Since I joined joined Lemmy, I signed up for two instances (Lemmy.World and Lemmy.Zip) because I didn’t entirely understand the fediverse and also because it seemed useful to be on multiple instances, since Lemmy.World sometimes has outages.
Anyhow, coming from Reddit I started to look for communities I care about and I tried to join them. It’s been two months now and there are some communities where I clicked on “join” and I still appear as “pending”. Of course, they need to chose to approve me, but I’m wondering what I must do to prove worthy.
Moreover, I learned about communities I might want to join and I cannot find them from the two instances I signed up for. More precisely, I wanted to join some communities on feddit.it and I cannot find them from the search bar in Jerboa, while I can see them from Connect for Lemmy but I can only browse them as guest. Is that because they’re not federated with the two communities I signed up for?
I suppose in that case I need to try to make an account directly in such instances
Thank you for any insight you might have!
UPDATE: regarding the first question, as several people pointed out below, I still appear as pending, but these communities now appear as those I am subscribed to in my apps (this is some sort of standard glitch in Lemmy and it’s OK).
Regarding the second question, I’ve been to feddit.it on my browser and looked for communities I like and then I searched for them in apps with a better search function, such as Liftoff.
While I know everyone is going gangbusters about Sync for Lemmy, I still haven’t found an app I like the best, but found each app is doing something slightly better than others, so I need to get more used to the fact that (at least for now), I need to access Lemmy through multiple apps (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
Thank you everyone for your help!
I know the forever pending is some sort of glitch. It still subscribes you and those communities show up in your frontpage, for me they do anyway. It still is mildly annoying.
so you say that, forever pending is much preferable than forever alone?
I want to understand this also
What solved the pending for me is to just un-join and then join again and it should fix it.
That is what I’ve done and it has always worked. So far.
I tried doing that. On Connect it does nothing, on Jerboa it keeps switching between “subscribe” and “pending”
I have been able to pull up communities in the search by finding them on their native server, finding a post name and then searching for that post on my server. Clunky work around but you only have to do it once. Part of the fun of a service that is still in development.
I’m not going to stop using Lemmy because of this. I agree it’s part of the fun, but I want to join more communities if I can, so it feels more and more like the large garden of subreddits I used to have (and will feel less and less compelled to still open Reddit once in a while) 😄
If the communities are on instances with Lemmy 0.17.x and older, the join function doesn’t work properly. You have already joined (and will see updates in your feed) and can interact with it.
Joining really doesn’t mean “ask for approval”, it means “subscribing to their feed”. There are no private communities and commenting restrictions.
Another issue could be that the instance was offline while you tried to subscribe, which leads to a missing ping back, but again you are subscribed regardless.
Joining communities sucks in many apps. Sync does a great job here; but if indeed the instances are not federated with the ones you are using in the first place, that will lead to issues.
One of the reasons why I created a backup account with infosec.pub, which is federated with just about anyone.
This is good to know on many levels. I don’t know of many instances (mainly learned their names when migrating from Reddit), so I just signed up for these two.
How do I find out if an instance is on an older version of Lemmy (like 0.17)?
How do I find out if an instance is on an older version of Lemmy (like 0.17)?
If you open the instance in your browser, the version is displayed in the footer on the very bottom. Alternatively you can also go to https://lemmy.world/instances, and they show the version number of every instance in the second column.
Gotcha, thanks! It looks like lots of instances are updated now.
I managed to find the “missing” communities using a different app (Liftoff in my case)
I’m not sure how fast Lemmy is growing, but it seems to be evolving at a faster pace (and most instances are keeping up to date)
When the subscription is pending, this means your instance knows you’re subbed, but the home instance of that community does not. Basically it’s a federation communication error.
As long as your server already has one successfully subbed user for that community, posts will get delivered to your instance from that other, and then to you, by your instance, because even if that other instance doesn’t know you’re subbed, yours does.
Basically the only real drawback is that the remote instance will show one less in the subcount.
So it doesn’t appear in my feed, but I can send messages to such communities?
No.
I does appear in your feed, and you can post and comment on such communities.
The only thing it means, is that the subscription didn’t make it the home instance of the sub. Your instance will still forward all the content from that sub to your feed, as long as at least one person on your instance is successfully subbed (not pending). As long as there’s one valid sub, the community gets synced over, and then your instance can handle the rest even if the home instance of the community doesn’t know you are subbed.
Ah, OK. Thanks!!!
Moreover, I learned about communities I might want to join and cannot find them from the two instances I signed up for. More precisely, I wanted to j on n communities on freddit.it and i cannot find them search bar in Jerboa, while I can see them from Connect for Lemmy but I can only browse them as guest. Is that because they’re not federated with the two communities I signed up for?
I’m on lemmy.zip and know for a fact that currently the only place we are defederated from on a voluntary basis, currently, is threads. Part of your comment with the apps sounds like that might be an app problem. Have you tried searching and connecting from a web browser?
I haven’t. I’ll try it later today from my laptop. It’s weird since I’m now so used to use apps to browse Lemmy (and Reddit)
For me, even though it still says pending, I see those communities in my Subscribed feed. So just a visual/status bug.
For accessing the communities, some apps might not have the functionality yet to search other instances from your home instance. You might try using the default web app search, since I know that works to subscribe to communities in other instances.
I need to try with a web browser. I prefer to do it from my laptop though (on cell phone I’m too used to use an app)
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