled in and familiar with things, these communities might be of interest to you:
Welcome to lemmy.ca / the fediverse 😊
Thank you so much for your perspective. I’ll be sure to check them out as soon as I can, and as I increasingly integrate myself in this platform. Cheers! 😄
So, there are a couple of issues with ‘streamlining’, the big one being that Lemmy isn’t a single service, controlled by a single entity. It’s a website engine, that lets anyone create a reddit-like content aggregator service. There are a thousand “Lemmys” out there, each one owned and operated independently from each other. Most of them are just engaged in an implicit content free-trade agreement.
So, how do you streamline that?
The apps are also made by whoever wants to make them. And none of them are made by the development team behind the Lemmy software.
How do you streamline that?
And, importantly, do you want to? Because stream-lining means centralizing ownership of it all, which leads us right back to the kind of situation that every major social platform is currently experiencing: taking away control from the user.
The tech isn’t the barrier. It’s the communication. People keep saying “join Lemmy!” as if it’s a place you can go to, and not 1000 different places.
Thank you for clarifying! Now I understand a bit more how it works. 😁
Thank you. I’m in, I need something that doesn’t feed me an algorithm.
Welcome :)
If anyone is curious, the post sorting calculations are also public (the code is open source). As a summary:
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
- Active uses the post votes, and latest comment time (limited to two days).
- Hot uses the post votes, and the post published time.
- Scaled is similar to Hot, but gives a boost to smaller / less active communities.
No more hidden algorithms was a big one for me. I personally use ‘Scaled’, and sometimes flip to the other ones to take a peek
I start to respond to a post or comment that I see on NEW. I finish and right before I hit post, I notice the instance/server is completely unrelated to my response and I deleted my post :) - It’s an added nuance to Lemmy that takes some getting used to.
Would you be able to share an example? (Short description or screenshot is fine)
We might be able to clarify or add it to the guides in the future
The question was “What type of stuff are you buying off Aliexpress?”
I started responding with “toys, cleaning supplies, phone cases, etc.” And then I noticed I was responding to a post on ** [email protected]**
So I felt like my response wouldn’t be as helpful or would be off-topic because I was responding on the programming.dev instance.
Right? That makes sense right? LOL
There’s actually no harm in commenting on communities from another instance!
Often there will be one large community for each topic, on some random instance, rather than individual communities on every instance. The diagrams on this doc might help to see how it works: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/lemmy/for-users/detailed-overview
It is possible that a community is intended for a certain group of people, and ideally the community name will indicate that. If not, you can open up the community and check the sidebar. For example, [email protected] is named ‘Medicine Canada’, and it is intended for Canadian medical professionals / Canadian medical news, while [email protected] is named ‘Medicine’, and it is the general community for the topic.
We didn’t have to make ‘Medicine Canada’ on lemmy.ca, and in fact, there are many non-Canadian communities on lemmy.ca. It all comes down to what the community mods want the community to be about. The instance is just where they chose to set up shop.
In your case, the sidebar at [email protected] says:
An unofficial English-speaking channel for discussing Aliexpress and Alibaba, interesting products you find, asking for product recommendations, and any scams by the sellers.
When in doubt, just check the community sidebar :)
Sub-forums here expect people from remote sites to comment on them. They’re not just for local users. Most sites aren’t going to have an Ali Express community on them for you to comment on.
Check the community’s rules before posting, in case it’s very specifically Ali Express discussion for software developers, and also so you know the nuances of that particular community, but don’t feel like you can’t engage with communities on the other side of the fence.
This whole space is best thought of “This forum I’m a member of, plus all these other things over there that I’d like to see, too!”
'morning! I’m in. Though I scrubbed my reddit content back in the ‘strike’ my eyeballs still regularly contributed to their site. I guess I’m stopping that now too. Small steps, as they say. Looking forward it.
Welcome aboard!
Welcome :)
Just joined today! Deleted all my posts on Reddit (thank you Shreddit) deleted my account, and now I’m here! The US can go to hell, well, it’s half way there already. Thank you Lemmy.ca
Hello All. I’m another new user hopping over from Reddit. Breaking the ice with this post.
👋
Welcome :)
*waves vigorously*
Heya, neighbour!
Hi Everyone! I joined today. Have used Lemmy briefly in the past but never got into it fully.
Only question I have right now is - how does one create a Community? I’d like to start one for my small town to post news, events and open discussions for others to find and join as the server grows.
Thanks in advance!
With that said, if there’s no activity in the small community, I’d post directly in !Canada. As we grow and we get more people, I think we’ll naturally break out into the smaller geographical communities. I think this is valid even for provinces at this point.
That’s fair. It’s probably too small of a user base to warrant it’s own community today.
Can still make it but if you want people to see things related to it, dump 'em in !Canada. It’s what I do for Toronto.
Also, assuming this is a Canadian small town, comment in this thread and I’ll add it to the big list
Thanks Otter! It is a Canadian small town (Okotoks). I’ll try getting it set up via web this week if I have time! Appreciate the guidance.
Welcome!
If you open the website in a web browser, you should see a ‘Create Community’ button.
A more detailed step by step:
Name:ex. ‘vancouver’- it will appear in the link (c/Vancouver), and can’t be changed
Display Name:ex.VancouverorMetro Vancouveretc.- you can keep changing this, but keep it relatively short
Icon&Bannerare recommendedSidebarfor a description of the community and any rules are recommendedUnder languages, select whichever languages users should select from when posting (ex.
Undetermined,English,French)Then you can post in places like [email protected] and [email protected] so people know about the new community
Then keep posting to it till it gets rolling :)
A couple of notes and unsolicited advice as someone who is almost an old hand already…
(1) Your front-page will be more interesting as you subscribe to more things. You can subscribe to things from other Lemmy servers and they will be pulled into your feed here.
(2) Communities that are hosted on this server will show up under “Local”.
(3) “All” shows all of the local content from (2), but also any content that this server had to fetch from other servers for others. Basically, when you subscribe to stuff, it’ll end up in All for everyone else on this server as well. If no one on the server has subscribed to specific content from another server, it won’t show up in All. As a result, All is sort of a cross section of our users’ interests.
(4) If you were to sign up for another server – say lemm.ee – you would get a different Local and All. But you should be able to subscribe to the same things regardless of the server you chose.
(5) Some servers are not connected to others, for reasons. This is called defederation. It’s basically a means to block an entire server who has a community not behaving in a way that doesn’t jive well on your local server. Lemmygrad.ml is blocked from this server, for example. You probably won’t notice, but on rare occasions you can’t subscribe to a community on a blocked server.
(6) You can help the quieter communities grow by shitposting. Throw your backlog of old saved memes into them. There isn’t as much traffic here as reddit, and the niche communities often don’t exist (or are silent).
(7) Find a larger community to post to for engagement. For example, on Reddit I would subscribe to the WinnipegJets team sub, but on Lemmy it is too quiet. So instead I post my Jets content to the more general Hockey community so we can have some discussion. This will change over time.
(8) A good place to find communities to subscribe to is: https://lemmyverse.net/communities – copy and paste the community name – eg: [email protected] – into the search bar and then subscribe.
(9) Meow
(10) Try different sort options. New or Scales are my favourites.
Tip: sort by “Top 12 hours or 24hours”. This is equivalent to reddit’s “hot”
Ah ha! Perfect. This is what I was missing. Thank you.
(11) Also don’t be afraid to curate the feed the block button is your friend, don’t like certain users, communities or instances baaam block, there’s your peace of mind.
The block button is key to curating your general daily experience on Lemmy. Obviously block anything you don’t like, but also use it if you’re not interested in a specific scene or topic. You can always remove the block later if you want. I think of the block button more like the “Not Interested” button on Youtube.
