As Lemmy starts maturing, there starts being so many communities out there that it's pretty hard to keep track. I've been browsing for about a month now, here's a list of popular communities I've subscribed to that others would find interesting!
Not many of these were noticeable while browsing communities so you may have missed some of these. I've roughly ranked these based on which I'd spend the most time on in each category.
Also note that I would add Kbin communities as well, but federation between Lemmy and Kbin is still not working well, so right now this post is for Lemmy communities only!
General Discussion
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Humor & Memes
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Technology
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected] NOTE: This one is a bot community forwarding tech news. Not for discussion, but it's useful to browse.
Pictures & Videos
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Movies & TV
Video Games
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
And that's it. Whew. Obviously I might have missed some, but these are the most interesting communities for me.
Interested in finding more communities? Check out [email protected] to see people showing off their new communities.
Edit: Removed spaces from links, added xbox to games section
Edit 2: android community moved to [email protected], updated link
I still don't understand how to subscribe to groups that aren't on my instance. I sometimes was able to get it to work on my PC but it's impossible on mobile. This platform needs a lot of work.
So I'm on Kbin.social right now. Let's say I wanna view our gaming community. like how Reddit has:
Reddit.com/r/Subredditname
I would go to:
kbin.social/m/magazinename
You on lemmy.world would go to:
lemmy.world/c/communityname
Super simple so far I hope lol. Same url format, just a C instead of an R on lemmy, and M instead of an R on kbin.
Let's say I on kbin wanna see your gaming community. If I did kbin.social/m/gaming, I would get mine. The url though can act like how an email address does, by adding a domain to the end of it. So if I did kbin.social/m/[email protected], I'll see your gaming community. Same if you do lemmy.world/c/gaming you see yours, but lemmy.world/c/[email protected] you should see ours.
If I got those URL's right that is lol
Both kbin and lemmy instances do also have other ways to get to other instances to sub, but the instructions I provided are based just on the url so it should work for anyone while ya get used to the UI and new platform and whatnot.
Exact info I’ve been hoping to find, thorough and concise - thank you!
This was helpful, and I understand it now, thanks! It's just SO clunky though to have to use a different URL to get to the same place depending on what instance you're a member of. I don't understand what the benefit of all this added complication is. I feel like good programming should make it so that when I type [email protected], whatever instance I'm in should just automatically link me to their version of the URL. Like kbin should know that that needs to go to kbin.social/m/[email protected] without me having to change anything.
And in the meantime... we're going to have different communities for each instance because of how confusing this all is. Who decided that [email protected] was going to be the default memes community? Won't there be other communities that pop up at [email protected] and [email protected] etc? It seems like chaos to me. How do I know which one is the right one?
You aren't alone. I'm still trying to figure it out, too. First step was to settle on my go-to instance, which just today I've decided will be kbin.
I picked kbin too. It seems like the most complete platform, and is more easy to navigate than lemmy... but that's kind of a low bar. I'm still very lost.
Ironically, the trouble you're having with subscribing is because you're on Kbin. On Lemmy you can just click the links in the post
It's a bit cumbersome on mobile, especially that kbin doesn't have a native app (yet). First of all, magazines/communities have a name and a domain, just like email, e.g.: [email protected] (or if you are "native" on lemmy.world, it's https://lemmy.world/c/dnd)
The easiest way to subscribe on a different instance is to open the magazines/communities in your browser and manipulate the URL a bit. The above c/m will look like this from your instance: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]
So if you would like to open then subscribe to any c/m, you just need to change the end part.
E.g.
In case of lemmy instances it's always /c, in case of kbin instances (there are more of that too!), it's always /m
On PC there are addons (e.g. for Firefox) that automatically rewrites the URLs to the correct ones.
Hope this helps.
It seems to be harder to subscribe to Lemmy communities from kbin.
Ok - I just figured it out but it was not intuitive. This is for kbin.social. Unsure of the differences to Lemmy.
You have to go to search, then click magazines. This link should take you right there:
https://kbin.social/magazines
Then search for what you want eg newcommunities.
That should show local communities as well as ones that are federated.
It wasn’t apparent on mobile but apparently there’s a subscribe button on the search results on the right side.
If you click on the community you can still subscribe but clicking the side bar on the left. There’s a subscribe button if you scroll down a bit.
On PC, if you are browsing any magazine (local or not) you can clearly see the subscribe(and block) button on the right. I usually go to the magazine of interest when I read interesting post.
On mobile you can click the menu button in the upper left corner to get to the thread and magazine info of your current page to follow that thread or subscribe to the magazine it was posted to. It's quicker than scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page.
And the communities in the list aren’t clickable. Pretty low hanging fruit for reducing friction. (Like, the platform should automatically link them, not that OP should have.)
I 100% agree. I should just be able to click a link to go to a community, and then there should be a simple way to subscribe when I get there. Like... that functionality may not be "basic" to program, but it is a basic necessity for ease of use and growth...
I'm on kbin.
What happens if I just type
[email protected]
It gives a 404
How about if I change the ! to a @
@NoStupidQuestions
This one works, but you don't see from the link text that it's a link to Lemmy's community instead of kbin's magazine.
(I wrote the whole address but it gets converted to the link you see above,which works but you have to scroll ⅔ of the way down to find subscribe.)
What if I just write @NoStupidQuestions ?
This one looks the same, but it links to kbin's magazine of the same name but different content. A bit confusing.
....
What if I create a URL using the kbin link thing above the text box
Link
This seems to work. Edit: no it doesn't. I just linked back to this post somehow. Try again with a different notation...
Link
Nope.
Now to try this comment on Lemmy...
Can't find this post on Lemmy - had to get there via https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
Lemmy is having a lie down at this time.
Fyi this is exactly how it works on Lemmy's side, and tbh it's usually how links work when they get pulled through to Kbin too, but something about this post has given Kbin an issue and it's stripped out the clickable links which is why it's super confusing for you lot over there!
The communities in the list are all clickable from Lemmy. You're just from kbin and that site doesn't have that.
I can just go to the search tab and look for the magazine (e.g. Search for retro gaming) and find an the other instances.
I think s fair number of people forget to switch the search to magazines before looking (or are actually subscribing to other instances but don't notice it)
What do you mean? Simply open the community and subscribe?
The user you're responding to is on Kbin, which is stripping the links out of this post for some reason. They literally can't click through, that's why people are confused.
It seems to be harder to subscribe to Lemmy communities from kbin.
whats weird is that you can hover over all username links and get all the useful buttons like follow/block but this isnt extended to communities, have to manually go there (while inside your home instance)
like, why?
I posted an answer above to the same question.
In case you cannot see it: