I put together a guide aimed at Redditors for Kbin and Lemmy!
(Reminder: if you have shared the original version in a public post with an old version up, replacing it with this one might be more helpful.)
I want to preface, if you see a mistake in the image or have something helpful to add, go right ahead! I still have the layered files for this, so edits can be made very quickly. I chose to handwrite the text to avoid font copyright infringement.
Feel free to share this poster as you wish, especially on Reddit. All I ask is that you respect the license and don’t remove my socials at the bottom. If anyone’s addition is included, I’ll credit them, and if this gets added onto (or translated) by someone else later, they can add their info as well.
I hope someone can find it useful with the subreddit blackouts right around the corner.
I want to thank the Beehaw admins so much for their amazing work!
(Poster edited; I spotted a duplicated word, mrmanager@lemmy.today noted the lack of whitespace; current version is slightly larger and has been spaced out. You can still request the 800x2000 size, but know it is a little squished.)
(Edit 2: Removed defederation part as it’s not really required. The email analogy blackcoffee@beehaw.org suggested has been added, thanks!)
(Edit 3: Here’s another version making the interconnectivity a bit clearer and mentioning some cool-looking reader apps that have been suggested! Also made the image slightly longer for ease of viewing. I might do some small cosmetic changes tomorrow)
(Edit 4 is here with the date updated towards the bottom. This version contains a reminder to verify your email, lets people know why mlem isn’t showing up on App Store searches, and added fedia.io to Kbin instances. Some colors have been changed slightly to be more mobile friendly, as this is written and edited from a phone tablet. If you have a hard time reading this because of the changes, please let me know. Thank you all for the help and tips!)
I wouldn't bother with the concept of de-federation in a beginners guide. One of the most confusing bits of the fediverse to new users is picking a server. For most users, the one they pick doesn't really matter, but talking about defederation makes it sound like a really important choice.
As someone who is brand new here, I agree with the others: the de-federation part confused me. But the email analogy was easier to grasp. Otherwise thank you for this!
Thank you for your work! I wonder if this could be updated to include join-lemmy since it just points people to kbin.social. That might be confusing if they're trying to find a Lemmy server or well, simply other instances in general!
Alright so this seems a good a place as any to ask dumb questions... This almost feels like the 90's and using the internet for the first time 🤣
So, I'm viewing this post on lemmy.world, but the content itself is from beehaw.org, simple enough. What happens if beehaw.org is unavailable, let's say permanently shut down, right now? Is the past content still available on other instances or does it just poof? Could I still view this post one day, week, month, year after a shut down? Could I still comment? The image itself I see is hosted directly on the beehaw instance so that obviously depends on a stable instance.
It's great. I agree with the removal of de-federation, I don't see how that's important at this stage. And since you mention kbin.social, why not also point people to https://join-lemmy.org/?
Important note for kbin (and fedia.io): if you sign up and fail to click that confirmation link, I think you're basically SOL. So don't make the same mistake I made! Click that confirmation link, it expires in an hour!
Really like it, sadly I don't think the people I'd share it with would be willing to read through it. I'll try with word of mouth for now and use this as a backup.
I did't knew I could use a mastodon accout and created a new one here on Kbin. I'll like to know more about that, if it's possible (yet, I know I can use my mastodon account to subscribe to content from other platforms and see it on my mastodon's activity feed)
Very nice! Perhaps it would be a good idea to spell out that you can subscribe to any community in the Fediverse no matter what part of it you signed up on, kbin or any instance of Lemmy?
I know that's not absolutely accurate, but it's close enough.
You're telling me that i could have just.. logged in with my mastodon account? How does that work? (i know its beyond the scope of the guide but i want to try)
I'm having a hard time figuring out how to subscribe to a community from another instance. I know I need a link to the community (not sure what this looks like as the one I thought I'd found didn't work) and a search bar to paste it in, which I found once on jerboa I think but not again. Is there a more detailed guide for subscribing to another instance's community?
As others have said, I would not talk about de-federation, and try to keep text as concise as possible.
I believe we need a super easy, short and visual guide (this one is definitely on the right track).
I think the core concepts that should be illustrated are:
fediverse nature (as you did);
it doesn't matter where (on which instance) you sign up, you can still access and interact with all content of any other instance. Could be seen like having multiple doors (or streets) to access the same room (or town square).
I believe these two are the most important bits of information (and what puzzles people the most)
It is a great post, but I would recommend changing the color you use for lemmy in the text. It is too close to black and it looks like only kbin is a different color. When I first read it, I thought there was a smudge on my screen.
Additionally, it seems that kbin.social is not currently federated due to being behind cloudflair and not being configured correctly. (according to other users) but I can confirm that kbin.social is not currently federated.
This is awesome, thank you for making this. Trying to get friends and family to move platform seems like such a daunting task and I wasn't sure how to put forward the information - feeling much better about it now.
Is the target group people who know what servers and/or instances are or not?
Otherwise I would go up one layer and put in the comparison more users have made about having an mailadres user1@gmail.com and being able to communicate with accounts who also have user1@yahoo.com etc.
It gives users who are not familiar an idea of the concept.
Related question for all you experts: if I have an account on both (for example) lemmy.ml and lemmy.world, what is effectively the difference between them if I can view content from any federated instance?
This is great. Does a good job of outlining the important information and making sure that things are approachable for new users. There really should be content like this on join-lemmy.org and similar sites.
Really well put together. Very succinct but with enough information to get people started.
I find that for not tech people trying to deal with such terms like fediverse, kbin, Lemmy, instance, protocol might be quite overwhelming and even off-putting. I am saying this because I used to do software development and still took me a bit to get my head around it.
I want to preface, if you see a mistake in the image or have something helpful to add, go right ahead! I still have the layered files for this, so edits can be made very quickly.
Why didn't you mention Jebora or the iOS app? People are into apps, makes things easier and quicker. For example, I never would have transfered to Lemmy if it wasn't for Jebora.
I can chat with other people from other instances (like email)
If I wanted to join the same communities as a friend, do I need to sign up for another instance or do communities 'live' on multiple instances? For instance, a community on 'cats.' If there is one on {instance1} and {instance2}. They aren't the same, right?
Can someone clarify for me - can I 'add' a kbin community to the Lemmy instance I'm on in the same way as any other community? For the first time I'd need to type !news@kbin.social for example (if no-one else had already added that community in my instance)? I ask because I tried to do that, and it doesn't come up under the listed communities. But maybe that's because kbin is overloaded?
So I'm trying to understand the whole federation thing, I know we can view/reply to the posts/comments on different servers, even to different platforms(?) like kbin/Mastodon while using a Lemmy account, though they might have slightly different formats, but can we sort of "follow" the feeds of other platforms?
Essentially what I'm trying here is to look for a one app/account to rule them all approach, where I can doom scroll through all the feeds from everywhere, kbin, Mastodon, Fedia, Beehaw, you name it.
For instance, since every server appears to have their own Communities/Magazines, I'm wondering if I can just subscribe to something like gaming@beehaw.org, gaming@kbin.social and user69420@mastodon.social, and read through all their posts in a single page?
Quick question is there normally a long federation delay between kbin and Lemmy?
For example while making a post/comment may be instantaneous, I noticed when using the edit feature for comment title there is a massive delay (6+ hrs sync delay for title change).
Question: Why are multiple communities allowed with the same name? Won't that create too much confusion? beehaw.org/c/community is different than lemmy.ml/c/community. Wouldn't it be better that all subs go to a single instance, no matter what the TLD is?