Lemmy

How important are reddit-style flairs for people? There's the raised issue https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/317 which has it listed as a far-future, with questions as far as how to handle federation.

Personally, having at least an initial implementation done on a community level would be largely sufficient, with expansion to instance-wide being optional. The situation I've found most useful, personally, is sports-related groups with your favored team being your flair. This gives context to comments without constantly having to say "as a X fan"

I always start typing and then realize that I still need to click in the search field.

Test post please ignore

Ok so, I am posting from Mastodon and just want to see if this is how I create a new post. No idea if this will work.

@lemmy

Subs like off my chest or r advice?

We all know about how Reddit closed-sourced back in 2017 and will be killing off third-party apps this July, what will Lemmy.ml do to avoid facing the same fate? Reddit started off like this (open, aiming for freedom) and it all went downhill from there.

I've seen lots of discussion on reddit of users trying to get others to join Lemmy and the prevailing reply is that it is too difficult to navigate and comprehend. Having to answer multiple questions and wait for manual verification is combersome and is limiting growth at a time when nothing should be standing in Lemmy's way. Combine this with server/instance selection analysis paralysis, and you get my point.

The linked mastodon blog post sums up my thoughts, but the TLDR is essentially this:

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't let dreams of decentralization interfere with the greater goal of achieving the network effect.

We should all be telling people to go to lemmy.ml and sign up. The devs should be too, and they should rethink/remove the questions and waiting period. Hell, just put a captcha. Discussions about servers and analogies to email as an example of federated service we all already use is a waste of breath. We shouldn't have barriers to entry.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I've just found kbin.social and find it has superior signup options. It's just: make an account (email/password), or sign up with Google or Apple. No server talk. Upside is the layout is nice and it acts as a Lemmy instance (threads) as well as a mastodon instance (microblogging). Only downside currently is that their android/iOS app is in development and isn't ready yet, so desktop only.

https://github.com/ernestwisniewski/kbin

https://kbin.social/

I think this might be the better recommendation for newbies at the moment.

Per my post here (https://lemmy.ml/post/1141245) I am finding it a little frustrating that I am not able to block instances as a user. I understand giving instances the ability to block other instances, but why should I not be able to do that on the user end as well? I already effectively have the ability to do it but it's just practically impossible to actually do it since it would involve going to every community and every user in that instance and manually blocking all of them which I'm obviously not going to spend the time to do.

One user suggested that I just browse my subscribed communities, but I have a couple issues with that. First of all, I don't want to lose the functionality of sorting by all as opposed to subscribed/local. Second, it doesn't do anything at all for blocking comments which blocking an instance would do.

The ideal situation currently is that I am able to find an instance which fits my preferences, which assuming adoption becomes more widespread should become easier. My problem with this being the ideal solution is that even in this situation there can arise issues later on. Let's say that a year down the line another instance pops up which gains enough traction to where I am seeing its communities/users regularly enough for me to want to block the instance. The only way that I currently have of doing that would be to suggest to the instance owner to block it and hope that they agree with me. Even if they do agree with me, others in the instance might not agree. Let's assume for a second that they don't want to block the new instance, what are my options? It seems to me that I can either go back to manually banning every community and user that ever pops up on the new instance, or I can go look for another new instance to join that is a better fit again and abandon my year old account in the process since you can't transfer accounts.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't literally all of these problems be solved by allowing users to block instances on their end? And don't users already effectively have the ability to block instances one community/user at a time so it's not like you would even be giving them any more power than they already have? I would be able to find whatever instance most closely fits my ideals without it having to be perfect even if they don't block any of the instances I want blocked. Of course I would still have to abide by the rules of the instance, but it gives me much more flexibility in choosing where I want to call home and more flexibility should any future issues arise.

Every time I look at reddit or twitter they're designed to be filled with the most vile or annoying posts imaginable to keep you scrolling and this place just... doesn't have that. It's relieving to not be inherently angry just scrolling through new posts

Grouping interests is really convenient.

With all that's going on in the reddit world, I'm thinking of leaving it behind, this may be a better place

Rule #2 is possibly our most important one:

Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.

Learn to disagree without being rude or disrespectful.

It can be difficult sometimes, since western social media thrives on collective outrage, and they knowingly ingrain this into us for years. But please do adhere to this rule, and it will make this place much more enjoyable.

We will not hesitate to issue temp bans (usually a day or two) for those who make everyone's experience unpleasant.Hit the report button if you see this behavior.

Thanks!

Hey guys, just joined Lemmy and noticed that there isn't any searching tool like on reddit. I was scrolling yesterday and saw a cool post but didn't have time to save it and I tried searching and realized that there was no searching feature, at least not in Jerboa on Android. Anybody come up with a solution for this or maybe it's a secret hidden icon?

I’m a frontend developer who would love to help improve the Lemmy web client. What would be the best way to help out here?

The link in CONTRIBUTING.md is broken:

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/contributing/contributing.html

I really love Boost for reddit, I know it's not open source but I'm sure there are open source apps that are similar enough. Does anyone know how to adjust one of these open source reddit apps to work with Lemmy? I am using an open source android app from f-droid, and it lacks some of my favorite features like tapping to collapse comment chains, customizable UI, etc.

Active seems to order based on discussion length while hot lets you discover newer content that's also popular.

I changed my default settings to hot, since it seems to be better for discovery.

I saw Jerboa while scrolling through random apps to potentially install, and became excited that finally there's a REDDIT alternative as well, instead of just Twitter. Mastodon might be nice, but I don't use Twitter, and I probably won't use Mastodon, either. Reddit, on the other hand, oh man...

Reddit is honestly so important to the internet at this point that you're trolling if you do web searches without "reddit" appended at the end (be it technological, physiological, historical, political, or any other type of topic that you're looking for information or opinions about).

However... Reddit is going towards a terrible corporate direction, and something like Lemmy has been desperately needed for a while now, and I hope it can eventually somehow become the new "reddit" at the end of web searches eventually, as nobody knows what could happen to Reddit soon...

I find the most random, but also INCREDIBLY important and crucial bits of information deep within Reddit thread replies, since each one can go anywhere, no matter what the original post was about, such as finding out that fabric softeners are damaging for everything, especially humans, and that they should just generally not be used... on a gaming-related subreddit. Of course I start doing my research afterwards as well, now specifically regarding what I just learned to make sure and verify I know the correct information from multiple sources, but even just that initial random warning is great to start off with.

And the worst part? We might lose ALL of these things since we're at the mercy of Reddit's shareholders (even more so in the future, most likely), and these incredible resources and HUMAN EXPERIENCES that one shares, and MANY others learn from, could just... disappear...

A quick major policy change, and goodbye Reddit...

I'm looking forward to Lemmy taking off!

Is there a way to have Lemmy instances render in wide-screen mode (sort of like old reddit or older themes of Wikipedia)? I really dislike the default look of everything being in the center with tons of blank space on both sides (I use 1440p monitors).

For what it's worth, I came up with the following Stylus css script to work on the lemmy.ml (also works on github.com for what it's worth if you so choose):

.container,
.container-lg,
.container-md,
.container-sm,
.container-xl {
    max-width: 2560px !important;
}

.col-md-8 {
    flex: 0 0 85% !important;
    max-width: 85% !important;
}

.col-md-4 {
    flex: 0 0 15% !important;
    max-width: 15% !important;
}

Can just adjust max-width under the .container* options to whatever you want (I chose to set it to my monitor's width). The col-md-8 and col-md-4 are for the main content and sidebar respectively, so I have main content at 85% of the width and sidebar at 15% of the width. Result looks similar to this: https://i.imgur.com/FMAZYbh.png

Published my style here for use on Stylus: https://userstyles.world/style/10168/1440p-lemmy

Hi, I'm new here, so sorry if this has been asked before.

I understand that Lemmy is supposed to be like a decentralised Reddit, but I've got a question about this; on Reddit, there is only one server, with subreddits on it, so there is only one r/Music, only one r/AskReddit, etc.

However, on Lemmy there are many servers; would this lead to a situation where many servers have repeats of the same popular communities or does this not happen in practice? Is there a good way for me to find communities across all federated instances? Thanks :)

Why when I click signup or login, button spins forever, no network activity on click. Tried on multiple instances, no luck. Am I the only one? I'm using Firefox @lemmy

Lemmy is booming

I have never before received so many reactions and comments on my Lemmy posts before, so it's obvious to see, that there are many new members here.
Welcome to all the new! And I'm looking forward to see more of you here.
Cheers!

Hello! I want to start a group of communities on here, regarding proprietary software for iOS, MacOS and Windows. Is its better to host communities or instances in this case? What to do and when?

I know it's possible to follow communities on lemmy from a mastodon account, but I was wondering if it's possible to do the reverse, and subscribe to a mastodon user? I wanted to try and get a combined feed from both platforms - I prefer lemmy, and given it works one way I was hoping it might work the other?