this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
95 points (100.0% liked)

Lemmy

12443 readers
69 users here now

Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've seen this mentioned a few times already: people wondering why certain communities don't show up in their instance. You need to first search for that community via the magnifying glass icon and type in "!communityname@instance.domain"

Notice the exclamation mark at the beginning. Might take a few seconds. This will teach your instance about the remote community.

top 47 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] bdonvr@lemmy.rogers-net.com 33 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I believe the devs have said they're working on making that work more automatically. Like having it happen as soon as a user clicks a link to it for the first time on your server. And also making links to communities outside your home instance automatically be changed so that it keeps you on your instance where you're logged in.

For example right now if someone on BeeHaw.org clicks https://lemmy.ml/c/memes, it'll take them to lemmy.ml where they're not logged in. They should add /c/ tags like /r/ on reddit, and when someone on BeeHaw clicks something like /c/memes@lemmy.ml, it should take them to beehaw.org/c/memes@lemmy.ml so they can stay signed in and comment/vote/post. You can do this manually right now by creating a link like so:

[/c/memes@lemmy.ml](/c/memes@lemmy.ml)

[–] Glue@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

100% agree. People keep posting communities but manually having to watch for each one is tedious when you’re trying to add a bunch at once

[–] SammichParade@vlemmy.net 1 points 1 year ago

Posting where? And where can you watch?

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jerboa also needs a lot of improvement with following links. Right now, if I click those links in your comment that are memes@lemmy.ml, my phone assumes they are email addresses and opens my email app.

[–] deuxenun@partizle.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wait, they're not e-mail addresses ? /s

[–] bdonvr@lemmy.rogers-net.com 1 points 1 year ago

I mean, same concept

[–] nude@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I expect some innovation in this regard in the next few months. Rexit will have a big short term influx to the fediverse that will die down, but hopefully some that hang around are the developer types who are being shafted by reddit.

[–] DrQuint@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Big upvote. I figured out how to follow other communities from clicking the community tab at the top and looking at the URL. But it shouldn't be this hard. It should be way more seamless.

There's two things I wish this had:

  • (This is your suggestion) Lemmy websites and apps should automatically attempt to show external communities within their own website if possible, so that sharing a community from this one will still allow you to join up without further navigating

  • When seeing a "subscribe" button on another website, instead of it assuming you want to subscribe from the site itself and telling you to log in, it should first check if you're not logged in, and if you're not, also give you the option to subscribe to it from another instance if it finds any browser cookies for other Lemmy communities.

With that said, both of these might be against the goals or require the cooperation of an instance, so if we ultimately end up not getting it, well, it's fine-ish.

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Other Lemmy sites having access to a cookie that says who you're logged in as could be a privacy risk for the user. Maybe a browser extension?

[–] deuxenun@partizle.com 1 points 1 year ago

That would be very nice indeed

[–] rawrspace@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any idea if there is a delay in community searching? Someone mentioned a newly created community (1 hour ago) on sh.itjust.works and I searched on lemmy.world for it and nothing but I can visit it directly.

[–] bdonvr@lemmy.rogers-net.com 3 points 1 year ago

Copy the URL and paste it into the search bar of your instance. That will force your instance to "Discover" it. It might say no results but go back to the community page then search the name again

[–] lixus98@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@ernest could this work on kbin as well?

[–] Zak8022@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

AFAIK, it does. But the url structure is slightly different. Instead of
https://kbin.social/c/memes@lemmy.ml
It would be https://kbin.social/m/memes@lemmy.ml with an “m” instead of a “c”.

I’m still learning, so someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

[–] lixus98@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Zak8022@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For real. I feel like I recall a browser extension doing something similar for Mastodon. But I don’t have the coding knowledge to adapt that to this use case.

[–] lixus98@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting, I might look into modifying the extension to work for kbin

[–] lixus98@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

So I managed to get the extension to an usable state.
It adds that little kbin icon to the beginning of the url or mention, if you click that icon you will go to the kbin link of that community. It works for all websites so if you are browsing on a lemmy site it should work there too.
I am currently working on testing it and publishing it to the chrome and firefox stores.

[–] nihil@hexhiker.com 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We need a way to search across servers for a community

[–] cerevant@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Try this: https://browse.feddit.de/

I’ll agree that fetching a new community is much more awkward than it should be.

[–] honk@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

You can do that as soon as your instance knows about that community.

load more comments (-1 replies)
[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a good PSA. Even though it's explained in the sidebar of most (all?) communities, it doesn't feel intuitive at first.

[–] Wander@yiffit.net 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Actually that's a great idea! I should add that info to the sidebar of mine.

[–] bdonvr@lemmy.rogers-net.com 5 points 1 year ago

It already is, open your community in incognito mode. It just doesn't show because you're already subscribed.

[–] Wander@yiffit.net 2 points 1 year ago

You are right ! I didn' t realize this!

load more comments (-1 replies)
[–] jennifilm@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Am I right in thinking that once you've searched (or subscribed?) to a community on another instance it'll show up in the 'all' feed for everyone else, too? It's a good way to help your wider instance discover other communities!

[–] bdonvr@lemmy.rogers-net.com 5 points 1 year ago

Yes. Searching will have it appear but subscribing means comments and votes will start syncing over.

[–] leds@feddit.dk 3 points 1 year ago

And if search doesn't return anything, reload the page! At least for me it magically appears then

[–] DivergentHarmonics@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

Also see this comprehensive write-up: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/61827

[–] danchez1@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Where's the magnifying glass? I'm very new here and all of this is pretty confusing. Can I get an ELI5? I was able to sign up and I'm not using the Jerboa app on Android and I don't see a magnifying glass anywhere.

[–] Wander@yiffit.net 3 points 1 year ago

Bottom bar. The list icon next to the home icon let's you search on Jerboa.

[–] DivergentHarmonics@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately, searching for comms which your server doesn't know yet, is not yet possible in Jerboa. But things are improving quickly.

[–] Garrathian@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You should see it on the top right on the page, i take a screenshot if that doesn't help

[–] warmblood@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

New and also very inexperienced- I tried searching for !totk@lemmy.ml but am getting no results. Can someone explain to me like I’m an idiot 😂

[–] lixus98@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What you want to do is search for @totk@lemmy.ml, basically just replacing the exclamation mark (!) for the @ symbol.
Why? Because kbin uses the @ symbol and Lemmy uses the ! symbol for the communities.

Edit: I'm working in an extension for chrome and firefox, it will basically convert the lemmy format [!communityname@instance.domain](/c/communityname@instance.domain) to the kbin format so you just need to click on it.

[–] mbp@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not currently using kbin but this is awesome

[–] Ozymandias_KoK@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Did the same for !sysadmin@lemmy.ml and a few others. This fediverse thing is kinda harder than it needs to be.

[–] nightauthor@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there a way to follow a mastadon user via lemmy?

[–] MBM@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From what I heard, no (but the reverse is possible)

[–] nightauthor@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I think I’m gonna use kbin, seems more featureful, including good integration with the fediverse.

[–] rawrspace@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Any idea if there is a delay in community searching? Someone mentioned a newly created community (1 hour ago) on sh.itjust.works and I searched on lemmy.world for it and nothing but I can visit it directly.

[–] Wander@yiffit.net 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not really. There shouldn't be a delay at all. If it doesn't work something is broken down or you aren't using the correct syntax

Make sure you search on ALL (not just communities) and write it like !name@sh.itjust.works

[–] sunaurus@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I have in fact noticed a 1-2 minute delay when searching for a completely fresh comunity from lemm.ee. Initially the search turns up 0 results, but trying again in a minute will find the community.

[–] Darc@lemmy.beyondcombustion.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This didn’t work for me on this instance. Can some communities choose not to participate or limit their import? I searched for !aviation@lemmy.ml and several others and nada.

[–] Wander@yiffit.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This has been changed with the latest version of Lemmy. Try this link: /c/aviation@lemmy.ml and check over at lemmy.ml/instances to make sure your instance is not blocked. (It's at the very bottom, I just checked for you and it doesn't look like it).

Edit: your instance is using an older version. Searching should still work. Try a couple of times. Make sure the search page is /search and use no filters

load more comments
view more: next ›