The above are great ways to find communities l, and if you struggle to subscribe once finding one (it can sometimes be surprisingly confusing), check out https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/39208.
The first one shouldn't be used as a directory. The second one, can be used.
The reason the first one can't, is because it is just the search directory of one instance. Each instance knows/shows a community only AFTER some user has indexed it manually by putting the full url of that federated community in the search bar and submitted it. Only after this, does lemmy.directory will be able to show it.
The admin from lemmy.directory actually stated that his instance tries to fetch all communities from everywhere in order to build a directory, it's not meant as an actual, general instance.
Ok I have a dumb question. Is Technology@beehaw.org supposed to have the same content as technology@lemmy.ml? Or are those two similarly names, but separate things with potentially differnt content?
They're different communities with the same name, because community names don't have to be unique between different instances. I get that subscribing to two different communities with the same theme is annoying when you could save time and subscribe to one, but having backup communities is a blessing when the instance shuts down or mods start power tripping. A "multireddit" feature that can combine multiple communities into one subscription feed would keep subscribing convenient without forcing only one community to exist per topic.
This doesn't pertain to your comment in particular, but it's the first time I've realized a pretty significant issue with lemmy. I'm browsing from kbin, but when I click your link, it loads the page on your instance rather than loading the content in my instance.
This is something we need to figure out, it shouldn't be too complicated for instances to rewrite links and open the content "locally". If I want to interact with the post you linked, I have to copy it, paste it into my instance's search bar, find the same post, and then open it.
That's a pretty far cry from the convenience of just clicking a link.
yeah. no kidding. i have another post out there decrying the same thing. and the maddening behaviour is maddeningly different between the web ui and apps. there are edges like this in mastodon but they don't seem as obvious or constant
You're not wrong, but kbin is early beta at this point. Personally I prefer it compared to the lemmy instances that I've visited, but it's still far from "done."
I just clicked "Communities" at the top of the page, then selected "All" instead of "Local"... seemed to show everything sorted by number of subscribed users... in fact I literally JUST did this and that's why I'm on this community right now.
https://lemmy.ml/c/findacommunity is a place for people to post communities that they mod or enjoy. It's quiet for now, but I'm trying to spread the word.