Rules
The rules may be more established as time goes on, but it's important to have a foundation to work on.
1. Follow the rules of Lemmy.world - These rules are the same as Mastodon.world's rules, which can be found here.
2. Include a community title and description in your post title. - A following example of this would be New Communities - A place to post new communities all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion.
3. Follow the formatting. - The formatting as included below is important for people getting universal links across Lemmy as easily as possible.
Formatting
Please include this following format in your post:
[link text](/c/[email protected])
This provides a link that should work across instances, but in some cases it won't
You should also include either:
or instance.com/c/community
FAQ:
Q: Why do I get a community not found message?
A: At least one user in an instance needs to search for a community before it gets fetched. Searching for the community will bring it into the instance and it will fetch a few of the most recent posts without comments. If a user is subscribed to a community, then all of the future posts and interactions are now in-sync.
*Q: Why isn't the link working on kbin.social?"
A: This is a community for Lemmy, there is a universal link for Lemmy, but when this universal link works on kbin. It turns out like the below.
https://kbin.social/c/[email protected]/
Simply replace the c with an m for kbin.social like shown below.
https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/
*Q: When I try to create a post, the circle just spins forever. Why is that? *
A: (This may be removed soon as it is seems to be happening less often now.) This is a current known issue with large communities. Sometimes it does get posted, but just continues spinning, but sometimes it doesn't get posted and continues spinning. If it doesn't actually get posted, the best thing to do is try later. However, only some people seem to be having this problem at the moment.
Cross-Posting
On Lemmy you can use the the built in cross post function to link viewers of one post to another. This lets users quickly see what people in other communities are saying and also has the potential to expose someone to something new. For community owners this is a great way to go about seeding discussion in new communities.
Example:
Thanks to this post and creator for this tip!
Q: Is it better to create my community on a large general Lemmy instance, a topical Lemmy instance, or create my own Lemmy instance?
A: It is up to you, but there are a few things to consider. General instances will likely help early discoverability, and your main account is likely already on one. However, your community will encounter risks of admin change and others defederating with the general instance for reasons unrelated to your community. If the account you want to be your main Lemmy home is on another instance, you must create an alt account on the general instance to create the community.
Self-hosting an instance will let you be in control. You'll have fewer worries about your community not being found due to defederation or the instance admins shutting it down over reasons unrelated to your community. However, you'll have to rely on word of mouth, communities like this, and the community search tools like Lemmy Explorer to get people there.
Topical instances might be a good middle ground if you trust the instance admins. As the local feed will have related topics, you'll likely be a positive contributor to the local instance feed and find a lot of shared interests with others on that instance. Topical instances will probably only be defederated by instances you wouldn't want to federate with already. If the account you want to be your main Lemmy home is on another instance, you'll need to create an alt account on the topical instance to create the community.
Edits: network issues, reworded