I created a repo on GitHub that has a table comparing all the known lemmy instances

Why?

When I joined lemmy, I had to join a few different instances before I realized that:

  1. Some instances didn’t allow you to create new communities
  2. Some instances were setup with an allowlist so that you couldn’t subscribe/participate with communities on (most) other instances
  3. Some instances disabled important features like downvotes
  4. Some instances have profanity filters or don’t allow NSFW content

I couldn’t find an easy way to see how each instance was configured, so I used lemmy-stats-crawler and GitHub actions to discover all the Lemmy Instances, query their API, and dump the information into a data table for quick at-a-glance comparison.

I hope this helps others with a smooth migration to lemmy. Enjoy :)

  • Barbarian@lemmy.reckless.dev
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    1 year ago

    You’re awesome man! This is direly needed. I’m just wondering how on earth to publicize this before the madness that hits on Monday.

    Any chance you could find a place to fit this in the join lemmy site and do a pull request before then? I know it’s a lot to ask, but it would be huge.

    • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I see TypeScript and get scared. Personally, I do think that the join-lemmy.org/instances page should link to:

      1. My table comparison https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
      2. The Lemmy Community Browser (to find communities across all instances) https://browse.feddit.de/
      3. The Lemmy Map https://lemmymap.feddit.de/

      Can anyone with TypeScript experience make this PR for us? Here’s the relevant file:

      • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You thinking just a <ul> with the 4 links in it and a header of some sort? Mock or description or anything?

        • maltfield@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          I think at the top, just above the “Recommended” <h2> add:

          For a more detailed comparison of Lemmy instances, see:
          
          <ul>
          <li><a href="https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances">Awesome-Lemmy-Instances on GitHub</a></li>
          <li><a href="https://the-federation.info/platform/73">the-federation.info Lemmy Instances Page</a></li>
          <li><a href="https://lemmymap.feddit.de/">Feddit's Lemmymap</a></li>
          </ul>
          
          After you create an account, you can find communites across all instances using <a href="https://browse.feddit.de/">Feddit's Lemmy Community Browser</a>
          
          <h2>Recommended</h2>
          ...
          
              • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Translation merged. Actual HTML in full PR. Once/if @nutomic@lemmy.ml approves, we’ll be… Nevermind, he just approved it. He said it’ll be live in an hour or two.

                There wasn’t really anything that resembled typescript changes ultimately. The submoduled translations were the only real time sink there.

                  • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    Took me a little while, too. The i18n stuff is all in the translations repo (which is why I needed to PR that one, too and first). You won’t find it anywhere in the active repo (I think this is a flaw, and the joinlemmy translation stuff at least should be in the same repo. But the idea makes sense to not repeat translations that show up in other projects)

                    On build-run, the translation process runs, which seems to “guess” any lines in non-english that it discovers. I didn’t dig too deeply, but it wasn’t immediately obvious how it knew to check English for the originals, only that English has no retranslation tool attached to it.

      • smartwater0897@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I think it’s better with less choices for beginners actually. I remember a lot of people didn’t get started on mastadon because they were afraid to pick an instance.

        It’s almost so it would be good if this could just be a checkbox “pick a good instance for me” and it would pick a medium populated instance from the list.

      • Barbarian@lemmy.reckless.dev
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        1 year ago

        abraxas said he was a typescript vet just earlier, maybe we can coax him into having a look? xD

        Worth a shot at least.

        EDIT: Just shot him a message

        • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Unfortunately I also have very little free time. If you’re not in a hurry and nobody does it before me, I can take a look. Wish I could set a reminder in Lemme. Anyone code the remindme bot yet? LOL.

          !remindme 1 week

          EDIT: Well shit, yes the deadline for a lot of things is next monday isn’t it. Lemme see if I can squeeze in a little time tomorrow morning or evening, if one of my jobs isn’t overwhelmingly crazy, I might be able to. It’s just adding a few links in the “Lemmy Servers” body text? Any UI standard?

          I’m a TS vet, but green on lemmy UI design.

            • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Updated my original message. If I can make time, I need a little more precise info about what/where on the links. It looks like a short enough PR as long as I know exactly what the links should look like