Just the overview, similar to local search. Titles, usernames, perhaps thumbnails and text excerpts of posts.

Pulling all communities would definitively lead to unwanted content.

Since it’s basically a work-around for the local only (incl. already pulled communities) search, more ideal solutions could be:

• Search works for all federated instances
• Universal search for all instances
• Admins can add instances to search through admin settings
• join-lemmy.org hosts a searchable community directory similar to join-lemmy.org/instances

Having some way to discover unfetched content (even if only from already federated instances) would be a significant addition to Lemmy!

@dessalines@lemmy.ml @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone

NRSK uses an admin-run “Fetcher” account to subscribe to various extenal communities and pull interesting content to our home “All” timeline. It’s a combination between browsing through communities on known and/or federated instances, and using join-lemmy.org to find new and unconnected instances. It’s all manually, which is a bummer but better than basically only local content for fresh users.

The majority of our users are inactive. It could be that they’re checking it out and think they need an account to access the full thing, much like Facebook,Twitter and Reddit does it?

But I’ve heard that the lurker to poster ratio could be quite high on social news aggregators like reddit and lemmy. I wish there was a way to see the last time a user logged in. But for now there’s the user stats, should show how many active users on the instance.

Thanks!

One problem I noticed is that the community list doesnt have any clickable links

I used to be on Mastodon which had a function to “Remote follow” profiles on remote instances. I haven’t seen the function in Lemmy, and the only way I know how to subscribe to remote communities not federated is to copy-paste and search for the URL from within Lemmy.

Adding a link seemed like an extra step, follow link, open page, copy URL from browser URL field, paste etc. Is there a better way to subscribe besides searching for the URL?

The list also includes some non-Lemmy instances like narwhal.city

Good point. I have no strong opinions either way, and is looking for more feedback from other users. But the most important thing is that only lemmy instances are shown as a new home instance.

There’s been some suggestions on a “Join random instance” button on the welcome site, what do you think? Right now it’s just linked to directly to join-lemmy/instances.

What about a “Pick random general instance” button?

A lot of users are looking forward to Hexbear getting their federation back. When they do, I’ll happily add any suggested communities to the overview.

I feel like there could be a button to simply sign up to a random instance from a curated list.

This has been considered. I agree that it would be nice to have a curated pool of random servers with a “Random Instance” button. It should be quite easy to set up. It would also allow us, as the wider lemmyverse, to avoid promoting instances some would consider harmful to the reputation of lemmy. Like 6 dead and inactive servers in a row on the automatic join-lemmy overview.

On the other hand there has been changes on join-lemmy, with two rather nice general instances being promoted. And you can browse a short description of all the instances before checking one out in depth, that’s also nice.

I’m also a follower of instance culture. Some people are better suited at certain servers. NRSK have blocked individuals from federating their content with us, but don’t mind that they have a community to participate in “over there”. You can’t find the right instance for you if all you get is random.

What about a “Pick random general instance”? That’s Beehaw and Sopuli if I’m not mistaken.

The site could essentially offer an easy (default) path that would tell you in the simplest possible terms (preferably with pictures) what Lemmy is

Hopefully a more graphical introduction will come, so far the setup is mostly about getting the list sorted and online. All help is appreciated, and if anybody want’s to do screenshots and the write-up you’re welcome to contact me through https://nrsk.no/c/welcome or DM’s

and enough about federation that the user is aware that it’s normal to have multiple web addresses, they all just access the same network.

Beyond the comparison to e-mail, I believe understanding duplicated community federation isn’t required entry-level knowledge. If a user comes from i.e. reddit, throwing up 14 unique but isolated communities would confuse them. That’s why there’s only a single recommendation per topic on the list - First people have to make it work before they expand.

If someone is able to write up a short explanation on how the fediverse works that I can show to my father, and he’ll understand it before giving up - I’ll definitively reconsider.

offer two buttons, one would take the user immediately to a recommended instance, the other would fork them to the “advanced” path

That could work.

Thanks for the invitation, a user from NRSK have joined.

Nice list.

NRSK.no is a rather new Norwegian instance, and it looks like we’re going for mostly Norwegian language posts. One community dedicated to content in English is Norway, where everybody is welcome to both subscribe and post.

Our Meta-community is Main.

Sure thing, we’re already pulling posts from 90% of the mentioned instances!

It’s not that bad down here.