Lemmy

For example, !lemmy starts with an !, but why not start with a # symbol?

I have created two communities, but it seems like I can no longer create new ones since when attempting to create one, it gets stuck in a looping circle.

Hey, fellow Lemmy users! I have an exciting proposal to share with you all regarding a potential enhancement to our beloved Lemmy platform. I believe this new feature has the potential to greatly improve the voting system, leading to a more balanced representation of content based on the size of the community and the temporal dynamics of voting.

Currently, Lemmy determines the popularity of a post solely based on the total number of votes it receives. While this approach has served us well, it falls short in considering the changing dynamics of community growth and the varying sizes of our communities.

To address this issue and ensure a more equitable content representation, I propose the introduction of a checkbox or user setting that modifies the filters used for determining popular posts. This new setting would take into account the size of the community and its growth over time when identifying outliers in each community, rather than focusing solely on recent outliers in the largest communities.

By implementing this feature, we can mitigate the influence of the largest communities, which often dominate the popular content section. This change would foster a more inclusive environment, giving smaller communities a fair chance to shine and encouraging diverse perspectives to rise to the top.

Imagine the possibilities! Users from different communities would have a greater opportunity to engage with content that resonates with their specific interests, without feeling overshadowed by larger communities. Additionally, this modification would reflect the evolving nature of our platform as new communities emerge and grow.

I invite you all to share your thoughts, opinions, and suggestions on this proposed feature. Your feedback is invaluable in shaping the future of Lemmy. Let's work together to ensure a vibrant, balanced, and inclusive experience for all users. Together, we can make Lemmy an even better place for diverse discussions and discovery.

Please feel free to provide your insights, concerns, or alternative ideas in the comments below. Let's have a fruitful discussion and continue to make Lemmy the thriving community we all love!

Right now, NSFW-marked communities are by default(?) not shown by their home instance to non-logged-in users in the community list, and even if you go to them manually no posts are shown.

Fine, but they also aren't shown to logged in users on other home instances, unless somehow already federated over. If you go to the community's instance, it can't tell you are logged in, and if you go to your home instance you can't see a list of all communities on the other instance that might be available.

Also, older posts that are marked NSFW can't be gotten by anyone with an account anywhere other than the instance they were posted to. When you subscribe to a community on another instance it federates over a few posts, but to doesn't request and federate older posts as you try and page back through the archive. The normal solution is to view the old posts on the source instance, but if the community is marked NSFW the source instance won't let you read the archive there without a local account.

I'm new to Lemmy, your typical Reddit refugee, and I'm missing some of the more niche subs I followed. I would like to start one or two of those here, but I'm a bit intimidated.

As I understand it, if I start a community I'm also the moderator. What kind of work does that entail?

Can I only create a community on the instance I joined, or can I also create a community elsewhere?

Is there a guide for creating new communities out there, especially for people who don't know much about the technical side of Lemmy?

Thanks!

I stole this from u/fuckass on Hexbear

issue: menus are not always immediately apparent

suggestion: style menus like sidebars (outlines and backgrounds)

---

issue: user menu elements on mobile are jammed against left edge

suggestion: add left padding

---

issue: content and comments are too narrow on large/wide displays

suggestion: add option to set min and max widths relative to viewport (CSS VW)

---

issue: main menu (from hamburger button) elements on mobile/narrow displayed as block is unsightly

suggestion: elements should be inline-block until they cannot fit on one line

---

issue: comment action icons are unnecessarily hidden

suggestion: show all comment icons persistently (could be grouped as [up/down/reply] on left, [message/flag/block/fav/source] on right; could be a user profile option to show/hide additional comment options persistently)

---

issue: message notification (bell icon) often indicates unread count when all messages are read

suggestion: fix

---

issue: auto-refresh on posts causes elements to move down as reading when scrolled

suggestion: implement option to disable auto-refresh OR move scroll position down correspondingly to total height of dynamically loaded post elements

---

issue: (if above feature implemented) must refresh page if auto-refresh disabled

suggestion: add soft-reload button (reloads posts)

---

issue: [subscribed|local|all] default from user profile doesn't work (always selects local)

suggestion: fix

---

issue: no function to block a specific community from your feed

suggestion: add function

---

issue: notifications view has no stateful awareness of viewing mode [unread|all] or [all|replies|mentions|messages]

suggestion: add stateful awareness to enable browser <|> navigation

---

issue: replying to inbox comment/message does not display after submitting reply

suggestion: display reply to comment after submitting reply

---

issue: [show context] from inbox comment does not display immediate parent comment

suggestion: [show context] from inbox comment should display immediate parent comment

---

issue: when viewing context from comment on a non-local instance, you are not authenticated and cannot reply from context

suggestion: implement cross-instance authentication OR link to context in the currently-authenticated instance

---

issue: [next] buttons have no stateful awareness (displays an empty page when clicked from the last page in a set)

suggestion: [next] should be statefully aware of page and be disabled when viewing last available page

---

issue: when inbox messages appear as a notification, there should be a button to mark them as read

suggestion: add function

---

issue: inbox messages are only marked read when explicitly clicking [read] checkmark button

suggestion: messages should be marked read when replying or navigating to context

---

Hope this helps make some improvements to the UX! :)

---

EDIT another one while I'm thinking of it: it would be nice for the top toolbar to be fixed at the top so you don't need to scroll back up to use it.

I love the growth and population, but I really want to help foster the decentralization of this platform, since that’s (to me) the best part of the fediverse.

Lemmy growth is crazy!

Blahaj zone (the Calckey instance) has been running for around 6 months now. We've had a slow but constant growth of new members, with a big spike when Calckey drew a lot of attention. And as a result, even though we're not a huge instance, we are one of the larger Calckey derived instances around.

lemmy.blahaj.zone on the other hand has seen crazy growth! In the last week, our lemmy instance has gone from almost no members, to nearly as many users as our Calckey instance. The mind blowing part though, is that the lemmy instance isn't even close to being one of the largest lemmy instances. We don't even appear on the first page of Fediverse Observer! And the sheer number of lemmy instances online now is huge compared to where it was a couple of weeks ago.

And that's before we even talk about kbin and the threadiverse as a whole, of which Lemmy is only a part

I can honestly say that this whole thing has shifted my view of just what the future of the fediverse might be. I assumed it would always be microblogging centric, but now, I question that...

#fediverse #lemmy #kbin #threadiverse #calckey

@lemmy@lemmy.ml @fediverse@lemmy.ml

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but posts created on Lemmy with images don't show up with images on Mastodon.

I've started running an instance based on artwork and this is a bit of a problem since it would allow us to advertise our communities to thousands of Mastodon users. Futhermore, since our images are often NSFW, Mastodon users clicking on the link that's currently visible on their version can't load the content since they often don't have an account.

It would be awesome if images posted on Lemmy would also show up on other parts of the Fediverse, since it's a huge missed opportunity for Lemmy and community self-promotion in my opinion.

(attempt to cross-post from /c/programming )

Idea: Scrape all the posts from a subreddit as they're being made, and "archive" them on a lemmy instance, making it very clear it's being rehosted, and linking back to the original. It would probably have to be a "closed" lemmy instance specifically for this purpose. The tool would run for multiple subreddits, allowing Lemmy users to still be updated about and discuss any potential content that gets left behind.

Thoughts? It's probably iffy copyright-wise, but I think I can square my conscience with it.

I replied to thread from Linus Torvalds and agreed with what he said but added my opinion which was not hate or rejection (literally) https://lemmy.ml/comment/477089 (ask for a revert)

My response to a mod (not committed in order to be able to post this thread)

They even removed my upvoted comment about a ChatGPT's response regarding question "Is disagreeing is hating?" i was going to share again with this person Arthur: https://lemmy.ml/comment/445401

This is a pathetic move and so low compared to what the extreme you're criticizing could do, at least them, are honest in their stupidity.

Dessalines posted https://lemmy.ml/post/1140303 "Be respectful..." my twist is "...as long as you agree with us".

One thing for sure, you are not serving your cause. BUT, I won't be a hater, I definitely won't be your supporter!

If the reddit exodus happens and Lemmy gets even 2% of reddit's daily active users, how will Lemmy sustain the increased traffic? I know donations are an option, but I don't think long term donations will be sustainable. Most users will never donate.

I know the goal of Lemmy isn't to make money, but I know that servers and storage costs add up quickly. Not to mention the development costs.

I would love to hear the plans for how to offset those costs in the future?

It's very well maintained and user friendly. It's made by the developer of Pixelfed.

https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy

The problem: when a new user who is unfamiliar with the fediverse visits join-lemmy.org, they will likely be turned off when they see how few users are on each server. This is because many people will assume that having a low number of users on your server means that you'll have a low number of users to interact with. (This is what I assumed when I first discovered Lemmy.)

The solution: instead of showing the number of users on each server, we should instead show information that feels more intuitive to new users and doesn't mislead people into assuming the user count is more important than it actually is.

I think it would be a good idea to show the date that the server was founded, and show the server's network traffic in terms of Low/Moderate/High. I think this would make the prospect of joining a server much more appealing to new members, and it would also help them understand that it's actually a good thing to join a server with fewer users, not a bad thing.

Here's my quick mockup of what it could look like. (I made up random dates but you get the idea):

I recently setup a new Lemmy instance and was surprised when my feed was mostly empty. I've since learned that a key part of Lemmy's federation is based on a user from your instance subscribing to communities on other instances. Only then, will your instance pull in posts from the subscribed community to your "All" feed.

This means that subscribing to new communities is especially important if you're on a young Lemmy instance since it helps to build out everyone's feed on that instance.

I've found discovering new communities to subscribe to on other instances can be difficult. To help me search for new communities I may be interested in, I tried aggregating as much of the Lemmy fediverse together into a single feed by subscribing to the widest range of Lemmy communities possible. This offers a Lemmy feed that's kind of like reddit.com/r/all. If it's interesting to anyone else, you can find the instance here: https://lemmy.directory.

Hopefully this offers another way to find new communities to subscribe to on other instances.

Here's a better description of my understanding on how Lemmy federates communities and why you might be interested in checking out lemmy.directory: https://lemmy.directory/post/34207.

Hope this helps ease the orientation to how Lemmy federation and communities work.

I've noticed this in many places in the Lemmyverse in my first few days here. When first signing up almost all the instances were listed as having 2 or less active users. The biggest was Lemmy.ml at something around 1000. Then I've seen those numbers listed in other places including a post yesterday that is supposed to help bring redditors to Lemmy.

These numbers will just get most people to turn around and not even consider Lemmy as an alternative.

I saw a GIF today showing the growth of user accounts on Lemmy instances and Lemmy.ml (for example) was over 30000 and many of the other servers were in the 100s, approaching 1000. That's a HUGE difference and indicates a community that is 10 times (or more) more active than the initial numbers presented indicate.

Any thoughts? Am I out to lunch?

I'm seeing across various instances that registration is going through manual approval as an anti-bot measure. As someone whose also run Fedi instances, I know how bad the bot problem is.

I do think invite links can get around this though. If we allow existing users to simply send a referral/invite to their friends (and have a tracker on who is inviting who), that'll do a ton to both mitigate spam registration and allow people to join quickly.

The more obstacles we put in the way of registration, the more people will be dissuaded and go away. We've seen it with Mastodon (and now there's this whole reputation of it being too complicated). We have a window here to fix stuff if we're fast. People will eventually forget about the Reddit API and put up with it if we don't offer a compelling alternative when the iron is hot.

I'm considering making a GitHub issue, if anyone has any thoughts or plans to work on it, let me know. I have a decent amount of connections on the Fedi and if enough people are serious about getting this ASAP, I can help out with the logistics/coordination.

Hello, all. I'm considering creating a Lemmy instance in order to facilitate migration of a moderately sized reddit community to the fediverse.

The community is about 150k users with around 1.5M pageviews per month.

I don't expect everyone to come with the migration, but I would expect a significant portion to do so. Perhaps half.

How do I go about capacity planning / sizing for such an instance? Is Lemmy designed to operate at this scale?

Thanks for your input.

I saw the impressive setup used by the sh.itjust.works instance with 24 CPUs and 64 GB RAM. This inspired me to reconfigure join-lemmy.org so that it can quickly update the instance list, and point users to sites which are actually reachable. This will be an immense help if a lot of Reddit users decide to join Lemmy at once (e.g. during the blackout on Monday). Individual instances will likely go down at that time, but others will stay available and users can easily join them.

Additionally, changes to the site, documentation and translations are also updated automatically. If you see anything that can be improved, consider making a contribution to help new users.

The instance list has a couple of recommended sites at the top. They are defined in this file and seperated by language. For most languages there is only one recommendation or none at all, so you can simply add yours by making a pull request.

In case of English, the situation is a bit different. The current recommended instances (beehaw.org and sopuli.xyz) are already quite large and would be shown near the top of the list anyway. So it makes sense to recommend smaller instances instead.

To be recommended, an instance should meet these requirements:

• It should be a general purpose instance
• At least one member of the admin team needs to be in the Instance admin chat to coordinate with other admins
• The admin team needs to be prepared for a large influx of users, both in terms of hardware and moderation

We can use this thread to discuss which instances should be recommended. There is no maximum number of recommendations, but it should be an even number to work with the desktop layout.

On a side note, the instance list itself could use many improvements such as showing more details about instances or using different sorting methods. If you are a programmer or web designer, you can contribute to improve the website.

Edit: If you are a Lemmy admin and want your instance to be recommended, go ahead and open a pull request for this file. Developers can also contribute in the same repo to improve join-lemmy.org.

question for the #lemmy users and #activitypub developers out there:

now that @lemmy is seeing a spike in interest, and @Gargron has said he's interested in building out groups on #mastodon - this seems like the right time to update ActivityPub protocol to support groups natively. anyone looking into this?

lemmy's integration into mastodon is pretty janky right now and can be a lot better!

I'm planning to move my instance to a new VPS provider that will allow me to scale more simply.

Has anyone done this already and can sanity check my plan? My current setup was spun up using the ansible playbook here.

Current plan is:

Lower DNS TTL to 60 seconds (already done)

Shutdown on current VPS: docker-compose down

backup /srv/lemmy// and copy to new host

sudo tar -zcvpf backup.tar.gz /srv/lemmy//

scp backup.tar.gz user@newhost

update dns A and AAAA records, wait 1 minute, verify DNS has updated

run ansible script

Shutdown on new VPS: docker-compose down

restore backup to /srv/lemmy//

Startup on new VPS with restored DB etc: docker-compose up -d

test

destroy old VPS

Increase DNS TTL to 86400

Anything I've missed? :)