Please don't link to Reddit. Let's not boost their traffic.
Yeah for sure. I went to the Join Lemmy website and was so confused about where I was supposed to create an account. Once I found lemm.ee and their intro to Lemmy article, it got way easier.
It was straight forward for me - I did some googling to understand the way that different servers shared data, picked what I thought was a popular platform (lemm.ee) and setup shop with my first community (being migrated from you know where).
Same exact experience for me. It hasn't been too difficult to pick up the Lemmy basics. I only ever lurked on Reddit and here on Lemmy I'm trying to be more of an active participant.
The Jerboa app not working due to the lemm.ee server not being upgraded to v18 was confusing at first - but then I found the conversations going on and I understand why we haven't upgraded yet. I'm patiently just using the lemm.ee website directly.
I only ever lurked on Reddit and here on Lemmy I'm trying to be more of an active participant.
Same here, and now I'm soo glad that I jumped that ~~shit~~ ship.
Yes. I still don't quite understand how moderating works with federation (and critically, defederation). The advice of "Pick an instance that aligns with your values" is the most WTF advice I've ever seen when signing up for a site. Even worse is the conflicting advice that it didn't matter since they all talk to each other, then followed by a warning that you have to choose an instance that will talk to your communities.
As bad as it was, at least the advice of "Go to lemmy.ml and sign up" was simple and direct, and most people could follow that without getting overwhelmed or confused
I thought I understood it at first but then I got confused when I visited other instances, but I think I get it now
edit: okay I'm still confused on how the search works
I'm just an hour or so into this, but this video helped me:
https://youtu.be/K8fBSrhHrE8
And this search page mentioned in the above video:
https://browse.feddit.de/
And here is another page to discover communities:
https://browse.feddit.de/
The main thing I've realized is that if you visit these communities on other instances, you will not be logged in and so you can't subscribe. What you have to do is copy the URL and paste it into this instance's search function. It may take a second for the search to complete, but you should see that community in the results. Click on the result and you will see that you are logged in and that you can subscribe.
The most difficult part is to choose a server/instance. It's like you want to install GNU/Linux, and you have hundreds of distributions to choose. But after you chose where you want to stay, it's easier.
Do you happen to know exactly how that all works and how it matters for individual users?
My understanding, and I might be wrong, is that it really doesn't matter which instance you join due to federation. I thought the only time it mattered was if one instance decided to cut federation with another, and even in that case it would just affect your ability to interact with the instance that was de-federated.
Would be nice if account creation was a bit easier to be honest. Would be much easier if they allowed federated authentication with Google, Facebook or Microsoft. Just two clicks and you're in a new server. Instead of having to write passwords in a bunch of places, which is slow and insecure. That way exploring instances would be a lot faster and easier for newcomers.
I tried Lemmy from a mobile phone and found it confusing at first. Kbin was much easier to use imho.
Did you try Jerboa? Because it has been one of the most unintuitive apps I've ever used. I'm sticking to desktop view until some other mobile apps are released.
Try Connect for Lemmy
Piracy
Arr