this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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Since it seems to be a common question for many new users.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Bushwhack 3 points 1 year ago

πŸ…here’s some gold. Get out. 🀣

[–] eddanja 29 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Think of instances (lemmy.world, kbin.social, sh.itjust.works, etc.) like planets. Each planet contains cities (or ~~subreddits~~ communities). Most of these planets are federated meaning that if you were born on one planet (have a login) then you can travel and participate the galaxy of cities and planets. If a planet defederates, then you can no longer travel there if you were not from there.

[–] SulaymanF 10 points 1 year ago

I think that still confuses people. It may be simpler to relate it to email. You are on one email domain like gmail.com or yahoo.com and can email other servers. Bad servers that are sending spam or hate speech can be blocked.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What is the major difference between something like Lemmy vs Kbin, etc., compared to just two different Lemmy "planets"?

Also, how do other platforms in the fediverse fit into this analogy? Something like Mastodon, would that be considered another galaxy? Is there any travel between these or do they require the birth of a new fedinaut within that galaxy to interact with those worlds?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What is the difference between the All view and the Local view?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Local shows posts posted on your planet, All shows the entire federation (galaxy).

[–] DontTreadOnBigfoot 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If I understand correctly, local only shows your planet and you can participate fully.

All shows the entire galactic federation (though you may only get to sightsee other planets, but not talk to the locals without getting a visa (login credentials for that planet))

[–] jcg 6 points 1 year ago

Not quite right. All would be the entire galactic federation that allows free entry with your planet, like the countries in the EU. There is no way currently to see the entire galactic federation, and probably never really will be because of the enormous amount of data that would need to be kept on a single instance.

[–] jcg 3 points 1 year ago

Not quite right. All would be the entire galactic federation that allows free entry with your planet, like the countries in the EU. There is no way currently to see the entire galactic federation, and probably never really will be because of the enormous amount of data that would need to be kept on a single instance.

[–] ThatGuyFromMichigan 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Local view only shows posts hosted on this instance (planet). So only communities hosted on lemmy.world for example.

All view would include posts from other instances as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

So should I have accounts on more than one instance? Which instance has the most communities?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

All shows communities on all planets. Local shows only the communities on your planet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can you decide to change your "home" planet?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The best you can do right now is recreate it on another planet. Hopefully someday there will be a way to migrate (or a way to export/import).

[–] MargotRobbie 2 points 1 year ago

Sign up for a new account at a different instance. While you can transfer your account to another instance in Mastodon, you can't do it for Lemmy right now.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

already done. My instance has pinned an infographic explaining how it works and many others have done similar things

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I found it but not where i thought it was

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You mean memes about how to not poop for 3 days?

[–] Bushwhack 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where is the link to this?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The image on this post does a good enough job at the very basics

https://vlemmy.net/post/388759

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the link, that's a pretty decent infographics yeah!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Make a tiktok dance explaining it, that'll teach the young'uns, at least

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

More effective would just be making the site easier to use for newcomers, particularly tackling the onboarding and community discoverability.

Some straightforward ways I can think of would be apps assigning users randomly to a good general instance (like lemm.ee, vlemmy.net, or lemmy.one) that isn't extremely overloaded when registering

and integrating lemmyverse.net's functionality into lemmy itself, cuz not being able to see a list of all communities and their true member count/activity in Lemmy itself is a huge blow to user experience.

[–] InfiniteFlow 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wouldn't go as far as automatically assigning users to (random) instances, as some people might really want to use the one they've selected for a number of reasons. OTOH, the registration page could offer alternatives ("instead of registering here how about one of these instances, that is currently looking for more users and will have lower loads/latency", etc.). The default could lead people to some other instance, but always with the option to stay where you are. Of course it would only suggest instances that are federated with the one you're trying to join (if the admins removed the others there was a reason for that...) or even having admins fill in a list of "preferred instances" that could have a higher priority in the suggestions list?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They'd of course be able to select instances, I just meant having a random good one selected by default when registering.

By good I mean one that's not too massive, isn't defederating popular instances, and isn't a questionable one that's likely to be defederated itself.

And I don't think they should explain too much, new users are easily scared away.

[–] InfiniteFlow 2 points 1 year ago

Indeed. The more frictionless it is, the better! Even giving the impression of some complexity will drive people away.

[–] lycanrising 8 points 1 year ago

genuinely a great way to spread awareness and teaching

[–] ANIMATEK 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

wefwef is virtually the same as Apollo. I just needed to export my r/s to c/s and ready.

Edit: corrected the name.

[–] jagoan 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s too late to export now right? I just learned about wefwef, opened Apollo, can’t find the export setting.

[–] ANIMATEK 1 points 1 year ago

Yep it kinda seems so. Sorry bro.

[–] Bushwhack 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You mean wefwef? It made finding alternative communities easy for sure.

[–] ANIMATEK 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lol yes sorry for that I can’t even see it’s name bc it sits in my dock.

[–] Bushwhack 1 points 1 year ago

All good. I just want people to be able to find it since it’s so good!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I love wefwef too! I tried a few other apps, but wefwef is closest to what I want in terms of GUI (until Sync for Lemmy releases anyways, Sync is what I used for Reddit before.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Works for me but the hosting site seems to go down intermittently. Was just a rewrite of the "I made this" meme

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally I found that thinking of Lemmy as a bunch of Discord servers really helped. Both have servers and "channels" inside them. Perhaps "The office" meme of "Corporate wants you to find the difference" would be fitting?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, don't do that. Discord messed up the definition of a "server", you shouldn't use the platform as an example, it will be confusing pretty quickly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hmm, perhaps you're right. When it comes to explaining the fediverse itself, that's definitely a no-go. I figured it's just visually easier to grasp it when thinking of Discord.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

How exactly is a rainbow made?

How exactly does the sun set?

How exactly does the posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work?

It just does.

[–] gamers_Mate 2 points 1 year ago

Interesting what would be a good meme format for this?

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