this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Fediverse

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I was just thinking about this, when I'm facing an issue, the first thing I do is go to a search engine and usually there's a Reddit post. But I don't want to ask there. And the only way we're going to build up the info for folks to find us and come here is for us to just start asking here. On the Fediverse. We need to build up that mountain of knowledge that Reddit has and will always have. So we should be championing ANYONE asking questions here. Even if we think it's obvious and we think you can just Google it. There was a time where you literally couldn't just Google it. That was built over time. We need to build that here. So start asking your questions here! Find the answers and then post your answer to your own question. Or let someone do it for you. We need to build the knowledge here to be found. It's not just about people looking for alternatives. We need our knowledge to be more valuable than their knowledge.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thats fucking stupid

Maybe, instead of Reddit and Lemmy and other forums, how about you just host a Wiki? Its gonna take more time, but it will be way better for readability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Hey thanks! Just a point of advice starting a conversation with "that's fucking stupid" isn't exactly seen as useful or helpful information. I'm just attempting to start conversations and help promote the fediverse so that it continues to grow. If you want to offer any helpful advice instead of being negative, that's be great.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Kagi search has a function to specifically search the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

OH! LOVE THIS! Thank you KAGI!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I try to ask questions here instead of reddit in the hopes that lemmy will pop up in google for someone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

This is what I do when I want to search Lemmy. I put Lemmy: "search for this" into the search box and see what comes up. It works better than Lemmy's internal search function a lot of the time.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

And I think that's what we should do. Or even ask the question, search it on Google, and answer your own post! :-) We need to foster the Fediverse by existing in the Fediverse and stop depending on Big Tech or using them to help build OUR internet. :-)

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I ask chatgpt first. It usually gives me decent ideas to test out.

E: the downvotes are interesting. I wonder why.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Downvotes are because a lot of folks are against ChatGPT and LLMs. We're going through MANY information transitions in the last 40 years and yet another holy grail is difficult to swallow. If you want to ask ChatGPT that's fine, but I'm trying to get folks to foster the Fediverse and make it more welcoming, more valuable, and heck just help people find us. Use the tools you want, absolutely. But we also need to find ways to help promote the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It would be cool if there was an operator that would force the search into Lemmy content. Are they called bangs? Like starting with !r

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Kagi (paid search engine, haven't tried it myself) has a fediverse forums (lemmy, piefed, mbin) lens.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

It also makes it easy to remove reddit from search results entirely.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh wow, you're right!

I wonder how they set that up? DDG has thousands of bangs but not one for Lemmy - probably because it is not at one single URL?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Kagi's lens are the equivalent of custom feeds for searching (i think, I haven't used kagi).

But yeah, ddg bangs basically just jump you to a search page on a website.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

I personally think that the main problem is bad search optimization. There quite a lot of good answers on Fediverse (Lemmy) but it is nearly impossible to find them via Google or any other regular search engine. And making things worse since Lemmy is Federated it is not easy to implement correct indexing for it. So it makes a lot of questions(Should each instance index only local posts to prevent duplicated search results? What about small instances? Or use some central instance like Lemmy.World? What about different frontends for same instance like Photon or Alexandrite?).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Suppose I wanted to discuss, say, typewriter repair. How could I find the appropriate community? How do I avoid having my questions deleted because they are “off topic”? How do I find posts/comments/answers related to my interests?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

One of my biggest gripes about the fediverse (and honestly any online community) is people making increasingly niche places to discuss things before there is a need to split things due to size. I'd post that to something like a general hobbies group. I'd also say mods need to be less strict about what is and isn't on-topic while there isn't much traffic in their communities.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I'd say having those groups isn't bad in itself, but they should crosspost posts to and from the small groups.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, or if you find a solution you can post it here for preservation. I've posted some guides and info that i pulled from Reddit onto here because the way things are going, I can't guarantee that information will still be available in a years time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Preservation is so MASSIVELY important imo atm. With Internet Archive under fire, Reddit and Twitter closing APIs, Google shutting down fucking everything, we need OUR internet, not theirs and we need to protect that which is precious to us.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Exactly. While Lemmy isn't exactly like the Internet archive, at least its self hosted so you could preserve anything you want for as long as you wanted on here

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Agreed. And even if 1 instance goes down, if another instance is following, it's still there. It's potentially the strongest off site backup ever.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thats what I've been doing...I say yes do it! We need more humanity nowadays too, when everything's bots.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

100% more humanity!

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