This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
I still don’t quite understand how the community is replicated…
Are you saying that if Lemmy.ml/tiki exists and someone creates Beehaw.org/tiki that they are the same community? They would show the same posts and comments?
Or are they completely separate communities that would just have the same name… users could subscribe to both if they wanted, but the posts and comments would be stuck on their respective instances?
Or - Is it the case that Lemmy.ml’s tiki community and posts and comments are also stored on Beehaw.org somehow?
If I deleted the tiki community on Lemmy.ml, would users from both communities lose their posts and comments from the Lemmy.ml instance of that community?
The current state is that they are separate communities, but I believe the person you're replying to is proposing something like the other option, where some communities would be the same across instances so that the community and its post history would survive if one of the instances went down (not currently the case).
Currently, if you deleted the tiki community on lemmy.ml, only the lemmy.ml tiki community posts/comments would be gone. Any other tiki communities on other instances would remain.