(I’m creating a starting guide post here. Have patience, it will take some time…)

Disclaimer: I am new to Lemmy like most of you. Still finding my way. If you see something that isn’t right, let me know. Also additions, please comment!

Welcome!

Welcome to Lemmy (on whichever server you’re reading this)

About Lemmy

Lemmy is a federated platform for news aggregagtion / discussion. It’s being developed by the Lemmy devs: https://github.com/LemmyNet

About Federation

What does this federation mean?

It means Lemmy is using a protocol (Activitypub) which makes it possible for all Lemmy servers to interact.

  • You can search and view communities on remote servers from here
  • You can create posts in remote communities
  • You can respond to remote posts
  • You will be notified (if you wish) of comments on your remote posts
  • You can follow Lemmy users/communities on other platforms that also use Activitypub (like Mastodon, Calckey etc) (There’s currently a known issue with that, see here

Please note that a server only starts indexing a server/community once it has been interacted with by a user of this server.

A great image describing this, made by @ulu_mulu@lemmy.world : https://imgur.com/a/uyoYySY

About Lemmy.world

Lemmy.world is one of the many servers hosting the Lemmy software. It was started on June 1st, 2023 by @ruud@lemmy.world , who is also running https://mastodon.world, https://calckey.world and others.

A list of Lemmy servers and their statistics can be found at FediDB

Quick start guide

Account

You can use your account you created to log in to the server on which you created it. Not on other servers. Content is federated to other servers, users/accounts are not.

Searching

In the top menu, you’ll see the search icon. There, you can search for posts, communities etc.

You can just enter a search-word and it will find the Post-titles, post-content, communities etc containing that word that the server knows of. So any content any user of this server ever interacted with.

You can also search for a community by it’s link, e.g. !Netherlands@lemmy.nl. Even if the server hasn’t ever seen that community, it will look it up remotely. Sometimes it takes some time for it to fetch the info (and displays ‘No results’ meanwhile…) so just be patient and search a second time after a few seconds.

Creating communities

First, make sure the community doesn’t already exist. Use search (see above). Also try https://browse.feddit.de/ to see if there are remote communities on other Lemmy instances that aren’t known to Lemmy.world yet.

If you’re sure it doesn’t exist yet, go to the homepage and click ‘Create a Community’.

It will open up the following page:

Here you can fill out:

  • Name: should be all lowercase letters. This will be the /c/
  • Display name: As to be expected, this will be the displayed name.
  • You can upload an icon and banner image. Looks pretty.
  • The sidebar should contain things like description, rules, links etc. You can use Markdown (yey!)
  • If the community will contain mainly NSFW content, check the NSFW mark. NSFW is allowed as long as it doesn’t break the rules
  • If you only want moderators to be able to post, check that checkbox.
  • Select any language you want people to be able to post in. Apparently you shouldn’t de-select ‘Undetermined’. I was told some apps use ‘Undetermined’ as default language so don’t work if you don’t have it selected

Reading

I think the reading is obvious. Just click the post and you can read it. SOmetimes when there are many comments, they will partly be collapsed.

Posting

When viewing a community, you can create a new post in it. First of all make sure to check the community’s rules, probably stated in the sidebar.

In the Create Post page these are the fields:

  • URL: Here you can paste a link which will be shown at the top of the post. Also the thumbnail of the post will link there. Alternatively you can upload an image using the image icon to the right of the field. That image will also be displayed as thumbnail for the post.
  • Title: The title of the post.
  • Body: Here you can type your post. You can use Markdown if you want.
  • Community: select the community where you want this post created, defaults to the community you were in when you clicked ‘create post’
  • NSFW: Select this if you post any NSFW material, this blurs the thumbnail and displays ‘NSFW’ behind the post title.
  • Language: Specify in which language your post is.

Also see the Lemmy documentation on formatting etc.

Commenting

Moderating / Reporting

Client apps

There are some apps available or in testing. See this post for a list!

Issues

When you find any issue, please report so here: https://lemmy.world/post/15786 if you think it’s server related (or not sure).

Report any issues or improvement requests for the Lemmy software itself here: https://github.com/LemmyNet

Known issues

Known issues can be found in the beforementioned post, one of the most annoying ones is the fact that post/reply in a somewhat larger community can take up to 10 seconds. It seems like that’s related to the number of subscribers of the community.

I’ll be looking into that one, and hope the devs are too.

  • RarePepeCollector@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    As someone who used voat for awhiel here are my tips:

    1. USE this platform, don’t use reddit. USE this platform and give it content. Content is basically the same as oxygen you can’t deprive it, POST often and comment OFTEN.
    2. Don’t dwell on reddit too much. Voat’s only active communities were about shit posting on reddit (they had a /v/MeanwhileOnReddit and a few banned communities and that was it, nobody used any other communities). Find your favorite community and build it. Build just 1 ideally, anymore is too thin. I am building up https://lemmy.world/c/frugal
  • Aeri@lemmy.world
    3·
    8 months ago

    I’d really like to have the ability to disable embedded images in comments. I want to see only text, not 50 memes, RES had this as a feature.

  • grus@kbin.social
    31·
    1 year ago

    I’ve seen repeated accusations that lemmy is tankie/red-fash, especially when it comes to those that control it - mods/admins/w/e. How true is this?

    • PorkrollPosadist@lemmy.ml
      3·
      1 year ago

      If you ask a liberal what “tankie” means you will get a response that sounds a lot like if you ask a conservative what “woke” means. The two main developers are communists, trying to collectivize social media. It is very shocking. 🙄 They develop the software transparently, out in the open, along with many other contributors. They also operate lemmy.ml, the very first Lemmy instance. Dessalines has a collection of essays he’s written on Github. If you are concerned about his beliefs, I would go straight to the source rather then taking third hand rumors on face value. As for the rest of the network, each instance (such as lemmy.world) is operated independently. The whole point of federation is to decentralize control over the network.

      • grus@kbin.social
        01·
        1 year ago

        If you ask a liberal what “tankie” means you will get a response that sounds a lot like if you ask a conservative what “woke” means. The two main developers are communists, trying to collectivize social media. It is very shocking. 🙄

        Opening with challenging the definition of “tankie” without knowing or asking on what definition I operate on is quite the red flag. Also the condescension instantly put me in defensive mode.

        Dessalines has a collection of essays he’s written on Github.

        Thank you for the links, now after seeing that individual’s defense and apologia of the genocidal soviet empire I’m more than convinced that is not the place for me.
        Just from a cursory glance alone his attitude is vehemently imperialistic, not too different from what I’ve experienced from many privileged westerners.
        Whether his heart is or is not in the right place, that’s another matter. But after a year and a half of excruciatingly depressing takes from western leftists of all kinds, I’m not going to surround myself with people that I disagree most, I value my mental health more than that.

        Thanks again!

        • BOMBS@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          just to be clear, we’re talking about the people that created Lemmy and gave it to the world for free and do not attempt to control your personal opinion on political matters nor are telling you that you can’t use the system they developed if you disagree with them politically. additionally, you’re not even in their instance/server. so if anyone here is being judgemental and self-righteous with the Lemmy system, it’s not them. if you want to leave and hold yourself to the same standard that you do for leaving, then make sure to investigate the authors of every single system you use and then decide to stay or leave based on your congruence with their political opinions to ensure you maintain consistency. i believe you’ll find it nearly impossible to find a place, though you might find some companies what will inauthentically pay lip-service to attract the most users for monetary gain or influence.

          for my next point, i want to be definitely clear that don’t like marxist-leninist theory. i find it too controlling and authoritarian. the Soviet Union definitely did some atrocious stuff, especially under Stalin. but if you want to criticize states and their respective economical systems based on the human toll, you might want to consider all of lives lost to manifest destiny, slavery, and then followed by CIA meddling in Latin America. if you’re from any country in Western Europe that was a colonial power, then I don’t even have say anything. if you’re from elsewhere without Western European ancestry, then I applaud your inherited innocence and I wish you good luck.

          Also the condescension instantly put me in defensive mode.

          if you want to take it as condescending, then that’s your right. no one can tell you how to feel about something. however, you can’t tell someone else what their intent was if it wasn’t openly state or clearly evident.

  • rjc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Is there a way to turn off auto-refresh on the homepage’s posts? Sometimes its cool to drink from the firehose, but other times you’re trying to read titles of posts and they refresh and scroll off faster than you can keep up with. Would be great to have a auto/manual toggle for refreshing.

        • stravanasu@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Same here (Firefox on Linux). From what I saw, if you select (with ctrl+click) multiple languages in the “Languages” option in the settings, every time you post you’ll have the option to select one of these languages in the “Language” drop-down menu of the post. But you have to choose one every time. It’d be nice if we could select one as default in the settings, so that we need to use that drop-down menu only when we’re posting in one of the other languages.

  • Swarming@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    What is the ideal resolution for a community banner so as not to unnecessarily ‘weigh it down’ with a super high-resolution image?

  • too_much_too_soon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Are there any more guides for Moderators and about editing communities? e.g. can images and banners be edited after creation? Where exactly are the mod tools options to found as a moderator? I’m very new to this and there is very little that is obvious to me.
    This basic guide is very helpful but where can I find more? thanks in advance

  • Sjotroll@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Hi, thanks for the post. This bit confuses me: “Please note that a server only starts indexing a server/community once it has been interacted with by a user of this server.”
    How does a user interact with a server for the first time, for lemmy.world to start indexing it?

  • twistypencil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    How does lemmy mark a post as read? I want to scroll past posts and have them automatically marked read, and then not show them to me again. Every time i open lemmy I’m seeing the same posts I’ve seen many times. Yes, even when I am not sorting on ‘active’

  • griffen62@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    The FediDB site does not list lemmy.worlds hosting location, what country is the site hosted in?

    ETA: I’m inclined to think the Netherlands based off of some quick googling, but confirmation would be nice.

      • ChromaticMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        On what kind of server are you hosting it? I guess it can get pretty expensive with the increasing traffic.

        Also what happens to my account when you decide to pull the plug? Are all accounts created on this instance deleted?

        • ramblechat@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          This is what worries me - an instance creator terminates the instance for whatever reason, then all the accounts and posts are gone. Or the creator could hold the instance hostage - “Hey guys, costs are building up and I’m going to have to shut it down unless people donate”

          • AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Afaik there has been talk of making a “server migration” procedure for an account. So if an instance is getting the axe in a month, everyone has time to migrate their stuff to another instance. Though this is not the case as of now.

        • Ruud@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I will watch the costs, and actively ask for donations when needed. But we have some reserve from the mastodon.world donations and also I’ve already seen Lemmy users donate.

          When this server is deleted, the accounts on it go as well. But as with the mastodon server (which has 164000 accounts now) I’m looking to adding levels of admins, of which at least 1 will get ‘the keys’ (registrar/dns/hosting/OS) for continuity. I have already promised on Mastodon I won’t shutdown. If I ever get tired of it I’ll transfer to another admin.

  • major_third@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    When I’m on the homepage, I click “All” then sort by Hot. I get a nice list of posts from all over which is really good. But after a few seconds new posts take the top slots of hot and makes just scrolling through unusable. Is there a setting I’m missing for how to keep it from refreshing until I actually hit the refresh button?