Think of instances (lemmy.world, kbin.social, sh.itjust.works, etc.) like planets. Each planet contains cities (or ~~subreddits~~ communities). Most of these planets are federated meaning that if you were born on one planet (have a login) then you can travel and participate the galaxy of cities and planets. If a planet defederates, then you can no longer travel there if you were not from there.
I think that still confuses people. It may be simpler to relate it to email. You are on one email domain like gmail.com or yahoo.com and can email other servers. Bad servers that are sending spam or hate speech can be blocked.
What is the major difference between something like Lemmy vs Kbin, etc., compared to just two different Lemmy "planets"?
Also, how do other platforms in the fediverse fit into this analogy? Something like Mastodon, would that be considered another galaxy? Is there any travel between these or do they require the birth of a new fedinaut within that galaxy to interact with those worlds?
Mastadon is like a galaxy of federated planets that can speak/travel to Lemmy planets when they want to, but lemmy can't really understand anything they say to each other and can't really travel to their planets (mastadon is 'people' based like twitter, whereas lemmy is 'subject' based like reddit)
I dont know how kbin fits into this analogy. I think it basically is the same as lemmy and can talk/travel to lemmy but also only understands some mastadon
What if they defederate so my visa expires and now I am stuck in the spaceport limbo?
Can you decide to change your "home" planet?
The best you can do right now is recreate it on another planet. Hopefully someday there will be a way to migrate (or a way to export/import).
Sign up for a new account at a different instance. While you can transfer your account to another instance in Mastodon, you can't do it for Lemmy right now.
What is the difference between the All view and the Local view?
If I understand correctly, local only shows your planet and you can participate fully.
All shows the entire galactic federation (though you may only get to sightsee other planets, but not talk to the locals without getting a visa (login credentials for that planet))
Not quite right. All would be the entire galactic federation that allows free entry with your planet, like the countries in the EU. There is no way currently to see the entire galactic federation, and probably never really will be because of the enormous amount of data that would need to be kept on a single instance.
Not quite right. All would be the entire galactic federation that allows free entry with your planet, like the countries in the EU. There is no way currently to see the entire galactic federation, and probably never really will be because of the enormous amount of data that would need to be kept on a single instance.
Local view only shows posts hosted on this instance (planet). So only communities hosted on lemmy.world for example.
All view would include posts from other instances as well.
So should I have accounts on more than one instance? Which instance has the most communities?
No, where did you get that idea? If you want to view as much random content from everywhere as you can just browse by All. If you want a more curated experience, stick to your subscriptions. Local is sort of a weird limbo unless you're on an instance that has a dedicated topic (like the Star Trek instance, for example).
Ok got it.
One interesting thing I found is I have a reddthat.com account and also a lemmy.world account. Using Jerboa, somehow browsing with the reddthat.com account is faster than using the lemmy.world account even if I'm browsing lemmy.world communities.
Yeah as far as I understand it, reddthat will have a local-but-regularly-updated copy of the community and that's what you're seeing when you view it from there. So makes sense that it would load a lot faster. The problem is that with all the strain .world has been under, we had some issues federating new posts and comments out so they weren't actually making it to other servers local copies.
I know this recent upgrade was supposed to help with that part. Lots of growing pains at the moment!
All shows communities on all planets. Local shows only the communities on your planet.
Local shows posts posted on your planet, All shows the entire federation (galaxy).
More effective would just be making the site easier to use for newcomers, particularly tackling the onboarding and community discoverability.
Some straightforward ways I can think of would be apps assigning users randomly to a good general instance (like lemm.ee, vlemmy.net, or lemmy.one) that isn't extremely overloaded when registering
and integrating lemmyverse.net's functionality into lemmy itself, cuz not being able to see a list of all communities and their true member count/activity in Lemmy itself is a huge blow to user experience.
I wouldn't go as far as automatically assigning users to (random) instances, as some people might really want to use the one they've selected for a number of reasons. OTOH, the registration page could offer alternatives ("instead of registering here how about one of these instances, that is currently looking for more users and will have lower loads/latency", etc.). The default could lead people to some other instance, but always with the option to stay where you are. Of course it would only suggest instances that are federated with the one you're trying to join (if the admins removed the others there was a reason for that...) or even having admins fill in a list of "preferred instances" that could have a higher priority in the suggestions list?
They'd of course be able to select instances, I just meant having a random good one selected by default when registering.
By good I mean one that's not too massive, isn't defederating popular instances, and isn't a questionable one that's likely to be defederated itself.
And I don't think they should explain too much, new users are easily scared away.
Indeed. The more frictionless it is, the better! Even giving the impression of some complexity will drive people away.
Make a tiktok dance explaining it, that'll teach the young'uns, at least
Lemmy try
🏅here’s some gold. Get out. 🤣
How exactly is a rainbow made?
How exactly does the sun set?
How exactly does the posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work?
It just does.
already done. My instance has pinned an infographic explaining how it works and many others have done similar things
Link?
I found it but not where i thought it was 
Strange. I cant find it now lol
Excellent plan!... What's an instance? Hit your profile and just see a meme about how men shower?
? I never said I posted it
You mean memes about how to not poop for 3 days?
Personally I found that thinking of Lemmy as a bunch of Discord servers really helped. Both have servers and "channels" inside them. Perhaps "The office" meme of "Corporate wants you to find the difference" would be fitting?
No, don't do that. Discord messed up the definition of a "server", you shouldn't use the platform as an example, it will be confusing pretty quickly.
Hmm, perhaps you're right. When it comes to explaining the fediverse itself, that's definitely a no-go. I figured it's just visually easier to grasp it when thinking of Discord.
wefwef is virtually the same as Apollo. I just needed to export my r/s to c/s and ready.
Edit: corrected the name.
I love wefwef too! I tried a few other apps, but wefwef is closest to what I want in terms of GUI (until Sync for Lemmy releases anyways, Sync is what I used for Reddit before.)
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.