Is Lemmy community nice to new users?
New to Lemmy and I quit reddit years ago and I remembered that r/conservatives was hostile to me for voicing my politics certain other subreddit made fun of me if I was wrong. I'm newish to the fediverse. I'm digging mastodon even though I never did Twitter
Lemmy is, in general, very welcoming of newcomers. We are always happy to see one more person escape the hell hole that is reddit. We all hope you have an amazing time here! Though a lot of it depends on what home instance you are on, but feel free to hop around from instance to instance to find one that suits you, or maybe you already feel nice and cozy just where you are.
Completely random, unorganized and improvised tips and tricks and other miscellaneous information
Reminder to use the subscribe button to curate a nice Subscribed feed!
Subreddits here are called "communities".
Use ! to link to a community. Like so !linux@lemmy.ml.
Need help? Ask something on the adequate support communities, like !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml.
The All feed only shows posts from communities that at least one person from your own instance is subscribed to, so might make sense to look on other instances Local community lists to find a community you might not find on Lemmy's horrible search function.
You might know on Lemmy, multiple instances share content. This content sharing happens through a proccess called "federation". When two instances are sharing content, we say they are federated, when they stop sharing content, we say they are defederated (like lemmy.world and lemmygrad.ml).
You might be confused with all the @ everywhere in community names and user names. Let me explain:
Username are structured like so: Username @ instance link.
username@host.instance
And communities much the same way:
communityname@host.instance
If you do not see a @ in a community or username, it means they are on the same instance you are on right now!
There might be duplicate communities of the same topic on different instances, so if you like one, you might want to subscribe to all of them. (There are like... 3 meme communities for example: !memes@lemmy.ml, !memes@lemmy.world, !memes@sopuli.xyz )
Before posting in a community, make sure to read the rules of both the community and the instance it is hosted in.
It is worth noting, though, that due to recent political... events... politically related skirmishes have gotten somewhat more common. Also, as more people join Lemmy, some of them are bound to be morons so... reminder the block button exists if you are not interested in that. Most of the skirmishes are between liberals and Marxist-Leninist.
I hope my unorganized guide might of of some use to you! ( ^ ω ^ )
This helps probably should post it for posterity
You can bookmark posts and comments for later.
I hardly ever check how old anyone's account is. I try to be nice to everyone regardless of who they are, and discuss issues rather than posters.
Varies wildly from instance to instance. At this point, most instances have their own "culture" and ideological leanings, if you go against your instance's grain then you will run into more friction. I can help if you give a broad overview of your political leanings and interests, or you can browse the major instances and see which most appeals to you.
On average, yeah.
But you gotta remember, there's a fresh wave of r/efugees coming in, and there was one not that long ago.
Lemmy is mostly people that left Reddit, rather than having been a separate culture of its own. So there's plenty of the same things that make reddit a difficult place to be.
Lemmy tends to be more forgiving overall, outside of the politically focused instances, and some of the more.... assertive belief systems that have communities and instances.
As others have already said, lemmy.ml is a dedicated leftist space, and it's hard left, even outright tankie at times (far left and authoritative). So you don't want to go there about politics, you won't have a good time.
Lemmy.world catches a lot of hell because some of the mods and admins are a tad whack, but the users are typically not going to fuck with you.
Sh.itjust.works is probably the closest in vibe to reddit, good and bad.
Those are still, iirc, the three biggest instances. So you'll have more users, which means the percentage of assholes in the human race equals those instances having higher numbers of assholes, but that really is the issue.
My advice to anyone new on lemmy is the same as it was for new reddit users. Hang back a while. Stay chill. Observe the culture of lemmy as a whole, and any community you want to participate in.
It is the internet though. People will say shit they'd never dare to in person. But I'd say there's less of it here than most forums. And, I also tend to see more compassion too
I originally found it really nice but in the past two month's I have run into a lot of rude users. Best thing to do is to call them out, report them, then block and be done with it. This makes it a lot easier honestly. Most of the frequent users are nicer.
I find the contrast to be funny. Some of the interactions are friendly where people know each other and ask them how certain events in their personal lives went. Some are just nasty. There is no predicting what you'll get, other than some decent active users that I'm familiar with.
Make note of the instances you are on. Communities with the same names can be radically different across instances.
Each instance may have their own collective view on what is right or wrong, good or bad. For example, I saw that you mentioned the "T" word (or was in a discussion about it) on .ml the other day and that is a recipe for an interesting discussion. You do what the heck you want, but each community will have their own special reaction.
I stumbled into lemmygrad a couple of years ago, somehow. It didn't take but about 5 mins for me to be labeled a fascist baby killer.
Were they new users?
Not always but frequently.
I've found lemmy to be kind most of the time but my original experience coming here was 2 years ago
I've definitely noticed an uptick in anger, but that's happened every time Reddit has pushed users away - nice thing is that they mellow out pretty quickly here
Its also quite a tense time in the world. A lot of people are stressed beyond belief.
I say somewhat - it really depends on which server you're on, because that defines the initial community that will be immediately available to you. There's also plenty of mods and admins that have very pronounced political views and will exercise their power according to them.
I've found that the discussion is better here, although slower, and there are far fewer bots and trolls (although Fediverse trolls tend to be heartier and more persistent than their Reddit cousins).
I was think it's really easy to evade bans since you can log into another instance and fediverse isn't about storing your information.
I try to be nice to all users.
Even ones who put catsup on hotdogs.
Most of Lemmy was extremely hostile during the US elections but that has mostly passed.
I had a fun time trying to explain why I voted for stien, I had to tell people the president part of the ballot is the one I have the least impact on and If people were to convince me not vote stien that is leave that part blank
Thank you for doing the right thing.
Yeah so you'll generally find lemmy users to be quite hostile to your political position. I'm grown up enough not to be "hostile" but to be frank I think your voting choices are very poorly considered.
To your broader question. Lemmy is just like any other platform. If you say silly things people will rebut you. There is no respect for contrary opinions.
I've found that lemmy communities tend to be very homogeneous and in many threads if you offer any insights which are not breathless support you'll be heavily downvoted and get vitriolic responses, or banned.
For example, saying anything critical of China in a .ml thread will result in a ban.
Honestly, it's been better than Reddit so far, probably because of who's self-selected into being here. In the long run, I expect it will be the same.
Like someone else said, there's prominent Marxist-Leninist instances, including this one to a degree, so this probably isn't the place if you want to talk about your cool new landlord sidehustle (for one example). Most of Lemmy (like everywhere I've been, probably even NCD) leans left of the IRL center, but it sounds like that won't slip you up.
I'm new, too, and agree it's been way nicer than reddit.
What brought you here? How did you hear about us?
Just curious.
Well, I left during the whole API thing, so I'm not sure I'd say I'm new. But anyway, glad to hear it!
If I'm gonna get into politics it's most likely to start organizational groups for approval voting/ranked Choice voting. I'll tell people that they have to deal with entire spectrum
Yeah, we have one-choice FPTP where I live, and it sucks.
Given the context, I feel the need to mention that starting an organisation is super, super hard to start with, and Lemmy is niche on top of that. There's organisations IRL that are always looking for volunteers.
As long as you are not a bootlicker, you will do fine.
If you arent homophobic, transphobic, anti-communist, in support of china or russia, in support of israel, religious, in support of non-opensource software, against linux, calling a lot of people nazis, or against murdering, then probably
I agree with most of these, but sometimes it feels like you cant disagree with people without them becoming angry
Lol I have pointed out that Russia hasn't dropped nuke in Ukraine but America has dropped nukes on Japan.
Only Americans can test a nuclear bomb on living people, in the name of democracy. The rest are not allowed! For the rest, this is a crime!
Leave it, only the Americans know what to do and progressive Europe... The rest of the Russians, the Chinese are stupid animals for them who can't do anything, don't know and shouldn't know! So....
It really depends on the community you’re in.
As others have eluded to, there is a massive glazing for Linux here and any objections to it are usually downvoted.
The same for FOSS services.
It made me ponder how much of an echo chamber we are in. If you think of it like this: Most of the people here are here because we were passionate about a de-federated alternative to Reddit. For me it was over the API changes.
So if you think about being on Reddit already puts you into a small subset of society, then look at how many came here and stayed over the API issue, then we can see that some of the views here are not at all indicative of the world as here we have about 50k MAU (monthly active users).
As an example, I got sucked in my the pro Linux rhetoric and wiped windows from my PC. It did not go as plain sailing as people would have you believe. My reservations were about maintaining the system and just not wanting to have to geek out when I’m not in work. I’m a software engineer so it’s far from a skill issue, but people here will tell you easy to switch and you won’t have any issues which isn’t the case.
It gave me pause for thought to get out of here every once in a while to gauge the actual populations views on something and not just the circle jerk in here.
On the whole though I can get more interaction with people here than on Reddit as there are less people and people seem willing to just chat about anything.
I think we're pretty nice. Though I can get a little hot sometimes I think we all try to keep in mind we are talking to real humans (most of the time lol).
Lemmy has a hardon for FOSS, and an irrational hatred for windows.
Aside from that, it's quite nice imo
Yeah I learned that you can't say about a Foss developer wasting resources even when they do fundraiser and apply for grants
Yes.
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Offensive username
Please create a new account and stop using this one. Aside from not wanting to deal with the extra reports this one will bring, we won’t let this become a Nazi bar, and we know that “ironic” bigotry is often the thin end of the wedge. I’m not saying you intended to lay out the welcome mat for the far-right, but that’s what ironic far-right messaging effectively does.
Perfect example of this is 4chan.
It's essential to align with communities that share your perspective, as there's limited space for meaningful dialogue in some spaces. While some communities foster open discussions, others quickly become hostile to differing opinions, escalating to such an intense level that it almost becomes humorous. Finding the right group where respectful conversation thrives is key.
Will the mods flame you then ban you?
Also on Lemmy you can see the moderation history for any user or comment.
https://lemmy.ml/modlog?userId=1660834
Do with that info what you will. It's very helpful sometimes when folks claim mod abuse.
If the worst happens there are many instances to choose from, and it seems easy to get your preferred username
We have mods of all kinds here! Most won't just ban you unless you broke an actual rule. Any who, good of a time as any to mention the Modlog exists. You can easily see someone's moderation history with just two clicks!
(three dots next to a comment and then moderation history.)
yeah ideological policing is insane
.world and .ml like to beef over their politics (generally liberal vs more leftist/Marxist)
Aside from that, people are generally pretty kind and won’t bash you for having left-of-center politics. If you’re a conservative, though, I’d expect downvotes. There just aren’t very many around on Lemmy. (And I personally think things are better that way.)
most of the "beef" actually happens in their own little threads with no cross interaction cause .world has hexbear and lemmygrad blocked
Ehhh there's not no interaction though, as .ml has them all federated and quite a lot of posts are thereI was misremembering, see below
both .world and lemm.ee are conservative enough for each one to have their own thriving conservative sub communities; i doubt op would get down votes from them.
Man, that must be tough for them. Lemmings run between solidly Democrat and contemplating critical support for Pol-Pot.
What a fucking whinge