Thanks. I just hit the wrong button and lost my reply to you. Shaka, when the walls fell. Giving it another go.
I’m deciphering an image whose original post I’ve lost in a sea of Lemmy links I’ve been reading and bookmarking. Image link is below. So, Lemmy is an umbrella for instances (servers), which in turn can host (I’m not sure if host is the right term) other instances? Is Star Trek an instance like a mini-reddit, or an, I don’t know what to call them, an instance like a subreddit within the mini-reddit?
Yeah, so the terminology can get weird, and the Reddit comparison is tricky Because you have to imagine multiple Reddits (the platform, not subreddits) for it to really work.
Servers and Instances are used pretty interchangeably - each one is privately operated, and you pick the one you want to sign up on - startrek.website is one of these instances.
Each instance can host its own “Communities” - there are like subreddits. We’re hosting three right now, /c/startrek, /c/daystrominstitute, and /c/risa.
The neat-but-complicated part is that each instance can communicate with other instances, so if you want to subscribe to a community on a server other than the one you signed up for, you can (within reasons, as there are mechanisms for instances to isolate themselves or block other instances from communication if they choose to do so).
So yeah, you can look at startrek.website as a mini-reddit with three Trek-related subreddits…but you can also use it as a springboard to subscribe to other subreddits on other mini-reddits.
Thank you for the response. One more question. For today. I don’t want to be exhausting.
From your explanation, I get why Risa in the screenshot below shows in the lower left corner as startrek.website/c/risa because Risa is hosted by startrek.website. edited Star Trek to startrek.website where applicable because I had an “a-ha!” moment of getting it.
In this next screenshot I took, does [email protected], as an example, show (in the lower left corner of the image) as startrek.website/c/[email protected] because beehaw.org or [email protected] is an instance of startrek.website? edit – hmm. The links in this paragraph show as clickable hyperlinks. The Risa link in the previous paragraph did not.
You’re seeing that because you’re tabbed over to “All” instead of “Local” - That’s probably showing you, at a minimum, all the communities, from all the instances, that people visited from. So in that example, you’re looking at https://beehaw.org/c/technology which is on a different instance.
I believe it’s because of federation. Beehaw.org is a “symbolic” subdomain of startrek.website since you’re accessing from your account at startrek.website.
If you’ve been on the Internet a long time, good analogies seem to be like email servers or (back in the day) Usenet servers. There can be lots of servers, and you get an account on one, but then you can post and read between all the servers. Like being on gmail but emailing people and reading emails from their accounts at other places. Or back in the day, like being on your ISP or university’s Usenet server, but reading posts from other servers and posting things people on other servers can read.
This is as good a place as any. We’re all learning as we go.
Thanks. I just hit the wrong button and lost my reply to you. Shaka, when the walls fell. Giving it another go.
I’m deciphering an image whose original post I’ve lost in a sea of Lemmy links I’ve been reading and bookmarking. Image link is below. So, Lemmy is an umbrella for instances (servers), which in turn can host (I’m not sure if host is the right term) other instances? Is Star Trek an instance like a mini-reddit, or an, I don’t know what to call them, an instance like a subreddit within the mini-reddit?
The image I mentioned:
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0006c2db-13c6-406e-97e7-6e274fddf355.png
Yeah, so the terminology can get weird, and the Reddit comparison is tricky Because you have to imagine multiple Reddits (the platform, not subreddits) for it to really work.
Servers and Instances are used pretty interchangeably - each one is privately operated, and you pick the one you want to sign up on - startrek.website is one of these instances.
Each instance can host its own “Communities” - there are like subreddits. We’re hosting three right now, /c/startrek, /c/daystrominstitute, and /c/risa.
The neat-but-complicated part is that each instance can communicate with other instances, so if you want to subscribe to a community on a server other than the one you signed up for, you can (within reasons, as there are mechanisms for instances to isolate themselves or block other instances from communication if they choose to do so).
So yeah, you can look at startrek.website as a mini-reddit with three Trek-related subreddits…but you can also use it as a springboard to subscribe to other subreddits on other mini-reddits.
Thank you for the response. One more question. For today. I don’t want to be exhausting.
From your explanation, I get why Risa in the screenshot below shows in the lower left corner as startrek.website/c/risa because Risa is hosted by startrek.website. edited Star Trek to startrek.website where applicable because I had an “a-ha!” moment of getting it.
https://i.imgur.com/VqLtssM.jpeg
In this next screenshot I took, does [email protected], as an example, show (in the lower left corner of the image) as startrek.website/c/[email protected] because beehaw.org or [email protected] is an instance of startrek.website? edit – hmm. The links in this paragraph show as clickable hyperlinks. The Risa link in the previous paragraph did not.
https://i.imgur.com/WmyADsP.jpeg
I took both screenshots while logged in to my Lemmy Star Trek account. I’m currently only subscribed to Star Trek.
You’re seeing that because you’re tabbed over to “All” instead of “Local” - That’s probably showing you, at a minimum, all the communities, from all the instances, that people visited from. So in that example, you’re looking at https://beehaw.org/c/technology which is on a different instance.
I have learned new things today. Thank you all for taking time to answer!
@Nmyownworld @ValueSubtracted
I believe it’s because of federation. Beehaw.org is a “symbolic” subdomain of startrek.website since you’re accessing from your account at startrek.website.
Okay. So if I had joined a beehaw.org site, and pulled up this Star Trek site, then the web address would show as beehaw.org/c/startrek.website.
@Nmyownworld
Correct
If you’ve been on the Internet a long time, good analogies seem to be like email servers or (back in the day) Usenet servers. There can be lots of servers, and you get an account on one, but then you can post and read between all the servers. Like being on gmail but emailing people and reading emails from their accounts at other places. Or back in the day, like being on your ISP or university’s Usenet server, but reading posts from other servers and posting things people on other servers can read.