I’ve introduced two of my friends (not into tech) to Lemmy. Since they’re not into tech this is their first web forum.

I’ve explained the federation thru the usual email metaphore and that’s ok, but to lookup for communities is not quite there on client side.

Let me explain.
He wanted to see all the communities on an instance because that instance is in his native language but he’s registered on another instance. So to see all those communities you must go on instance.domain/communities, copy the name of the community you are interessed in and paste it inside the app/web client to look it up.

And to see all the communities all over the fediverse you must use lemmyverse.net which is a cool site, but still you got to copy paste back and forth to the app.

This could be implementend inside app itself by listing all communities and add ability to filter by things like instance.

Obviously open to discussion about the issue itself and how that could be improved.

Feel free to tag apps/clients devs to ear their opinion too.

  • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    I highly recommend the Lemmy Universal Link Switcher user script, installed through Violentmonkey. It makes everything so much easier and more enjoyable. It basically rewrites every Lemmy link to a link that’s specific to your home instance. I.e. it allows you to click any Lemmy link, and it will open up on your home instance. This also means that you can just go to some other instance, explore the communities and easily open them on your home instance to subscribe to them. It also works with posts, e.g. if you see a post that you want to comment on, it will redirect you to the same post but on your instance, so you can use your account and interact with it.
    Btw lemmyverse.net also has an option to set a home instance, making it easier to subscribe to communities:

    (This feature even works with Kbin/Mbin)

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    6 months ago

    I addressed most of that in Tesseract. It lets you browse other instances directly and one-click load / subscribe to communities.

    Would love to see other 3rd party UIs incorporate something like this.

    • Nato Boram@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Amazing. One feature that is desperately needed on Lemmy is to open a post in another instance, not just a community or a user.

      • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        Instance agnostic post and comment links need to be implemented as well, and would address the underlying challenge in “opening a post in another instance”.

        Edit: For now, Lemmy Universal Link Switcher is a great browser script which mostly simulates the functionality of instance agnostic post and comment links. It would be great if the equivalent functionality could be integrated natively into Lemmy though.

        • Nato Boram@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Clients can work around it by making a search on the home instance that filters by community id and submitter id. Something like this.

          • Nato Boram@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            You can’t have content addressing because it’s mutable. On the other hand, UUIDs are made for that. There’s even multiple types of UUIDs made for distributed computing with namespaces and such.

            • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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              5 months ago

              Bluesky does strict content addressing with hashes plus post ID (unique per repository, this allows edits). So you can choose which version to refer to. If you need to archive or mirror stuff you can use the hash, and threads can have both methods so you can see which version of a comment somebody replied to, etc.

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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        5 months ago

        If you can elaborate on that, I can probably add that as a feature. It already has that capability, but it’s not exposed as a “view post on X instance” in any menus.

        Edit: Added buttons in the post and comment action menus to “View [Post | Comment] on Home Instance”. Thanks for the feature idea.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Non-techie here. It’s true. I have no idea how !instance.domain/community works.

    I understand that I’m on an island. Lemmy.World is a pretty big island, kinda like Austrailia, but it is still an island.

    I can’t just go to otherinstance.otherdomain/community and click subscribe. Or comment. Or anything. That instance should know I’m Lost_My_Mind@Lemmy.World just by the fact that I’m still logged into Lemmy.World, even if I’m on Lemmy.ml

    So if I go to any other instance, I shouldn’t have to do a thing.

    As long as I’m not banned from Lemmy.ml, and as long as Lemmy.ml hasn’t defederated from Lemmy.World, I should be able to log in on Lemmy.World, travel to Lemmy.ml, and immediately be able to comment, upvote, downvote, subscribe, whatever. And when I do these things, even though I’M on Lemmy.ml, my actions will have come from Lemmy.World

    Lemmy/The Fediverse is a great idea. It has a lot of foundationally sound ideas that should be able to continue to thrive for decades. It just needs a userbase.

    I remember in 2000 saying the same things about linux…and it never got that userbase until Android took all the techie sound ideas, and put them behind the curtain. When 16 year old blond valley girl Britney uses her Android phone, she doesn’t know what a terminal is. She doesn’t have to know. She doesn’t have to think about it. She just opens her app drawer and plays spotify. And thats it.

    I know the concept of a techie platform hiding the techie advancements sounds completely foreign to the idea of someone who spent 3 years learning how to techie, but thats what needs to happen.

    Otherwise Britney will get about two sentences into you explaining the fediverse, before her brain turns off.

    If Britney can’t use it, this will have a userbase to reddit, in the same way that Linux has a userbase compared to Mac/Windows.

    Lenny can grow. I feel like the ideas here are built to last. They just need to be more accessable to idiots. I have other issues I feel could be fixed, but I think this one is by far the biggest barrier to entry for most.

    • adONis@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      login to lemmy.world travel to lemmy.ml and be able to comment.

      See, this is kind of impossible because of security reasons.

      Imagine logging in on gmail, going to facebook (without any further action in between) and being able to read your emails. That would be convenient but catastrophic!

      Yes, I know, FB and gmail are two different things, but the concept of auth is the same. A website saves a cookie in your browser and uses it to check whether you’re authenticated or not. And that website can AND SHOULD only be able to read its own cookies.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    6 months ago

    I really miss having Liftoff work because it has been the only app I’ve used on android that actually had a functioning search feature that let you search individual posts, community names, instances, or users.

    @zackitrocity@lemmy.world: pls come back 🥺