Why can't I find federated communities on lemmy.one?

3 years ago by Bricriu to c/chat

One of the things that has been frustrating me most deeply when trying to move to Lemmy, especially as the exodus from Reddit really picks up steam, is finding new communities as they set up shop. Most of them appear to be landing on lemmy.ml, which has adopted more of an open-door policy for community creation. That's fine, I'm not asking lemmy.one to necessarily do the same. I picked this instance to take some pressure off the really big ones.

But the process is maddening.

I search for (e.g.) the string "no man" in my lemmy.one Communities page under "All". No results.
Someone mentions a cross-federation search at lemme.de. Why isn't this everywhere?
I search there for "no man" and two communities pop, one at lemme.ml and one at lemmy.world. There are no subscribe links.
The lemmy.ml one looks popular, so I copy the full URL and put it in my lemmy.one search. No results, and no "no results" message.
OK, so I visit https://lemmy.ml/c/nomanssky directly and click "Sidebar". Nothing happens. There appears to be a Javascript error preventing anything from working (including the hamburger menu). Is this because I'm a lemmy.one user?
Start from lemmy.ml, and search their Communities for "no man", find the community, click through, click Sidebar. I get a magic string, !nomanssky@lemmy.ml.
Back on lemmy.one, search for !nomanssky@lemmy.ml. NO RESULTS.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! What is going on here?? Is lemmy.one blocking these instances? Can't be, I see lemmy.ml stuff all over. Starting to wonder if I just made the wrong choice and should go join the cool kids on a "big" instance.

unfazedbeaver 9 points 3 years ago

I have run into similar issues. I am assuming Lemmy is... Struggling with load right now

path: 0 62978, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0

erik 8 points 3 years ago

If you know the name of the community, I found success going through the address bar in your browswer, as opposed to search.

For example: lemmy.one/c/whatever@whatever.instance

path: 0 52378, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 5

Bricriu 3 points 3 years ago

Right, I did that -- steps 5, 6, and 7.

path: 0 52378 52988, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 4

CmdrShepard 5 points 3 years ago

In the lemmy.one search, try putting your search in the format of !videos@lemmy.ml and you should be able to find them. Essentiallyust separate the community name and the domain with the @ and have the ! at the beginning. This should work but you may need to give the search 10-15 seconds of additional time to find the community. I noticed that it would give me "No Results" but then the community would pop up a few seconds later. After this click on the community > sidebar > subscribe

path: 0 52378 52988 76678, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 2

Bricriu 1 point 3 years ago

So I also tried that, step 7, and I still don't get any results, days later.

path: 0 52378 52988 76678 93556, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1

CmdrShepard 1 point 3 years ago

I must have missed that in your OP. It could be server issues due to the increased traffic but other than that I dunno since I'm new here myself.

path: 0 52378 52988 76678 93556 136024, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

erik 1 point 3 years ago

I need to work on my reading comprehension :)

path: 0 52378 52988 53786, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

tezoatlipoca 7 points 3 years ago

You're not alone. I find the intra-Lemmy-instance searching to be... "sticky". sometimes it works as advertised and sometimes it doesn't. As I also just joined Lemmy, I can't say if this is a recent thing or its always been like this.

I would probably chalk the current issues with the massive influx of Redxiles just absolutely hammering lemmy.ml and the few largest instances. Keep at it, I find if you bash at your instance's search page enough eventually it might connect.

In the meantime, I compiled a bruteforce list of communities from the dozen or so largest Lemmy instances, and created !lemmy411@lemmy.ca and !wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca. See the Community listing here: https://lemmy.ca/post/612259

path: 0 48853, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 2

Bricriu 4 points 3 years ago

"Be the change you want to see in the world," indeed!

path: 0 48853 49007, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

GuyDudeman 3 points 3 years ago

Thanks!

path: 0 48853 80411, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

Kurt 5 points 3 years ago

The way I do it is I search on https://browse.feddit.de/ and then if I find a community I like I copy and paste the URL for it into the search field at my instance.

path: 0 65697, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0

moonleay 3 points 3 years ago

Maybe your instance is not aware of the community, which you are looking for. Try copying the direct link to the community in question into the search of your local instance and try searching.

path: 0 48583, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 3

Bricriu 2 points 3 years ago

I did that -- it's the 4th or 6th step I noted in the post. Full URL into search = nothing, not even a "no results" message.

path: 0 48583 48610, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 2

moonleay 2 points 3 years ago

hm, wired. It worked when I searched for the community on your lemmy instance.

path: 0 48583 48610 48658, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1

Bricriu 1 point 3 years ago

That is bizarre. I'm trying from my phone, both normal and Desktop Mode, but maybe I'll try from an actual computer.

path: 0 48583 48610 48658 48691, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

hydra 3 points 3 years ago

Can confirm, I can't find a large amount of communities from lemmy.world nor read the already existing comments inside their threads if I enter them manually.

path: 0 57978, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

Bricriu 3 points 3 years ago

Further weirdness: It still doesn't resolve by URL for me on lemmy.one, but now that @moonleay@feddit.de was able to find it, I can get results back with the string "no man" -- but both are listed as having zero subscribers??

path: 0 48827, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 7

moonleay 2 points 3 years ago

That 0 subscribers thingy is probably just a bug or it hasn't updated yet.

path: 0 48827 48838, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 6

jonah 6 points 3 years ago

Yeah. The subscriber count it shows is the number of subscribers on your local instance, in this case lemmy.one (which would of course be 0 since it was just discovered)

The only way to see the true subscriber count at the moment is by looking on the instance where the community is hosted.

path: 0 48827 48838 51054, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 2

moonleay 2 points 3 years ago

Ah. That makes sense.

Thanks for the explanation! :)

path: 0 48827 48838 51054 51473, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

Bricriu 1 point 3 years ago

Ah, thanks for the info. That's not a great user experience, but at least it makes sense.

path: 0 48827 48838 51054 53033, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

Bricriu 1 point 3 years ago

Oof. Very very wonky.

path: 0 48827 48838 48850, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 2

moonleay 1 point 3 years ago

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Btw I just though about this. Do you have any extensions installed, which could cause this problem? A JS Blocker perhaps?

path: 0 48827 48838 48850 48871, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1

Bricriu 1 point 3 years ago

Nope, no JS blocker on my phone, and I even disabled the "Block This!" adblock VPN I usually have running to test it out. Desktop is a pretty vanilla FF install -- and to see the same behavior (URL search failing) on both implies it's a problem with lemmy.one or my account overall rather than the browser.

path: 0 48827 48838 48850 48871 48900, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

priapus 2 points 3 years ago

I'm not facing these problems. If I search nomanssky on this instance, the one you're looking for comes up right away.

path: 0 51995, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

Bricriu 1 point 3 years ago

Ok, so having gone through all of that, and subscribed to the lemmy.ml community, I tried posting and..... not so good, Al.

Again, I wonder how much of this is my particular instance. > UI: v0.17.3

path: 0 48989, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

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