List of popular communities you should visit!

simple@lemmy.world to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 891 points –

As Lemmy starts maturing, there starts being so many communities out there that it's pretty hard to keep track. I've been browsing for about a month now, here's a list of popular communities I've subscribed to that others would find interesting!

Not many of these were noticeable while browsing communities so you may have missed some of these. I've roughly ranked these based on which I'd spend the most time on in each category.

Also note that I would add Kbin communities as well, but federation between Lemmy and Kbin is still not working well, so right now this post is for Lemmy communities only!

General Discussion

Humor & Memes

Technology

Pictures & Videos

Movies & TV

Video Games

And that's it. Whew. Obviously I might have missed some, but these are the most interesting communities for me.

Interested in finding more communities? Check out !newcommunities@lemmy.world to see people showing off their new communities.

Edit: Removed spaces from links, added xbox to games section

Edit 2: android community moved to android@lemdro.id, updated link

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List of unpopular communities you should visit:

I'm so alone 😭

Sadly the r/dota2 community doesnt seem to have migrated that much. Which is a shame because everyone from pro players to valve use it as an official means to communicate.

From the way the mods of that subreddit behaved, it was pretty clear that they didn't care at all about the protests. They made a poll and ignored the like 60% that wanted the protest to continue.

People posted saying they'd support the protest, so the mods locked down. Then they made a poll and the comments were almost exclusively against while the votes were split, so calls of manipulation and astroturfing were rampant because people couldn't actually believe there were people in favor of the protest.

I would agree that they didn't care either way, and tried going with the flow. The mods basically acted, ah... What's the word... Something like "pussy-whipped" but with Reddit users as the instigator? The "comments" made demands and they acquiesced every time then acted confused that there was no consistency with those comments and lots of anger then aimed at them. Which honestly, probably matches up with what they do day-to-day. I appreciate the esports match discussion and summary threads, but overall, the actual acts of moderation is extremely hands off and lenient towards things like xenophobia and whatnot. I wonder what actually happens in that subreddit's mod queue and if half those people are even around. Outside of 3 people, their presence has taken a nosedive since the days ReaverXai was around.

It was not the time to be so hands-off. It was not the time to tell people "oh just go on the pepe-emoji infested discord that not even us ourselves have used in 7 years, it'll be fine". It was the time to take a stance one way or another, the time to investigate alternatives and list them on the frontpage. The time to restrict the sub and filter comments from newer acoounts, or the time to stay open and declare you don't think the cause will work. Something. Anything.

Yeah idk, there is of course a nice sentiment to do what the community wants, but it really looked like the mods had no opinion at all.

I really wonder what kind of mindset is behind there. I have multiple theories but nothing definite.

btw the spaces in the links provided by OP effectively break the links if you're not based on the community's home server. Would be really great to get this updated.

Was gonna say this. Glad I wasn't the only one encountering this issue with the links.

I think it's an app issue, not dependent on which instance you're on. I'm on world and clicked through to a couple shit just works links just fine. I'm using Liftoff on Android.

Clicking the links is working for me now.

That's because they're on your home instance. They don't work for me because those communities don't exist on my home instance.

If I click on the links on jerboa it crashed. But it works fine with connect for lemmy

Could you remove the spaces for people who aren't browsing from .world?

Can anyone help me how to subscribe to these communities? Thank you

If you're logged in on the website, those links should "just work" and the subscribe button is in the sidebar. Mobile website also works really well although you have to expand the sidebar to see the button.

If you're using one of the many different mobile apps you'll have to let us know which one because they all seem to work completely differently at the moment!

Edit: Just realised you're on Kbin and it looks like Kbin is stripping the link formatting out of the post for some weird reason, that's why you can't click them 🤦‍♀️

These are links with an "!" at the beginning. You should be able to copy and paste that into the search bar on your instance to search for it. The "!" will force your instance to search for it in other instances I'd no other users in your community have subscribed. If you click the link from your search results, you'll access the community from your instance and then you'll be able to subscribe in the sidebar.

If for whatever reason the subscribe button is not working, and you click the button to create a post and just return to the previous page. It's a known bug that depends on the version number of the instance.

You're on a kbin instance, and it is the main one so most of them are probably already there. If any of them is not, just click the search button at the top of the screen and enter the name you see above without the ! and without the space before the @. e.g. "technology@lemmy.world", your instance will then look it up and subscribe you to it if found.

It might take a while for threads to begin to appear if it wasn't already there though.

Works exactly like Reddit. Open the community of interest and press the subscribe button lol

I would add the following:

!BestOf @kbin.social
!newcommunities @lemmy.world
!truegaming @kbin.social
!fediverse @kbin.social
!askkbin @kbin.social
!RedditMigration @kbin.social

These are pretty good, but I decided not to add kbin communities to the post for now. Kbin still has issues with federation so posts and comments coming from there often end up missing on Lemmy and vice-versa. Hopefully things will get fixed soon enough, and when they do I'll check out all the kbin communities I've been missing out on.

I can't claim to understand this tech yet, but I feel like so many of these communities being on the same instance isn't the way it's supposed to be.

As long it's not a single one, we need 3 big main instances to reach critical mass.

Btw I made this userscript (Lemmy post) for anyone who's as annoyed of links not going to their home instance as I was! It rewrites all links on all websites to always point to your home instance.

Have you successfully subscribed to any lemmy.ml communities or moviesandtv@lemmy.film? Mine still show as pending after a couple of weeks

Pending is the same as subscribed, at least functionally. You'll still get the posts in your subscribed feed. I think it's just a visual thing.

I'm getting the same. It's all pending.

Thanks!

Can anyone let me know if there is a way to book mark a post? Am using the connect app. Thanks!

To save a post, you need to tap the bookmark icon next to the downvote arrow. Comments can also be saved by swiping them to the left until you see the bookmark icon.

To view your saved posts, open the navigation drawer (hamburger menu) on Connect and tap on Saved, which is just below Profile.

Thanks, right there in front of my face the whole time!

I am using "connect for lemmy" app. Can someone please explain how to join communities? Just signed up and very confused.

When you open communities you can use the three dot menu in the top right to subscribe to them

Hey thanks!

I've used connect for a while now and while I'm pretty happy with it for browsing, I'm not in love with how difficult it is to join communities. Especially when you want to join a bunch of communities if your account is new.

I found it way easier to join a bunch of communities in Chrome (which is made a lot easier on the actual lemmy website) and then coming back to connect to browse.

It's less of an issue if you just wanna join the odd community, but if you are looking to add a bunch I wouldn't bother trying to do so through connect.

Connect is suuuuuper unstable for me at the moment, but I find it way easier to navigate than Jerboa. As someone said, you can use the three dots at the top right to subscribe.

Instances can be super confusing, but as Lemmy grows, it'll be simpler to figure things out 😊. Don't worry, it's a learning curve for all of us!

Definitely a learning curve. At least sort of figured out finally how to join communities. What's sort of confusing for me now is communities with same names but different instances (is that the right word?). Then I have check back to see whether I have joined it or is it a different one. This part is super confusing for me at present because I came across many such instances.

Could that be due to your instance and not the app? Connect has been working well for me with only a few random errors that don't affect much. Yesterday it wasn't loading my lemmy.world account because the instance servers were struggling.

My addition to this would be !lemmyapps@lemmy.world, for a good list of apps you can try out. Note that while it says apps, this also covers browser extensions and PC web apps.

...also note I have never linked before, so I have no idea how that is going to turn out.

Thank you so much for this list! Super helpful.

I still don't understand how to subscribe to groups that aren't on my instance. I sometimes was able to get it to work on my PC but it's impossible on mobile. This platform needs a lot of work.

So I'm on Kbin.social right now. Let's say I wanna view our gaming community. like how Reddit has:

Reddit.com/r/Subredditname

I would go to:

kbin.social/m/magazinename

You on lemmy.world would go to:

lemmy.world/c/communityname

Super simple so far I hope lol.

Now whichever one is applicable to you (and if you're on other instances, sub in the url where appropriate.

Let's say I on kbin wanna see your gaming community. If I did kbin.social/m/gaming, I would get mine. The url though can act like how an email address does, by adding a domain to the end of it. So if I did kbin.social/m/gaming@lemmy.world, I'll see your gaming community. Same if you do lemmy.world/c/gaming you see yours, but lemmy.world/c/gaming@kbin.social you should see ours.

If I got those URL's right that is lol

This was helpful, and I understand it now, thanks! It's just SO clunky though to have to use a different URL to get to the same place depending on what instance you're a member of. I don't understand what the benefit of all this added complication is. I feel like good programming should make it so that when I type !community@whatever.yay, whatever instance I'm in should just automatically link me to their version of the URL. Like kbin should know that that needs to go to kbin.social/m/community@whatever.yay without me having to change anything.

And in the meantime... we're going to have different communities for each instance because of how confusing this all is. Who decided that !memes@lemmy.ml was going to be the default memes community? Won't there be other communities that pop up at !memes@kbin.social and !memes@lemmy.world etc? It seems like chaos to me. How do I know which one is the right one?

You aren't alone. I'm still trying to figure it out, too. First step was to settle on my go-to instance, which just today I've decided will be kbin.

It seems to be harder to subscribe to Lemmy communities from kbin.

I picked kbin too. It seems like the most complete platform, and is more easy to navigate than lemmy... but that's kind of a low bar. I'm still very lost.

Ironically, the trouble you're having with subscribing is because you're on Kbin. On Lemmy you can just click the links in the post

Ok - I just figured it out but it was not intuitive. This is for kbin.social. Unsure of the differences to Lemmy.

You have to go to search, then click magazines. This link should take you right there:

https://kbin.social/magazines

Then search for what you want eg newcommunities.

That should show local communities as well as ones that are federated.

It wasn’t apparent on mobile but apparently there’s a subscribe button on the search results on the right side.

If you click on the community you can still subscribe but clicking the side bar on the left. There’s a subscribe button if you scroll down a bit.

On PC, if you are browsing any magazine (local or not) you can clearly see the subscribe(and block) button on the right. I usually go to the magazine of interest when I read interesting post.

On mobile you can click the menu button in the upper left corner to get to the thread and magazine info of your current page to follow that thread or subscribe to the magazine it was posted to. It's quicker than scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page.

I can just go to the search tab and look for the magazine (e.g. Search for retro gaming) and find an the other instances.
I think s fair number of people forget to switch the search to magazines before looking (or are actually subscribing to other instances but don't notice it)

It seems to be harder to subscribe to Lemmy communities from kbin.

I posted an answer above to the same question.

In case you cannot see it:

You're on a kbin instance, and it is the main one so most of them are probably already there. If any of them is not, just click the search button at the top of the screen and enter the name you see above without the ! and without the space before the @. e.g. "technology@lemmy.world", your instance will then look it up and subscribe you to it if found.

It might take a while for threads to begin to appear if it wasn't already there though.

What do you mean? Simply open the community and subscribe?

The user you're responding to is on Kbin, which is stripping the links out of this post for some reason. They literally can't click through, that's why people are confused.

And the communities in the list aren’t clickable. Pretty low hanging fruit for reducing friction. (Like, the platform should automatically link them, not that OP should have.)

I 100% agree. I should just be able to click a link to go to a community, and then there should be a simple way to subscribe when I get there. Like... that functionality may not be "basic" to program, but it is a basic necessity for ease of use and growth...

I'm on kbin.

What happens if I just type

!NoStupidQuestions@lemmy.world

It gives a 404

How about if I change the ! to a @

@NoStupidQuestions

(I wrote the whole address but it gets converted to the link you see above,which works but you have to scroll ⅔ of the way down to find subscribe.)

....

What if I create a URL using the kbin link thing above the text box

Link

This seems to work. Edit: no it doesn't. I just linked back to this post somehow. Try again with a different notation...

Link

Nope.

Now to try this comment on Lemmy...

Fyi this is exactly how it works on Lemmy's side, and tbh it's usually how links work when they get pulled through to Kbin too, but something about this post has given Kbin an issue and it's stripped out the clickable links which is why it's super confusing for you lot over there!

The communities in the list are all clickable from Lemmy. You're just from kbin and that site doesn't have that.

This was extremely helpful. Perhaps this can be posted up for new users looking for “default” communities

I've been sitting at "pending" for a couple days on some of them. Maybe there's just one or two mods that approve adds a couple times a week?

Nah the pending thing is a known issue. It's essentially a visual bug and you are subscribed and will see those communities in your feed, but the UI doesn't update for whatever reason. Seen some reports that you can fix it by repeatedly unsubbing and trying again, but it shouldn't affect the actual functioning.

(fun fact there is no such thing as "approving" community members even though that's what this totally looks like it is!)

Took me a while to get through this but I loved it!

This is great! Thank you! I’ve been struggling with finding new communities, so this is super helpful.

Thank you. Need more of this. I've been searching for something like this for a while.

This is a great list! If possible I would have this stickied for more visibility

Why the duplicate communities? My understanding was it shouldn't matter where I subscribe to "games" the posts should be the same.

The posts are different on each server. They are effectively separate communities with separate names, counting the server as part of its name.

There are different communities. You can subscribe any of them from any instance, but they are not the same.

Like john@gmail.com and john@outlook.com are different emails, and you can mail any of them using your email provider.

Which is stupid imho. I don't want to sub to 10 different /c/movies or even 2 different /c/nba. Mark my words you're going to see a consolidation here if this takes off and you're going to lose the federation appeal that people want (I couldn't care less just want a Reddit alternative). Already I've unsubbed from communities to simply sub to the biggest one.

Let's also ignore there's an open issue from 2 years ago because no one apparently thought or cared of the scenario that some of us actually like a unified identity online and yet you can't port your account across the fediverse.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985

Not sure about "stupid", but agree - most probably we will see consolidation in the future. This is rather usual scenario in general.

If it is so important for you to be so much outraged, I guess it is time for you to either learn to code and open a PR, or to pay someone to do it for you!

I know how to code don't have the time. It's potential I may look into it. Doesn't change the fact that it's two glaring issues that weren't thought through and there's many more that have been brought up.

So you know the reason those issues are still opened. There are only 2 paid developers for the whole thing, backend, front end, Android app... Everyone else, as you, don't have time. We need to accept it and live with it

You know I'm on this platform too? It's completely acceptable to be critical and bring up those flaws without a need to make excuses. I understand there may be mitigating reasons that doesn't make it more ok. Also, it is not "up to me alone" to fix these issues.

I am simply highlighting glaring concerns and I encourage everyone else to also do so. The alternative is to do as you say and "just accept it" which quite frankly is a shit way to live life.

I get that you're angry the new thing doesn't work exactly the same as the thing you were used to. But take a deep breath, and remember they are in fact different things with their own pros and cons. Everything's changing at a rapid rate. Some features you want will make it in, some features you want probably won't, but there are ways to respectfully make and contribute to feature requests and have some small part in guiding the project in the direction you'd like to see.

I find it helps to think the name of a community includes the originating server name