Hi there! I’m another reddit refugee, been lurking here since the API fiasco.
How do I search for a community across the several federated instances? Is there a directory somewhere?
Thanks!
In the search bar for communities, you should have options for ‘local’ and ‘all’. ‘Local’ just gives you your own instance, while ‘all’ should give you the whole fediverse. I think. Don’t quote me.
The way it was explained to me, that feature is a bit misleading. This instance is only aware of outside communities that have been acessed by other users of this instance. So when you search, you’re searching that subset, not all of the currently existing communities on all federated instances. So if know there’s a community called !veryspecificcommunity@someinstance but it doesn’t show up on search, I’d have to type in the full address in the search bar to make mander.xyz aware of its existence. Then I’d be able to interact with it.
Thanks!
Yeah, the “all” list only lists communities/magazines your own instance knows.
I personally prefer lemmyverse.net, which @notsofunnycomment@mander.xyz mentioned below.
If you want to browse /kbin magazines (i.e. the equivalent of Lemmy communities), kbin.social is by far the biggest instance currently so you can start your search there, but a fuller list of /kbin instances can be found here: https://fedidb.org/software/kbin . Just go through the list of magazines on /kbin instances one at a time for now; I don’t know of a better /kbin search engine.
(You can also browse Lemmy instances one at a time to find communities you like, for that matter.)
And there’s always the option of just reading things on other instances directly, and just copying the fediverse link over to your home instance’s search box if you want to comment/upvote/whatever.
Thanks, very helpful!
I recommend an app if anything. Connect for Android works wonders for me. Not sure about iOS. Have fun! It’s been a good time so far and it’s growing for sure.
