So basically what the title said. So lemmy communities are divided in multiple instances, so finding active communities from different instances took some time. After i found them through browser i tried searching them in lemmy apps and the problem was half of the apps failed to find these communities like they are searching locally in my own instance not fedivese.

apps which failed

  • Jerboa
  • Infinity for lemmy
  • Summit
  • Liftoff (found the community but asked me to search it my own instance, i mean i can’t sub in that instance)
  • sync for lemmy
  • thunder
  • arctius

apps which work partially.

  • Infinity for lemmy (searches your own instance about that community, if any post being made about that community, you can find it)
  • Liftoff (searches community in own instance like infinity)
  • Summit (same as infinity)

apps which worked.

  • connect
  • voyager.
  • Liftoff (it worked i got confused at first but it actually viewed the community without my account when i tried to sub it asked which account to used then after that i got to sub the community)

only these two apps have global search in fedivese.

not blaming any app developer here i can’t find a single app with all the features. some have nice ui, but lack parent comment reply feature and now this fedivese mess.

tldr: most lemmy apps don’t interact globally, which results not able to find communities in different instances.

edit: added another community I’ll check all those apps and will update this post.

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    There is no such thing as “global search” in the fediverse. (Unless you use off-instance tools like lemmyverse)

    Search can only return results that at least one local user has interacted with (meaning, subbed to).

    The exception is when entering the url or exact name of a user or community. In these cases the server will actually contact the other instance, to establish a new federated connection. For a given community to appear on a given instance, at least one user must do this, and subscribe.

    Until that happens, an instance will not receive incoming content related to that community, and hence it will not show up in search results.

    Triggering this behaviour requires you to be logged in, and for the client to support detecting that you’re doing so, and sending the relevant, different, authenticated API call.

    Additionally, if you are that first person, even once the community starts getting federated, it takes a while for the content to start coming over. Are you sure you were seeing “copies” and not just half-synced newly federated communities? Old comments and votes do not get synced when the connection is first started by a first subscriber from a given instance. Also, the subcount you see only tells you how many subs the community has from your instance, not globally.

      • theredhood@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I think that’s how it works. I’m not 100% sure but I remember it being explained that once a user visits a community from another instance for the first time a copy is made and only new posts start to populate the copy. Meaning the past discussion is not ported. Also, I assume the users are low because it shows people subscribed in that copy just made but not including the other instances’ subscribers.

  • Neato@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    I don’t get how this doesn’t work on all apps and sites. It’s a core functionality of the fediverse. It’s like if a reddit app didn’t let you search for subreddits. Without federation any instance is nigh useless.