to start: after some consideration, we’ve altered our entry question a little bit so that entry is not guaranteed. during the daytime you can basically expect waits of 30 minutes or less when it comes to approval/disapproval, but overnight it’ll be anywhere from 6-12 hours. just FYI
if you’d like to introduce yourself without it getting lost in all the posts already made, i just made a thread for that over here
our sidebar should give you most of the information you’re looking for about us, but to reiterate some: we are pretty relaxed here, but we have a well carved out understanding of what we want to be. if you would like more elaboration on that, you can find elaboration on that at length in the following two posts:
for some less lengthy and more relaxed elaboration, see the discussion in the comments of this post.
as for funding: we are 100% user-funded. if you would like to contribute to our ability to keep the website up, you can donate on OpenCollective, which supports both one-time donations or monthly donations.
a few other questions occasionally pop up like “why do we have the set of communities we do?” and “why can’t people make their own?” (the latter is a feature of lemmy). for elaboration on that, you can see the following post and the discussions here. we are open to suggestions and creating communities as demand sees fit; see also discussion here.
downvotes are disabled on this instance and that’s a thing we’re not liable to change. if you’d like elaboration for why that is, see this comment. this may be a point of friction for some coming from reddit, but i hope you’ll understand why we’re doing it even if you don’t necessarily agree with it.
if you’re interested in our governance to this point and a brief idea of our long term goals, see the comment here.
feel free to sound off on other questions you have; i’ll try to update the OP with those and our ability to answer them as time goes on.
The fediverse is basically tricked-out email with different UI tweaks. My account/address is @OOFshoot@beehaw.org and since beehaw is a part of the fediverse that means it agrees to use certain communication protocols that can be read and understood by any other fediverse server.
While email only has direct communication, the fediverse standard let’s you make a public post, with different versions of the fediverse having a few local extras. If your server runs the same version as another server (like Lemmy and Lemmy) then they can interact practically as if everything is centralized. If they use different versions (like Mastodon and BookWyrm) then some features may not translate very effectively, but basic communication is still possible.
One thing I haven’t found out is whether or not everyone is using a browser to access fediverse or is there an app that can be used? I can see Beehaw posts and comments on Mastodon but I can’t login via my Beehaw account.
Right, so your account on a Lemmy website cannot be logged into from a mastodon app. You would need a Lemmy specific app for that. If you have android, use jerboa. However, personally I find the mobile website to be suitable. I believe there is an IOS app as well, but I forget it’s name at the moment.
I appreciate the response. There was an app but I guess it was discontinued. My confusion is with all of the different accounts. You’re posting on here from a midwest.social account. But when I try to post there from my Beehaw it says I need to login or register. Is there a way to connect one account to multiple instances?(I did register with you guys also!)
One account is tied to only one instance. You can use your beehaw account to comment on almost everything, similarily with your Midwest.social account. Think of it like having a @gmail and an @yahoo email address. They both can receive and send emails, but they’re on different websites. For right now you cannot mix accounts or anything.
That being said, using only one account you can make posts and submit links to almost every community. You just have to make sure you are still on your original instance.
Ohhh, that’s it. That what I was doing wrong. Again, appreciate the help. I’m learning so much!
Glad we got it figured out! Always happy to help.
You should be able to follow and comment on Midwest.Social communities from Beehaw. Open up your search menu in Beehaw and search !community@midwest.social to pull up a Beehaw link to a midwest community (replace the word “community” with the name of the group that you want to follow), from there you should be able to comment and subscribe from your Beehaw account.
I had to look up how to do this a little bit ago and this search format worked for subscribing to !geschichte@feddit.de, but I haven’t tried commenting across servers yet.
Personally, I use my browser for accessing fediverse sites. I’m trying to get away from having to download separate apps to do every little thing. I wish more companies would focus on developing a good browser experience instead of shunting people into separate apps with all kinds of added permissions requests.