this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
811 points (100.0% liked)

Chat

7498 readers
4 users here now

Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.


Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

(Reminder: if you have shared the original version in a public post with an old version up, replacing it with this one might be more helpful.)

I want to preface, if you see a mistake in the image or have something helpful to add, go right ahead! I still have the layered files for this, so edits can be made very quickly. I chose to handwrite the text to avoid font copyright infringement.

Feel free to share this poster as you wish, especially on Reddit. All I ask is that you respect the license and don’t remove my socials at the bottom. If anyone’s addition is included, I’ll credit them, and if this gets added onto (or translated) by someone else later, they can add their info as well.

I hope someone can find it useful with the subreddit blackouts right around the corner.

I want to thank the Beehaw admins so much for their amazing work!

(Poster edited; I spotted a duplicated word, mrmanager@lemmy.today noted the lack of whitespace; current version is slightly larger and has been spaced out. You can still request the 800x2000 size, but know it is a little squished.)

(Edit 2: Removed defederation part as it’s not really required. The email analogy blackcoffee@beehaw.org suggested has been added, thanks!)

(Edit 3: Here’s another version making the interconnectivity a bit clearer and mentioning some cool-looking reader apps that have been suggested! Also made the image slightly longer for ease of viewing. I might do some small cosmetic changes tomorrow)

(Edit 4 is here with the date updated towards the bottom. This version contains a reminder to verify your email, lets people know why mlem isn’t showing up on App Store searches, and added fedia.io to Kbin instances. Some colors have been changed slightly to be more mobile friendly, as this is written and edited from a phone tablet. If you have a hard time reading this because of the changes, please let me know. Thank you all for the help and tips!)

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wouldn't bother with the concept of de-federation in a beginners guide. One of the most confusing bits of the fediverse to new users is picking a server. For most users, the one they pick doesn't really matter, but talking about defederation makes it sound like a really important choice.

[–] unsunny@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago

Edited; the defederation bit probably shouldn’t be the reason why someone picks a server (my original thought was that someone who is LGBTQ probably won’t have to worry about seeing phobic content from another instance, for example), but chances are if the rules make a place inviting to a group, conflicting (or illegal) instances will probably be defederated anyways.

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for your work! I wonder if this could be updated to include join-lemmy since it just points people to kbin.social. That might be confusing if they're trying to find a Lemmy server or well, simply other instances in general!

[–] unsunny@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thank you, I didn’t expect this to take off like it did! I explained in another post here why I didn’t name join lemmy for the guide, but the thread is getting pretty long. There are instances listed on there fairly high up with descriptions that suggests the instance hosts and permits illegal content (the instance is not FMHY or related to piracy as I also noted), and I wouldn’t feel good about recommending the website because of that. browse.feddit.de didn’t have anything of that nature on their list as far as I can tell by scrolling for a few minutes, and it also tells you which instance hosts the community.

[–] not_a_dog@lemmy.one 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is Kbin just another Lemmy instance or a whole separate thing entirely?

Thanks for the guide!

[–] JohannesOliver@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is not a dumb question.

kbin is it’s own thing, originally it couldn’t talk to Lemmy. It can also have its own instances. Today it can talk to Lemmy and Mastodon and should be able to talk to anything else that talks to them. It also has its own communities, and people on Lemmy can access those as if it were another Lemmy instance.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

If you mean the instance that promotes itself as NSFW allowed and "shota/loli/cub friendly", it's my understanding that fictional drawings of that type are not illegal, at least not in the states (presumably laws vary between countries on this). It's certainly not something I'd ever want to be within 10 feet of, but there's an ocean between that and actual child abuse materials (and the instance in question does explicitly ban such materials, per a quote of the rules I saw in another thread about this). I don't think it necessarily follows that people into the former must also be child abusers, same as I don't think furries are automatically into beastiality.

But nevertheless I agree it's... not a good look at all for that to be front and center on the join page. It could have and should have been removed a while ago - it's been up long enough I believe the Lemmy devs must be aware of it, so I'm suspecting they just don't care.

I think the join page also made generally offputting by Lemmygrad and arguably even Lemmy.ml, too, frankly, and since those are the lemmy dev's instances, there's no fixing that until and unless they end up just outnumbered.

tl;dr: I support you not linking join-lemmy, but I wonder if we have an alternative site that people can use to browse and choose an instance somewhere? If not, could someone make one?

Edit: an alternative would be especially helpful since redditors, lacking a direct link, will inevitably just google "lemmy" and immediately find the join-lemmy page anyway.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] SindriDeLaMancha@beehaw.org 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

all the weirdly specific cat subreddits if I don´t have a my r/catloaf idk what I'm going to do.

[–] Anarch157a@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here's one for you buddy:

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Saturn@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like this style! Kind of reminds me of a whiteboard. It’s neat!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] P0wderedtoastman@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

As someone who is brand new here, I agree with the others: the de-federation part confused me. But the email analogy was easier to grasp. Otherwise thank you for this!

[–] mrmanager 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Needs a bit more whitespace to not be a wall of text in my opinion. But looks good in general!

[–] unsunny@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good point! I can easily resize and add more space.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] code@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alright so this seems a good a place as any to ask dumb questions... This almost feels like the 90's and using the internet for the first time 🤣

So, I'm viewing this post on lemmy.world, but the content itself is from beehaw.org, simple enough. What happens if beehaw.org is unavailable, let's say permanently shut down, right now? Is the past content still available on other instances or does it just poof? Could I still view this post one day, week, month, year after a shut down? Could I still comment? The image itself I see is hosted directly on the beehaw instance so that obviously depends on a stable instance.

[–] httpjames@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

If an instance shuts down, they're supposed to send a "self destruct" notice to all other instances to delete their content, but technically speaking, instances do not have to listen to these notices. Thus, it's possible that deleted or unavailable content still remains available on some platforms.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Kory@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's great. I agree with the removal of de-federation, I don't see how that's important at this stage. And since you mention kbin.social, why not also point people to https://join-lemmy.org/?

[–] unsunny@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I will be removing the de-federation part and putting the email analogy in its place, I agree it isn’t really important enough to note. The reason I don’t add the join lemmy site is that they list at least one instance that seems to invite illegal activity/content, and that didn’t take long to find in the directory, so I feel it would be irresponsible to mention it. I scrolled through browse.feddit.de for a few minutes and couldn’t find anything that obvious, so I added that one. It says where a community is hosted, too, so that might help someone!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] BobQuasit@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Very nice! Perhaps it would be a good idea to spell out that you can subscribe to any community in the Fediverse no matter what part of it you signed up on, kbin or any instance of Lemmy?

I know that's not absolutely accurate, but it's close enough.

[–] unsunny@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Good point! I won’t be able to edit for a few hours, but in terms of it not always being accurate it is definitely possible in the vast majority of cases.

[–] SmugBedBug@lemmy.iswhereits.at 10 points 1 year ago

Really like it, sadly I don't think the people I'd share it with would be willing to read through it. I'll try with word of mouth for now and use this as a backup.

[–] worfamerryman@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It is a great post, but I would recommend changing the color you use for lemmy in the text. It is too close to black and it looks like only kbin is a different color. When I first read it, I thought there was a smudge on my screen.

Additionally, it seems that kbin.social is not currently federated due to being behind cloudflair and not being configured correctly. (according to other users) but I can confirm that kbin.social is not currently federated.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] emr@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Important note for kbin (and fedia.io): if you sign up and fail to click that confirmation link, I think you're basically SOL. So don't make the same mistake I made! Click that confirmation link, it expires in an hour!

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

I did't knew I could use a mastodon accout and created a new one here on Kbin. I'll like to know more about that, if it's possible (yet, I know I can use my mastodon account to subscribe to content from other platforms and see it on my mastodon's activity feed)

[–] Bretzel@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Learned lot of things, quite new into the fediverse. Is there an equivalent Community like the r/coolguides, that would be the perfect place

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Harmageddon@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to subscribe to a community from another instance. I know I need a link to the community (not sure what this looks like as the one I thought I'd found didn't work) and a search bar to paste it in, which I found once on jerboa I think but not again. Is there a more detailed guide for subscribing to another instance's community?

[–] 4th_Times_A_Charm@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You should just be able to search for the community using jerboas search. Example: I searched "technology" and it gave me back a handful of different communities from different instances all with "technology" in the name. Then you should be able to just tap the one you want and hit subscribe.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] genfood@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is there a list of kbin instances? The one from kbin.pub seems to be incomplete.

[–] metaltoilet@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wow! I was going to make a guide but this is so much better than what I could've made.

[–] marsxyz@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"You can use a mastodon account to use lemmy"

What do you mean?

@marsxyz
@unsunny
You can view and even comment on lemmy/kbin posts from mastodon, like I'm doing right now

It's not as good a way to view forum based content though imho

[–] Steelerz@karab.in 6 points 1 year ago

Thanks for this!

[–] BeHereNow@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

What's the difference between kbin and Lemmy? I saw something about Lemmy having 'baggage' and kbin being a newer iteration?

[–] croobat@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Kbin is a different application, another content agregator suitable for leaving Reddit. The thing is, since we all use the same protocol to communicate (ActivityPub), these two completely different applications can talk to each other :)

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] cfx_4188@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jerboa has a not very user-friendly interface. Maybe I'm not used to it, but the feed updates jerkily, everything works with a slight lag.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] levmyskin@feddit.it 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

As others have said, I would not talk about de-federation, and try to keep text as concise as possible. I believe we need a super easy, short and visual guide (this one is definitely on the right track).

I think the core concepts that should be illustrated are:

  • fediverse nature (as you did);
  • it doesn't matter where (on which instance) you sign up, you can still access and interact with all content of any other instance. Could be seen like having multiple doors (or streets) to access the same room (or town square).

I believe these two are the most important bits of information (and what puzzles people the most)

[–] CynAq@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't agree with the "it doesn't matter which one you join" part because each instance offers a different user experience, even though technically they are interconnected, and depending on mostly the size of the instance someone chooses, their experience can make or break the usability of the fediverse in their eyes.

I think people should be directed to instances with already vibrant communities and then when they learn the ropes, they'll find their best fit anyway.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] kryostar@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

You're telling me that i could have just.. logged in with my mastodon account? How does that work? (i know its beyond the scope of the guide but i want to try)

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] WindInTrees@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Related question for all you experts: if I have an account on both (for example) lemmy.ml and lemmy.world, what is effectively the difference between them if I can view content from any federated instance?

[–] priapus@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The difference is just that you log on using two different sites. They can access the same federated content. Just read the rules of both instances and see if you prefer one or the other.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] 1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

AFAIK, the difference is mostly in the performance, moderation, and peering of each instance.

[–] WindInTrees@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I see, so...

  • If the instance my account is on is down or slow, I may not be able to log in.
  • Only moderators from my account's server can take action against me? This seems... potentially problematic, unless the moderators from federated instances are all in communication with one another? E.g. if I'm a problem on one instance but not my home instance, is there nothing the moderators on the non-home instance can do?
  • Could you elaborate on peering? Does that refer to which Fediverse apps a Lemmy instance can communicate with?
[–] 1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm new to this as well, so this is all AFAIK, don't take it as gospel, please correct me readers, etc.

If the instance my account is on is down or slow, I may not be able to log in.

Correct. Your account is tied to your local instance. Unlike mastodon there is currently no way to transfer accounts between instances.

Only moderators from my account’s server can take action against me? This seems… potentially problematic, unless the moderators from federated instances are all in communication with one another? E.g. if I’m a problem on one instance but not my home instance, is there nothing the moderators on the non-home instance can do?

Moderators of communities can delete your posts or ban you from their community. I'm not sure if remote admins can easily ban you from their entire instance.

Remote admins can definitely decide to de-federate your local instance if you and a bunch of peers are being bad trolly spambots.

Could you elaborate on peering? Does that refer to which Fediverse apps a Lemmy instance can communicate with?

Yes. Click "instances" at the bottom of this page to see which instances beehaw federates with. You'll note there are a couple banned instances due to issues with their content or moderation.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] r3nder@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

This is awesome, thank you for making this. Trying to get friends and family to move platform seems like such a daunting task and I wasn't sure how to put forward the information - feeling much better about it now.

[–] EcstaticHumility@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Saving this for when I need to explain to people the differences.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›