I’m really confused. I want to learn how this website works. Would love to know more tips if you guys have any!
I might be talking bullshit here as I’m also pretty new to this. But I believe an instance is the server (basically like Reddit) where all the communities (Subreddits) are located. These instances can federate with other instances to grow in a decentralized fashion. Every instance can impose site-wide rules (e.g. beehaw disabled the downvote button, I believe, so you can’t downvote anyone in all of the communities that belong to the beehaw instance).
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong!
Yep! It’s a bunch of reddits that all talk to each other, and each one can have whatever communities (subs) it wants.
Every instance can impose site-wide rules (e.g. beehaw disabled the downvote button, I believe, so you can’t downvote anyone in all of the communities that belong to the beehaw instance).
That’s true for those on beehaw. But if I look at a thread hosted on beehaw from another instance I can downvote. Since I’m looking at a copy/synced version of the thread and I don’t have downvotes disabled.
Still though. It limits the abuse of downvotes to an extent.
Here’s an example screenshot. Note the downvotes are there.
Example 2 from beehaw
communities are exactly like subreddits but instances are servers run by different individuals, think of them as small reddits but all able to talk to each other, that is why it is called federated
Oh, got ya! What about different links for lemmy? For example, the ones that end in .ee or .ml? Are those instances?
Yup! Those websites are the instances which are the infrastructure and interface by which you can access communities - each of which is hosted on a specific instance. An instance is essentially the collection of all the communities it hosts and all of the users signed up through that instance.
Thank you! I understand now! So, when I’m browsing by ‘all’ does it only show all the community posts from my instance?
No. Local is your instance. All is all instances.
Browsing All shows posts from all communities that have previously been interacted with by a user from your own instance. So if someone from Lemmy.fmhy.ml subscribes to an obscure community on some other instance, that community is added to your All view, but it wouldn’t show up before then.
“All” is essentially all instances, but it uses a bit of a completed formula of doing it from what I hear. Other people have explained it so I won’t. If you registered on a reasonably sized instance I imagine it effectively works out to “all” instances (for hot anyway, maybe not new).
The ‘instance’ is the ‘server’ that you made your account with.
Your ‘instance’ is ‘lemmy.fmhy.ml’.
A community is essentially a subreddit. As far as I know, there isn’t really an official term for it yet. I have been calling them ‘sublemmys’.
sublemmy is probably not a great term, since it references lemmy rather than being a generic threadiverse term
You’re right but let’s not confuse the OP
the term sublemmy confuses the issue because it makes it harder to understand the idea that an instance isn’t just lemmy, which is another big question people have about the fediverse: what’s kbin, how does it interact with lemmy, how do i see things on mastodon, etc
Why not just call it a community?
The official term IS community.
Instance of lemmy like lemmy.world, lemmy.ml or beehaw.org are the servers which host the software running lemmy. Communities are the hosted on those instances.
It’s pretty obvious if you go through the docs.
its pretty obvious if you go through the docs
What a snarky way to end your comment. People don’t wanna do homework to browse a website
Lots of good answers here, but I’d also like to add that you may come across “magazine” instead of “community”. This is from Kbin which commonly federates with Lemmy. So m/ and c/ are similar but just different platforms in the fediverse.
Simple explanation: imagine an instance as an apartment house, where communities are apartments (where people can gather). You also have neighbor buildings (instances) with their own apartments. You can go and visit them freely if you want. In that case, federation will be like a city I guess
It’s the same difference as the one between Reddit = instance and a subreddit = community:
- instance - a platform hosted somewhere. It has its own users, communities, admins.
- community - it’s a space for a topic inside an instance. It has local moderators, that must abide to the rules of the admins of that instance, and may set up their own rules.
The big difference here is that instances can communicate with each other. For example: you’re a user of the instance lemmy.fmhy.ml, you’re posting in a community from lemmy.world, and I’m replying to your post from lemmy.ml. There’s nothing remotely similar in Reddit.
Simplified way to look at it:
Instance is like a server, it hosts your account and some communities.
Communities are like “subreddits”. It has to created / operated on one of the instances, but is accessible to all federated instances (which is largely the norm).
An analogy is email. You can choose your email provider (Gmail, Protonmail, Fastmail etc) and you will have an unique email address based on that provider (e.g. someguy@gmail.com is different from someguy@fastmail.com), but you will have the ability to send emails to anyone (unless you are blocked).
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Instances are where the communities are hosted. Think of them like several different reddits with the subs spread out among them
