This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
I believe the only way to get Lemmy working with every “refugees” is indeed to run organised instances. I’m thinking of a Circlejerk instance (yeah sorry, first example I had in mind) with all the jerk communities such as r/Watchescirclejerk, r/Carcirclejerk, etc… Could work for countries, car, music communities… I might be wrong though as I’m quite new to all of this.
No idea if you’re into it, but I’m working on running my own organized instance for popheads, think Taylor Swift, Camila Cabello, Lana Del Rey, there are dozens, if not hundreds of subs in that category that I think deserve their own instance. (Even SwiftieCircleJerk, which I love)
If you’re one of them, registrations are open on mine, https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech
Not knocking the original idea, but since this isn’t Reddit, I don’t think we need “circlejerk” communities until the communities here become large enough to have CJ style takes to lampoon. Otherwise they’d all be satirizing Reddit and since this isn’t Reddit, maybe that’s best avoided?
Could probably just be meme communities
Yeah, obviously. My point wasn’t “Damn we need those Circlejerks on Lemmy asap” haha. Just that we might need organised instances, sorted by specific subjects : animals, cars, music, food, etc.
If I were to host an instance, let’s say for music, its communities could be guitar, piano, every instruments, and why not genre : baroque, classic, romantic, etc… So that people would know where to go to talk music.
Having many generic instances with clone subs on each (like memes, technology, politics, whatever) won’t help audience development and instance hosting I guess.
I like that, then you’d have servers that can develop a sort of “style” and users could browse other communities from that server if they enjoyed another one.
Ultimately you’re right that having topics fragmented over multiple instances has natural risks, I think this is also something that will have a natural evolution where some will become the largest ones, others will die down and smaller ones will have to offer a more niche specialty to attract users.
Your server will be secondary to which communities you choose to subscribe to, but I’m sure that they’ll still have nice general chats and whatnot that you can participate in.
We already have tools to navigate existing communities and I’m sure it’ll only get better, then you can have a discovery solution for all servers and natural selection will do the rest.
It would be nice to have a gaming instance, with game specific “subs”, Console and PC gaming subs, Retro gaming and Emulation subs.
I absolutely agree. I’d love hosting/paying for a server but it seems a bit tricky for me atm. I guess a “Lemmy server setup for dummies” would be great !
True, otherwise we can donate to existing servers to help too.