Welcome to lemmy.net.au: Understanding Lemmy and How to Use It
Hello and welcome to our Lemmy instance! If you’re new here, you might be wondering what exactly Lemmy is and how it differs from other social platforms. This guide will help you understand Lemmy’s unique structure and how to make the most of your experience here.
What is Lemmy?
Lemmy is a forum-style social media platform (sometimes called a ‘link aggregator’) similar to Reddit or Hacker News. Here, you can:
- Share and discuss links, text posts, and images
- Upvote and downvote content to determine what rises to the top
- Join communities centered around specific topics or themes
- Connect with users across the entire “fediverse”
What Makes Lemmy Different: The Federated Approach
The key difference between Lemmy and traditional social platforms is that Lemmy is federated. Here’s what that means:
Instead of one central website controlled by a single company, Lemmy consists of multiple independent websites (called “instances”) that are all connected to each other. Each instance is run by different organizations or individuals.
Think of it this way: If Reddit is like a single massive shopping centre with one owner setting all the rules, Lemmy is like George Street in Sydney, which has multiple shopping centres, each with their own management but where shoppers can freely move between them.
The Power of Federation
When you join lemmy.net.au, you’re not just joining this instance - you’re joining the entire Lemmy network. You can:
- Interact with users from other instances
- See and participate in communities hosted on other instances
- Keep all your connections even if you decide to move to a different instance
This means if you don’t like how one instance is being managed, you can move to another without losing access to your favorite communities or connections.
How Lemmy Works in Practice
Communities and Usernames
In Lemmy, both communities and usernames include the instance name:
- Communities are shown as
c/CommunityName@instance.org - Usernames appear as
@username@instance.org
For example, a community on our instance might be c/Australia@lemmy.net.au, while a user might be @JaneDoe@lemmy.net.au.
Accessing Content Across Instances
With your lemmy.net.au account, you can:
- Subscribe to communities from any federated instance
- Comment on posts from any federated instance
- Message users from any federated instance
When you find a community hosted elsewhere (like c/Programming@programming.dev), you can interact with it just as if it were hosted here.
Finding Communities
To discover communities:
- Browse popular communities on lemmy.net.au
- Use the search function to find specific topics
- Try the Lemmyverse.net search engine for more comprehensive results
Reddit to Lemmy: Translation Guide
If you’re coming from Reddit, here’s a quick reference to help you understand the terminology:
| Reddit Term | Lemmy Equivalent |
|---|---|
| Subreddit | Community |
| r/example | c/example@instance |
| u/username | @username@instance |
| Karma | Score |
| Moderator | Moderator (same!) |
| Award | Not available (no awards system) |
| Crosspost | No direct equivalent, but you can share links to posts |
| Sorting by “Hot” | Sorting by “Hot” (same!) |
| Sorting by “New” | Sorting by “New” (same!) |
| Reddit Premium | No equivalent (no premium tier) |
Finding Communities
There are several ways to discover communities on Lemmy:
- Browse popular communities on lemmy.net.au
- Use the search function to find specific topics
- Visit lemmyverse.net - This is an excellent search engine specifically designed for Lemmy that allows you to search across all federated instances
Lemmyverse.net is particularly useful because:
- It indexes communities across the entire Lemmy network
- You can search by keywords, topics, or community names
- It shows activity levels and subscriber counts
- It allows you to discover niche communities you might not find otherwise
When you find a community you like on lemmyverse.net, simply copy its full name (including the instance) and search for it on lemmy.net.au to subscribe and participate. You might need to wait a few seconds after you search for the community to show up as the lemmy.net.au instance needs to connect to that instance and pull the information back.
Managing Your Experience
Blocking Content
If you encounter content you don’t want to see:
- You can block individual users
- You can block entire communities
- You can even block entire instances
If you believe a community or instance violates our community standards, please use the reporting function to alert the admin team!
Same Name, Different Communities
Sometimes you’ll find communities with the same name on different instances (like c/News@lemmy.net.au and c/News@another-instance.org). These are separate communities with different moderators and potentially different rules.
This flexibility allows for diverse moderation styles and community cultures to coexist.
Getting Started
- Complete your profile - Add a bio and profile picture
- Find communities - Search for topics that interest you
- Subscribe - Join communities to see their content in your feed
- Participate - Comment, post, and vote to become part of the conversation
Need Help?
If you have questions or need assistance, feel free to comment on this post or message the admins.
Welcome to the fediverse - we’re glad you’re here!
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