this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023

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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.

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I put together a guide aimed at Redditors for Kbin and Lemmy! (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by unsunny@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org

195 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(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)

(I’ll put out Edit 4 tomorrow, which will include the date the edit was made, will clarify mlem only being available through TestFlight, will mention other Kbin instances, as well as a reminder to confirm emails with any new signup in a timely fashion. Thank you all for the help and tips!)

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[–] CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years 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 0 points 2 years 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.

[–] OmegaMouse@feddit.uk 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Can someone clarify for me - can I 'add' a kbin community to the Lemmy instance I'm on in the same way as any other community? For the first time I'd need to type !news@kbin.social for example (if no-one else had already added that community in my instance)? I ask because I tried to do that, and it doesn't come up under the listed communities. But maybe that's because kbin is overloaded?

[–] azdle@news.idlestate.org 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yep. You just need to search that exact example (or just the URL) and it should pop up a little link where you can view that community from your local instance, which'll have a subscribe button.

You might have tried it while kbin.social's federation was broken from being behind cloudflare for awhile.

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[–] mrmanager@lemmy.today 1 points 2 years 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 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

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[–] Deemo@bookwormstory.social 1 points 2 years ago

Quick question is there normally a long federation delay between kbin and Lemmy?

For example while making a post/comment may be instantaneous, I noticed when using the edit feature for comment title there is a massive delay (6+ hrs sync delay for title change).

Curious is this common or more of a one off

[–] lodion@aussie.zone 0 points 2 years ago

I love the style, nice work.

[–] Kory@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years 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 0 points 2 years 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!

[–] zekiz@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Are you talking about FMHY? One of the devs of Lemmy even moderates the piracy sub and said it's one of his main motivation for even developing Lemmy

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[–] P0wderedtoastman@kbin.social 0 points 2 years 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!

[–] SindriDeLaMancha@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Here's one for you buddy:

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[–] BlackCoffee@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Is the target group people who know what servers and/or instances are or not?

Otherwise I would go up one layer and put in the comparison more users have made about having an mailadres user1@gmail.com and being able to communicate with accounts who also have user1@yahoo.com etc.

It gives users who are not familiar an idea of the concept.

[–] levmyskin@feddit.it 0 points 2 years ago (4 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)

[–] calixte@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Yep, definitely the second one. The join-lemmy was pretty confusing about it.

[–] unsunny@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is kind of what I was thinking; it does matter which instance you joint in the sense that different servers have different goals, rules, and moderation, and saying it doesn’t matter isn’t quite right. It is true that you’ll see a lot of the same things across instances, though, and I’ll revise to add that in the next few hours.

[–] CynAq@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'd suggest adding something like "even though you can access the content on other instances, the user experience will differ depending on which instance you sign up for".

A good analogy would be using Facebook vs Twitter but being able to follow and post content cross platform from either of them.

One will not look and feel like the other, but they will let you read and reply to content from the other one.

For good measure add in reddit, hacker news, and discord in there too to help people visualize.

It's also important to give people a few clear instance examples to check out, but you already did enough of that I think.

[–] CynAq@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.

[–] levmyskin@feddit.it 0 points 2 years ago

I totally see your point here (and @unsunny@beehaw.org's). Yet, I still believe this is one of the most puzzling things for new people. People are just used to sign up and go, the fact they have to choose where can be pretty baffling imo, and maybe push them to desist.

This is just my opinion, but I think we should think about making the transition as smooth as possible (little by little, people will understand how this works and get used to it). Talking about my personal experience, I signed up on feddit.it, but I always look at the all feed (so I'm actually mostly hanging in beehaw or lemmy.ml communities). Again, I totally get your point of view here, and you're totally correct. I'm just saying that my impression is people are super puzzled by the sign-up mechanism, which can be a pretty huge barrier preventing people from actually joining lemmy.

[–] rustyspoon@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Could you elaborate on why it doesn't matter which instance you join? Because I've tried accessing communities from other instances using my Beehaw account, and I'm unable to comment without registering under that instance first

[–] levmyskin@feddit.it 0 points 2 years ago

Yes, seeing other instances communities from your own instance can be painful, and this is (as far as I understand) something the devs are working on. The way I do this is by simply setting the feed to all, so that you can see communities from all instances. If you need to look for a specific community from another instance see here.

[–] JohannesOliver@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You need to access them through Beehaw, not directly. This can be done through the Communities menu at the top, or the search function (put in the !community@place or the full direct url to the community).

[–] Scoony@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

!support@beehaw.org

[–] aussie@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

first comment. it took me waaaaaay too long to realize I had to go all the way to the bottom to reply.

[–] BeHereNow@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (10 children)

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

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[–] Steelerz@karab.in 0 points 2 years ago

Thanks for this!

[–] dirtmayor@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago

I really like this, nice work 🙂

[–] Burrito@fedia.io 0 points 2 years ago

Thank you. I'm new to this sort of thing.

[–] PiedPipetter@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

I was confused by "instance instances" in the first starred note.

[–] Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social 0 points 2 years 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)

[–] metaltoilet@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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

[–] Skooshjones@vlemmy.net 0 points 2 years ago

Great work on this guide!

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years 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 0 points 2 years 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 0 points 2 years ago (2 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!

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[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.

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[–] Hellebert@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

The Jerboa for Lemmy app can communicate with several different servers including Kbin and Beehaw. I'm using it right now!

[–] unsunny@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Is that Android only or is it on iOS as well? I’d definitely be interested in adding it!

[–] Hellebert@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

There are apps for both.

https://join-lemmy.org/apps

I haven't used the IOS app so I can't vouch for it. The Android app is passable though.

[–] Master@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago

I just installed Jerboa for Lemmy and it's passable on android. Not as many features as I would like but it seems to work well enough.

[–] not_a_dog@lemmy.one 0 points 2 years ago (4 children)

It works with any federated Lemmy server, of which I think there's over a thousand, now.

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[–] PCChipsM922U@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

Why didn't you mention Jebora or the iOS app? People are into apps, makes things easier and quicker. For example, I never would have transfered to Lemmy if it wasn't for Jebora.

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[–] wreck@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago

You are a saint.

[–] BobQuasit@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years 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 0 points 2 years 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.

[–] EcstaticHumility@lemmy.one 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

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