NRSK made a small website to introduce new users to the basics of Lemmy and give them an (incomplete) list of Lemmy Communities.
Hopefully this will help users find a lot of interesting content across the network, despite the home instance not federating with a particular community yet.
Such a list was something that was sorely missed when the NRSK administrator first became a user on the lemmyverse, and quite so after creating a new and isolated instance.
As mentioned, it is an unofficial site and if the devs disapprove, I can make the “unofficialness” of it clearer or discuss how we can make it work.
Manually sorting, cataloguing and estimating activity on 283 communities sure was something.
That’s why everybody is welcome to contribute to the list by submitting your own suggestions and corrections in the linked community. As of now the list is curated manually, I assume I’ve made several errors - Particularly when it comes to what “Topic” the different communities belong in.
Yes, you can sort nearly 300 communities by:
- Topic
- Name
- Instance
- Activity
- Recommendation
A lot of it could have been scraped the first time around I assume, but then there’d be no sorting by topic for sure.
You can visit the “Welcome” community by following the post link or visit https://nrsk.no/c/welcome.
I feel like there could be a button to simply sign up to a random instance from a curated list.
The site could essentially offer an easy (default) path that would tell you in the simplest possible terms (preferably with pictures) what Lemmy is 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. It would then offer two buttons, one would take the user immediately to a recommended instance, the other would fork them to the “advanced” path, allowing them to pick an instance with all the bells and whistle options and access more detailed information about federation etc.
“Sign up to a recommended instance (server)” and “learn more first”/“advanced options” buttons, perhaps?
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.
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
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.
That could work.