to start: after some consideration, we've altered our entry question a little bit so that entry is not guaranteed. during the daytime you can basically expect waits of 30 minutes or less when it comes to approval/disapproval, but overnight it'll be anywhere from 6-12 hours. just FYI
if you'd like to introduce yourself without it getting lost in all the posts already made, i just made a thread for that over here
our sidebar should give you most of the information you're looking for about us, but to reiterate some: we are pretty relaxed here, but we have a well carved out understanding of what we want to be. if you would like more elaboration on that, you can find elaboration on that at length in the following two posts:
for some less lengthy and more relaxed elaboration, see the discussion in the comments of this post.
as for funding: we are 100% user-funded. if you would like to contribute to our ability to keep the website up, you can donate on OpenCollective, which supports both one-time donations or monthly donations.
a few other questions occasionally pop up like "why do we have the set of communities we do?" and "why can't people make their own?" (the latter is a feature of lemmy). for elaboration on that, you can see the following post and the discussions here. we are open to suggestions and creating communities as demand sees fit; see also discussion here.
downvotes are disabled on this instance and that's a thing we're not liable to change. if you'd like elaboration for why that is, see this comment. this may be a point of friction for some coming from reddit, but i hope you'll understand why we're doing it even if you don't necessarily agree with it.
if you're interested in our governance to this point and a brief idea of our long term goals, see the comment here.
feel free to sound off on other questions you have; i'll try to update the OP with those and our ability to answer them as time goes on.
Thanks for the rapid approval! I was expecting to have to wait a few hours at least, but I think the wait was less than a minute!
I've been on mastodon for a while, and heard about Lemmy but never really looked into it before now. I know all the fediverse can interact somehow, but I don't know the details. Can mastodon accounts see Lemmy posts (or vice versa)?
Mastodon/(most non-lemmy Fediverse) accounts can follow Lemmy communities and users, it works the same as following any other fediverse user.
Mastodon/(most non-lemmy Fediverse) users can make a top level post to a Lemmy community by mentioning it in their post.
Most, if not all, fediverse accounts will be able to make comments on Lemmy posts.
@JackFromWisconsin
This is a reply to this comment from a Mastodon account.
@hybridhavoc
Right back at you from my Mastodon account!
Fediverse is just so awesome.
Interesting. Thanks for the explanation.
That's neat. It's like what Reddit and Twitter could be, if companies like those were interested in building bridges rather than walls.
Back in the day, when people talked to each other using ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, or the like, I remember lamenting that people using one of these systems could not talk to those using another. Then, along came Jabber (now known as XMPP), which was federated. I thought the days of people's social reach being divided and controlled for profit were over.
I was wrong. Jabber/XMPP didn't catch on. The proprietary instant messengers did fade into irrelevance, but they were replaced by Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, and we all know how that turned out.
Now, here we are again, trying to solve the problem of artificial social division through federation. Dare I have hope again? The Fediverse does seem to be getting some traction…
@mistersheep@beehaw.org Yep! I'm commenting this from Calckey right now, and a Mastodon user also commented on the thread.
It just shows up like a normal post for us, but at the bottom it has a link to open the post on Lemmy itself (for OP's post itself, comments don't have the link)