I migrated over to Lemmy from Reddit, and while I am excited to use a new platform and explore new and continuing communities from Reddit, using this app honestly confuses me. Part of the reason is app design. But I understand that many apps are newer and may be rough around the edges. Nevertheless, here are some things I’m confused about how to even do:
- How do I visit communities of which explicit hyperlinks I know? Sometimes I can find them by typing in search, but why can’t I just go somewhere by typing in like an address bar or something?
- I signed up at the VLemmy instance, but why are there menus everywhere for the lemmy.world instance everywhere that is practically useless to me? Can I make them go away?
- How do I navigate through different communities? When I click a link that I expect to take me to a community my email app pops up instead and I don’t know how to get around. Do I have to type everything into search when I want to navigate to a new community that I’m not subscribed to?
- Is there a way to re-hide NSFW posts once I’ve clicked them to make them visible?
Then there’s some design things I’m legitimately confused about why they’re like that. It’s entirely too cumbersome to reach saved posts. I have to go to my profile, then tap on the bookmark icon on the upper left. I feel like there should be a way to access that easier. There isn’t even an indication about where that is supposed to be so finding out that’s where saved posts are took awhile.
Sorry if it seems I’m too critical about this stuff. Coming over from Reddit does mean being a bit spoiled about this stuff since many Reddit apps have had longer to figure app design out. Still, hopefully some of these things are at least addressable towards making a more user friendly experience in the future.
I find it easier finding communities through the native instance site (yours would be vlemmy.net). I use a PWA from chrome and subscribe to communities that way. Once I have that established, I use the apps (liftoff, jerboa, connect, thunder, wefwef) to browse my subbed communities. If communities you are looking for aren’t already subscribed to by someone from your instance, you may have a hard time finding them; however, you can use the search option from the vlemmy.net site to find them, sub to them, and then anyone on vlemmy.net after that should be able to find it more easily. (Remember, lots of new communities, new instances, new apps, and everything is still a work in progress).
I am unsure of your second question, re: lemmy.world instance. The instance itself is one of the largest ones currently and hosts a ton of communities. That may be the reason why you seem to be directed there. From the vlemmy.net instance, you can subscribe to those communities. If you don’t see the community on vlemmy.net that you are looking for, you can (if the instance allows) start a new one specifically for vlemmy.net. The thing about the fediverse is that, unless blocked, all users from all instances can access and participate in any community in any instance. You may (and will) find multiple communities of the same title/subject on different instances. You can participate/join any or all of those and the content is different depending on user participation.
The best way I found to navigate through communities is either sort by all to see everything available and then choose ones to subscribe to that you have interest in. Once you are tired of seeing all and have enough subbed communities you want to focus on, then switch your view to subscribed and browse that way.
Afaik, the main way to hide the NSFW posts is in your profile/settings, disable NSFW. As far as re-hiding NSFW content, I am unsure as I have not tried.
Don’t give up, there are a ton of helpful threads/users/communities on the fediverse. After a few days of playing around it should become clearer for you. I know it took a week or so for me to learn through trial and error.
Goodluck!