ElectroVagrant

For those switching over from Reddit that are interested in this feature, there isn't a direct substitute for this with Lemmy right away. Instead you have to create a community and set it so only moderators (which will be you) can post, and everyone else can only comment.

The plus side to this approach, despite the initial hurdle, is that you can name the community however you like, give it a distinct icon and banner and so on.

This is a more focused revision of a post I made a few months ago, with an aim to help with discovery across the fediverse.

Searching and Following methods
This will vary across software, and may change as it changes, so take note of when this was written (end of March 2025).

By default, ActivityPub sites don't know of other, remote sites. Any remote site stuff you're seeing is because somehow the site your on was made aware of the other's stuff. Typically this may be that a user learns of a remote site's stuff in some way and decides to follow from their home site by looking it up via their site's search then subscribing/following.

All of the above format-specific links I've provided above are means of finding some remote sites' stuff to follow on one's home site. Below are some additional tools and methods to further help when using some of these different sites.

If you're aware of other resources, tools, or methods that I've not mentioned here, please mention them in the comments! There's undoubtedly more to add that I've not come across.

Was looking around for different writing communities and found this one. The idea's simple, start a post with one sentence, then others build on it in the comments one sentence at a time. It's a fun community idea in my opinion, just needs more participants!

!justonesentence@lemmy.world

Rolypolies are wise

Almost forgot, template for Wizard Pondering Rolypoly:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27118561

Title's unmodified from original.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:27 - History of Clonk
• 01:26 - Basic Gameplay Loop
• 02:51 - Scenarios
• 04:08 - Multiplayer
• 05:07 - Mods
• 06:27 - Music
• 07:51 - Outro
  

Download links:

• Clonk 1-4 + Clonk Planet
• Clonk Rage + Clonk Endeavour
• CCAN (Clonk mod archive)

Still maintained, open source version:

• Open Clonk

Typing into a little box and quietly erasing it all just doesn't scratch that same itch, y'know?

Although ActivityPub does a lot to help share content across federated sites, it goes without saying it doesn't always go smoothly for a variety of reasons. Different post formatting, different overall focus and structure of other software, and so on.

With that in mind, it's as important to create different local accounts both on the same software (at times) and on other software to help polish up the content sharing.

As an immediately obvious example in the case of Lemmy: creating other accounts to help moderate a remote community due to issues of cross-site moderation.

However, it can go beyond that. Due to the minimal algorithmic design of a lot of federated software, many across these sites may not even be aware of some of the others. Some using Mastodon or a *key variant may have no idea of Lemmy, Mbin, or Piefed and vice versa, so may still be using corporate alternatives.

This means that it may also be beneficial for those trying to grow these respective communities to create accounts on Mastodon, *key, etc. sites and share links from Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed there, or vice versa. It's by no means ideal, but it's the reality of the situation at the moment.

Speaking of multiple accounts, it's important to try to correct misconceptions of only needing one account for this very reason.

For the moment, if you want to participate on federated forums, it's better to make an account on whichever site software supports it (like Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed), largely the same with federated microblogs (like Akkoma/*key/Mastodon), and so on.

Ultimately despite some of the inconveniences, taking this approach may at least be less of an uphill battle than navigating the increasingly closed corporate networks trying to keep people trapped there. Across the federated sites one may find more receptive audiences to checking out other open social networks that they may have completely overlooked.

Alongside the various !city/province/state communities I know some have been working to get going, and given the trend of posts lately, I came across a few broader focus communities for civilian activity that may be worth a look.

!organize@lemmy.world
!movement@lemmy.world
!protest@lemmy.world

Another more recent community that brought this to mind was for local organizing:
!act_local@lemm.ee

Whether one wants to contribute to the first few or use them as a model to make their own communities elsewhere is neither here nor there to me, but I think the basic ideas may be solid. Having distributed communities for sharing organizing resources and helping direct people to existing groups to join and coordinate with would be of great use.

For those of us here for awhile, there's a good chance we've adjusted our settings and built up blocklists that distance us from new people's experience of these sites, so we gotta remember and work the Defaults.

One example of this is the sorting method. Most Lemmy instances stay with the default Active sort, which means the posts that many are seeing are those being voted on a bunch and receiving comments.

What this means for those trying to build communities is partly what one may already have thought of, make posts that inspire discussion, but another part that one may fumble, which is to reply to whatever comments that may appear.

This may be a little part to why some communities struggle to get others involved. Posts may be getting upvoted, but without any comments they may not be as widely seen or gain as much traction as they otherwise could with the way Active sort works.

Interestingly Mbin and Piefed appear to default to Hot for their sorting method, which if it's like Lemmy's Hot sort, may be a little more helpful in surfacing some communities' posts.

That's just one example though, what other Default details do you try to keep in mind as you try to get communities going?