New Lemmy user here...What terminology should I know?

Samuel Block@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 95 points –

I know the obvious things like federation and fediverse, but do we say upvote/downvote, updoot, karma? I hate to bring up the software that must not be named, but I don’t know what else to call things.

61

  • Community - the equivalent of a subreddit. Some people shorten it to "comm".
  • Instance or server - a site using Lemmy or Mbin or PieFed, with multiple communities in it. For example lemmy.world and mander.xyz are instances.
  • Upvote, downvote - the same as in Reddit.
  • karma - it would be the same as in Reddit, except that the main software (Lemmy) doesn't have it.
  • Lemming - a Lemmy user
  • Defed - often used as a verb. Because "defederate" is too long.

Who tf says lemming

I haven't seen lemming in like a year when reddit users (including me) were moving over and some people apparently needed a replacement for redditor.

I don't remember ever seeing defed in place of defederate or comm in place of community, but maybe I just missed out on that.

I don't, but I've seen plenty people saying it. Just like "defed", Snooggums didn't see it but I did.

People need buzzwords to feel like they belong to a group. We are just a bunch of nerds who already know that. It's a free spirit community as long as you behave like a human. You can try to establish some new terminology, but don't come up with the old reddit stuff, people will make fun of you.

I proposed we say cheers or just 🍻 instead of cake day for activitypub- i like to think of everyone just popping into a pub and chatting about stuff.

You subscribe to communities, which are hosted on different servers. Upvotes and downvotes are what they are. AFAIK there is no karma counting here.

Some apps/front ends/instances track upvote/downvote totals. Haven't run into any automated filters based on total karma yet, though.

Also worth mentioning that instance admins and some moderators can see specific users' upvotes and downvotes.

There's also a public mod log where instances display their moderator actions taken against whom for what reasons. Doesn't quite stop moderator abuse but it makes it public.

Any kbin user can see everyone who upvoted something. They used to be able to see all of the downvotes as well, but that was disabled with most kbin instances...

As far as I know, all you need to do is find a kbin instance that allows their users to see both upvotes and downvotes (or set up an instance yourself).

It's best to treat your votes here as public if you're coming from Reddit where you normally expect this to be hidden.

Lemmy once computed a total score internally, but this was removed in the later versions. There is no such thing as overall user karma or score unless an admin or other software decides to try to compute one. The platform itself doesn’t care.

Except some instances like hexbear have downvoting disabled, which tends to encourage people to comment more.

Not really terminology, but I would recommend trying to engage in good faith when discussing more complex issues on Lemmy. Keep your eyes peeled for trolls who are not open minded and block them once they show they're unreceptive to civil discussion. Since the userbase is rather small, it works extremely well and makes your experience so much better.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I actually read something about this today! Funny.

I'd like to add to their comment. A lot of people are coming from very argumentative or abrasive communities, and sometimes their initial messaging will show that. If someone comes off way too hot headed try not to assume that they're going to end up being a troll. They might just be riled up. I've had pretty good success in asking clarifying questions to get people to explain their view rather than just come in swinging.

Or honestly, just block them and save yourself the pain of dealing with them in the future the next time they're riled up.

I don't hold it against them but why listen to the noise if you can just get signal?

Check this out: https://sopuli.xyz/comment/12454364

What is not mentioned is, deleting anything does not mean it will be deleted everywhere. Hundreds of other instances receive your content and who knows whether the delete action will be correctly federated, processed or accepted. Check twice before submitting.

On the topic, if you send a comment just assume it went through even if an app tries to pretend it didn't. There are a lot of double comments from this fake error

That pretty much is the app's fault. I encountered that with some third party apps. Jerboa has never done that.

most everything you do in the fediverse is very public. upvotes and sometimes downvotes can be attributed to you personally. luckily that includes the moderation logs.

lemmy is only one of many fediverse server types. there are many: https://fedidb.org/ im partial to mbin because it looks more like that other place, and exposes more information like a reputation value (karma) and downvotes

Smuderly

Klambdot

Glumpont

Pelquant

Pelquänt

Jurelstzhhhgg

And most important: Smuderlie

Karma exists but unless I'm off we don't seem to really mention it ever. Theres up and downvotes but I just like them as a way of letting me know how far out my ideas or comments are without taking it personally. It improves your thinking and advocacy skills so its cool

For things such as how to make a proper link that does not take people away from their instance, see !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca.

That's super old info. That was fixed in like the first update after the exodus.

You've been able to just write the name in !community@instan.ce format and it will work ever since.

And doing so is better because there're a bunch of cases where using a hyperlink won't work.

I've had situations where that doesn't work for me, or like where I will start typing and it won't expand quite properly - e.g. typing !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca expands not to !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca but like to !newtolemmy!newtolemmy@lemmy.ca. The latter repeatedly happened to me on a desktop Chrome. Also if you user-block an instance, then the name expansion process no longer works.

There are actually two types of expansions - one done after you post, another while you are still writing. Neither of which I have ever seen written up in any guide anywhere, other than release notes from as you say like a year ago. Similarly I have not seen guides to cross-posting, in e.g. the Getting started guide.

Edit: oh, and this is the first I am hearing that the former expanded links won't work - do you know when that happens? Maybe apps, or perhaps non-Lemmy Fediverse Mbin or PieFed? This is the first I am hearing of this iirc.

Finding out how things work on Lemmy, for those of us who do not use Arch btw, is a terrible process for new users. I was thinking, it sure would be nice if there was not just a single post here and there such as Lemmy.ml's What is Lemmy.ml (that is the exact link that appears in their sidebar though), but an entire community somewhere where such guidance could be posted. If not this one, then somewhere else - but this is the only one like that that I have seen.

Edit: if you know more about when links won't work, perhaps you can post the thought in that community?

Expanded?

No. You literally just type the name of the community. Plaintext. No extra steps of any kind.

Look at that first community mention you wrote, it turned into a link.

Both the webUI and basically every client will then make it clickable in a suitable way for each user on whatever instance. The post itself is still just plaintext, the lemmy server doesn't change anything to add a link, the clients do.

If you use a hyperlink, or let the webUI autocomplete it into a hyperlink (which is what I think you mean by, "expanding" it), it wont be a relative link anymore. It's then a "normal" markdown hyperlink. Which technically wont work right as-is unless you edit it to be relative, which breaks in other situations.

Using relative markdown links was always a stopgap, and is no longer necessary.

But then absolute links are being fixed, as many clients will now open absolute links, as if they were relative.

Except then you have to know the proper community name, which can often look very different from what is displayed. e.g. !world@lemmy.world is an entirely different community than !worldnews@lemmy.world, and damn, that example did not work bc both end up as "valid" links. Well, theoretically sometimes the feedback on having gotten the name correct could be helpful I suppose.

Also I note that what you are saying can seem in contradiction with the help docs. If you start a post or reply and click the help icon in the web UI, it will go to https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/02-media.html, which does not mention the word "community" at all, but does show link syntax. I am more inclined to believe you than the help docs! Especially when we can see the resulting behavior in front of our very eyes - except where it may pertain to other methods of access - but I am pointing out here again that for a new user, finding out such things is currently a terrible process! Even Arch Linux has at the very least man pages, as well as the wikis!

But I've been on the Fediverse since the Rexodus, and since I don't use apps other than the webpage UI (I tried Voyager but while it looks nice, it doesn't seem to function well, maybe that pertains to accounts on instances other than Lemmy.world such as mine - e.g. I would reply to someone but no amount of refreshing or clicking around would let me see my reply until I force-quit and restarted the app), Mbin, PieFed or Sublinks (or Tesseract), I don't know myself what the "preferred" method of linking is. I just see what works (or not) for me. And again the help docs are of no help here.

So since you are saying that this 11-month old post is outdated, if you know the details of what would be better practice, perhaps you can write a newer post explaining that?

The webUIs feature to autocomplete links pre-dates the new way of doing it.

It has not been removed, or changed to autocomplete to plaintext for some reason.

No other client does it, afaik.

Everything is enshittification. And you better like GNU/Linux, or else...

Docking Sounding Ligma

Sounds like fun.

Joking aside, if you want to list items vertically without having to input a line break twice, insert three spaces before the line break:

Docking
Sounding
Ligma

Nazi: When somebody on lemmy says this, they aren't talking about literal jackboot historical underlings of Adolf Hitler, but instead referring to anyone who isn't firmly on the progressive side of the political aisle.

Tankie: I'm still trying to figure this one out. Apparently it's not referring to tank roles in online games. It supposed to be insulting, despite sounding very laudatory.

Centrist: better than you because choosing is a sin.

Which is why all religious zealots are the best, right?

Oh, wait, zealotry is only evil when it disagrees with your worldview, i forgot.