Sorry for more meta posts; I'm depending on you all to counterbalance them with memes :).

I wanted to ask if we should have any resources for eggs and trans people listed in our sidebar after our rules. For example, the transfem community on lemmy.blahaj.zone has these resources listed:

• The Gender Dysphoria Bible // In depth explanation of the different types of gender dysphoria.
• LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory // A directory of LGBTQ+ accepting Healthcare providers.
• Trans Resistance Network // A mutual aid organization to help trans people facing state violence and legal discrimination.
• TLDEF's Trans Health Project // Advice about insurance claims for trans healthcare procedures.
• TransLifeLine's ID change Library // A comprehensive guide to changing your name on any US legal document.

Another that comes to my mind is The Trevor Project.

Thoughts? Yea, nay? Any suggestions on what to include or leave off if we do post a list?

At the moment, I've taken the rules that were in place on r/egg_irl as a starting point for our community. You can find them, tweaked for Lemmy (edit: and updated according to early feedback below), in the sidebar. Unfortunately, the r/egg_irl wiki is not accessible during the blackout, and it was not archived in the Wayback Machine, so we'll have to wait a bit to get the full versions.

There are, however, four potential changes that I'd appreciate community input on:

Scope

Nominally, r/egg_irl was for memes about being an egg, but a lot of the posts were just about things that eggs and omelettes could relate to. Do we want to update the community description to reflect that broader scope?

Content Warnings

Lemmy does not have post flairs at the moment, and I know it's going to be important that people can filter out content that would cause dysphoria. As a stop-gap, I would like to propose that posts assuming the gender of the viewer be required to be spoilered and be marked with a square-brackets tag [CW: Assumes Viewer is …] at the start of the post title. Similarly for posts that discuss violence, transphobia, etc. That won't be enough to support filtering, but hopefully it would help people avoid clicking through to content they don't want to see. Thoughts?

Also, while discussing post flairs, do we want to go further and ask all posts to be tagged [Transmasc Meme], [Transfem Meme], [Nonbinary Meme], etc.?

Pronouns

Lemmy does not have user flairs either, so there's no good way to know commenters' pronouns at a glance. Do we want to have a recommendation (I don't think we could make it a rule) that commenters list their pronouns in their user profile?

It was also nice that people could flair themselves as questioning, cracked, etc., but I don't that that's the kind of thing everyone wants to make as visible across Lemmy as being in their profile, so I don't have a good suggestion for replicating that feature.

Image Descriptions

One thing that I think we could improve on versus r/egg_irl is accessibility and searchabilty. (I at least had trouble finding old memes back on Reddit since every post is titled so similarly.) I have tentatively added

10. If possible, include an image description for accessibility.

to the sidebar, but there is a cost because it takes time to manually type up an image description, as well as a risk that people won't write good descriptions. Are we okay with this being in the rules? Do we want to make it a hard requirement?

This post suggests that Kbin magazines can be subscribed to in the same way as Lemmy communities, by searching for them, possibly waiting for one's instance to pull info about the magazine in, and then visiting the magazine through one's instance. However, although my home instance is federated with kbin.social, I am not able to get any search results for kbin.social magazines, and it seems that I am not the only one; see here, here, and here, though that last case seems to have fixed itself on its own. The behavior is the same whether I search by URL (e.g., https://kbin.social/m/fediverse), by magazine name with an at-sign (e.g., @fediverse@kbin.social), or by magazine name with a bang (e.g., [!fediverse@kbin.social](/c/fediverse@kbin.social)).

(These instructions are for using Lemmy in a browser. If you are using an app, some steps may differ.)

How to Join Lemmy

To use Lemmy, you need to be a member of one instance from the list at https://join-lemmy.org/instances. You will still be able to see content from anywhere, but the instance you choose will determine:

• What URL you use to log in to Lemmy,
• What content shows on the homepage when you select "Local" or "All",
• Who moderates your instance, and
• What rules you agree to when you sign up.

Choose an instance that matches your interests, language, and region. (If you want more information about an instance, you can tap its "Join" button, which will show you its current homepage in the main view and its description in the sidebar. You can also check the tables here and here.) Please avoid joining instances that are already crowded (1K+ users/month). If an instance gets overcrowded, it can start running slowly or experiencing downtime, so choosing an uncrowded instance will give both you and others a better Lemmy experience.

Once you have decided on an instance, tap its "Join" button to open it and then tap "Sign Up" in the upper-right corner. Fill out the form and wait for your account to be approved.

When your account is approved, log in and customize your profile and settings. If you change your language settings, select "Undetermined" in addition to any languages you speak so that you can still see posts and comments that are not tagged as being in any particular language.

How to Find and Subscribe to Communities

There are four ways to find communities through Lemmy:

1. To browse communities that others in your instance are already subscribed to, tap the "Communities" tab at the top of the page and choose the "All" scope. Tapping on a community name will open it through your instance.

2. To browse communities across all instances, visit https://browse.feddit.de/. Tapping on the community's name will open it, but probably not through your instance (in which case the page will say that you are not logged in). Instead, follow these steps:

   a. Copy the community's URL or remote name. You can use the copy button next to the community name, you can open the community outside your instance and copy the URL from your address bar, or you can open the community outside your instance and copy the remote name (which will look like [!community@instance.tld](/c/community@instance.tld)) from the sidebar.

   b. In your instance, tap on the "🔍 Search" button in the upper toolbar.

   c. Make sure that you have chosen "All" for each of the four filters: "Type", "Scope", "Community", and "Creator".

   d. Paste the community's URL or remote name into the search field and tap "Search".

   e. One of the results should be the community shown as an icon, a name, and a subscriber count. If you do not see it, or it is buried too deep in the search results, try changing "Scope" to "Local". If that does not work, you may need to wait a bit and try again.

   f. Tap on the community in the search results to open it in your instance.

3. If you want an experience similar to Reddit's r/all, visit https://lemmy.directory/home/data_type/Post/listing_type/All/sort/Hot/page/1, which aggregates from these communities as described here. As in Option 2, you can copy and search for a community's URL to open it in your instance and subscribe to it.

4. If you don't see a community by browsing, subscribe to https://lemmy.ml/c/findacommunity and make a post about what you're looking for.

Once a community is open in your instance, subscribe to it by tapping on the "Subscribe" button at the top of the sidebar. It will then appear in the "Subscribed" section of your "Communities" tab, and its posts will show on your home feeds.

Can't find a community you're looking for? If your instance allows it, you can create the community yourself by tapping "Create Community" in the upper toolbar.