Welcome to even more new users! There's real hype behind Lemmygrad due to the Reddit API thing, which drives further hype for people to recommend Lemmygrad to their friends.
This post should contain everything to get you started using Lemmygrad, so please read it entirely. Then, at the end, why not make your first comment in this thread and tell us about yourself?
What is Federation
Lemmygrad works similarly to Reddit for users. You can make posts, subscribe to communities, comment on posts, etc.
The major part where we differ from Reddit (aside from the fact we're not corporate-owned and don't run ads) is that Lemmy allows federation to other instances. If you click on the "All" button at the top of your home page, you'll see posts from Lemmygrad as well as other instances (two big ones we federate with is lemmy.ml and lemmy.world). You can act on those instances the same way you would act on Lemmygrad, except they have their own rules and moderation team. They're completely independent from us, you can just interact with them. And they can interact with us too.
You can also subscribe to federated communities by the way, and they will show up on your "Subscribed" view (on the same group of buttons as All).
We also federate with Mastodon and other ActivityPub projects by the way. You access all federation from lemmygrad.ml, by using the All button or typing the URL you want to reach in the search bar.
Speaking of, please read our rules
Lemmygrad-wide rules are on the homepage. I'll copy them here too:
Rules
- No capitalist apologia / anti-communism.
- No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
- Be respectful. This is a safe space where all comrades >should feel welcome, this includes a warning against >uncritical sectarianism.
- No porn or sexually explicit content (even if marked >NSFW).
- No right-deviationists (patsocs, nazbols, strasserists, >duginists, etc).
Since January 2023, the creation of new "Shit X Say" type communities is not allowed. Please post anything of that nature to Shit Reactionaries Say or Shit Ultras Say.
We take these rules seriously and you will be warned or even banned (temporarily or permanently) for breaking them. We've cultivated a very laid-back and welcoming atmosphere here over the years though, so don't be scared to participate haha
If you participate on Lemmygrad from another instance, we also expect you will respect our rules.
Creating communities
Unlike other Lemmy instances, we allow users to create communities here. You're free to create a community (subreddits on the aforementioned inferior competitor), but please look around to make sure it doesn't already exist. Community bloat is a real problem on such a small site, which is why we merged the Shit X Say communities into just 2 earlier this year.
You're free to run a community you create however you want for the most part, but you have to respect and enforce the instance rules. For our part we try not to step on your toes as a mod unless we have to make a sitewide ban. Essentially it helps spread the load of moderation from our small team of 5 people.
As a moderator, you can't ban people from the lemmygrad as a whole, just from your community. Generally, we find that someone who gets banned from a community should be banned from the whole instance, so in that case feel free to contact us or make a report and we'll look at it.
How to make reports
We're a small team managing a growing forum, and as such we rely on reports to see what we can't see ourselves. Please see this post: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/727768
What else?
We try to submit big decisions to the community for input as much as possible, for example the merger of SXS communities was first put to a vote, and then further discussed to see how we should go about it.
We hope you enjoy Lemmygrad, now it's your turn ;) tell us a bit about yourself!