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2y ago

Comparison of Lemmy Instances

github.com GitHub - maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances: Comparison of different Lemmy Instances

Comparison of different Lemmy Instances. Contribute to maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances development by creating an account on GitHub.

I created a repo on GitHub that has a table comparing all the known lemmy instances

https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

Why?

When I joined lemmy, I had to join a few different instances before I realized that:

Some instances didn't allow you to create new communities
Some instances were setup with an allowlist so that you couldn't subscribe/participate with communities on (most) other instances
Some instances disabled important features like downvotes
Some instances have profanity filters or don't allow NSFW content

I couldn't find an easy way to see how each instance was configured, so I used lemmy-stats-crawler and GitHub actions to discover all the Lemmy Instances, query their API, and dump the information into a data table for quick at-a-glance comparison.

I hope this helps others with a smooth migration to lemmy. Enjoy :)

93 comments

Great work! Thanks for making this. ❤

You're awesome man! This is direly needed. I'm just wondering how on earth to publicize this before the madness that hits on Monday.
Any chance you could find a place to fit this in the join lemmy site and do a pull request before then? I know it's a lot to ask, but it would be huge.
- Yes this sounds great.
- I see TypeScript and get scared. Personally, I do think that the join-lemmy.org/instances page should link to:
  My table comparison https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
  The Lemmy Community Browser (to find communities across all instances) https://browse.feddit.de/
  The Lemmy Map https://lemmymap.feddit.de/
  The federation's lemmy page (with another table comparing instances) https://the-federation.info/platform/73
  Can anyone with TypeScript experience make this PR for us? Here's the relevant file:
  https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/blob/main/src/shared/components/instances.tsx
  
  You thinking just a
  <ul>
  with the 4 links in it and a header of some sort? Mock or description or anything?
  
  abraxas said he was a typescript vet just earlier, maybe we can coax him into having a look? xD
  Worth a shot at least.
  EDIT: Just shot him a message
  
  I think it's better with less choices for beginners actually. I remember a lot of people didn't get started on mastadon because they were afraid to pick an instance.
  It's almost so it would be good if this could just be a checkbox "pick a good instance for me" and it would pick a medium populated instance from the list.

There is also a similar list on: https://the-federation.info/platform/73
- oh shit I wish I knew that existed before XD
  
  I've stumbled upon this site that seems to be similar?
  https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/
- Is it autogenerated like this one?
  
  Yes, it uses a standard called NodeInfo2 that many Fediverse projects and XMPP / Matrix etc. expose.
- This project seems not well maintained (see this), I suggest this as an alternative (click "all columns").
- @poVoq Information in both list is completly different. For instance, in the list in github almost all instances accept new users, what is not the case in the-federation.
  @maltfield
  
  This is just a difference in how "sign upd only with admin approval" is handled.
- Was about to post the same hehe That website is pretty great, specially like the charts!

Users can create communities on Blahaj Lemmy. Most of our communities are created by users
- Hmm, I see community_creation_admin_only is set to false on the API. I'll look into this, thanks for letting me know :)
  https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/api/v3/site
  Edit: should be fixed now. Please let me know if you find any other issues :)
  
  Same for lemmy.studio, I have community creation open for everyone. Not sure why it shows as false.
  What's the API endpoint? I'll double toggle the option to see if it fixes it, maybe it is set to admin only even if the UI shows the opposite.

I also recently just created my instance vlemmy.net, I dont mind anyone joining and creating their community's there. Dont really have any restrictions either. Would be nice to learn some new things from our internet friends

@maltfield So apparently I can interact with my Lemmy posts on my Mastodon account. Cool!
For anyone else trying to figure out how: I just took the URL of the Lemmy post (https://lemmy.ml/post/1168743) and pasted it into the Mastodon search field.

expired

How do you check wether nsfw content is allowed?
Because my instance (feddit.de) doesn‘t allow pornographic material. I guess that doesn‘t exclude all nsfw content. But the column header is called adult and it makes it seem like „adult content“ aka porn was allowed.
*edit fixed typo
- It doesn't say porn, it says adult. The legend describes how it's determined
  Adult "Yes" means there's no profanity filters or blocking of NSFW content. "No" means that there are profanity filters or NSFW content is not allowed.

@maltfield
It's cool seeing this post in Mastodon.
- how do you do that? Is there a guide anywhere for how to setup mastodon seeing lemmy or lemmy seeing mastodon?
  
  @maltfield
  You can follow users or communities from Mastodon.
  The magic of ActivityPub.
  Just search for the user or community's url in mastodon, You can then follow from the result.

Shooting for this. It's not beautiful but it's not ugly:

Gonna have to dance around the i8n library for this PR, but it shoudl be possible.
- Definitely better than what we have! More info is better

It would probably be useful, but harder to collect, a summary of:
Primary/intended topics or users (eg, tech, politics, regional, etc)
Any unusual moderation patterns
Most/least blocked

How about a spreadsheet release (on GitHub) so we can easily filter things out? 👀
- Shiit, it would be much easier for me to write it out to a CSV than to a damn markdown table. Thanks for the great suggestion :)
  Edit: @QuestioningEspecialy@kbin.social the table is now available as a spreadsheet

It would be nice for those elsewhere on the fediverse to know when an instance is aligned with or run by the same people as an existing mastodon or other kind of instance.
Pretty sure nothing conventional is exposed for that sort of information, but it could be useful in the future. Maybe a general description field that can contain that sort of information.
- You mean like https://mastodon.world and https://lemmy.world? Do you have other examples?
  
  I think there are a few.
  blahaj.zone
  infosec.pub
  pawbs is a furries thing on mastodon too I think
  I wrote a small mastodon post with some links here: https://hachyderm.io/@maegul/110506940921141037

Great work! Can you include the instance description in this list also?
Also i would love to see country but that's doesn't seem to be included in the Lemmy app. I guess you could do a ip lookup on some service to see country if you really wanted to.
- I think the description would be too long and clutter the table. I'd be down for descriptions on-hover, but I'd have to switch platforms (from GitHub markdown) for that afaik.
  You can also get the country from this list. I don't know how they do it (maybe IP lookup)
  https://https//the-federation.info/platform/73

I'm a little bit confused by the federation thing. How would I let my instance talk to any other instance except the ones I blacklist?
- It's documented here:
  https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/federation_getting_started.html
  By default users on an instance will be able to talk with communities/users on all other instances. This only changes if the instance admin puts hosts in the allowed list or disables federation.
  If you add instances to the blocked list then users will be able to talk with all other instances, except those on the blocked list
  
  Oh I see. I had put Lemmy.ml on the allowed list and never intended other instanced to not be allowed.
  Fixed, thank you!
- there's an option in the admin panel to block certain instances

are manual additions allowed? our host's security blocks some bot traffic and is currently not playing nicely with the stats crawler
- Manually maintaining is not realistic.
  If your API is read-only and you're blocking bot traffic from querying it, you're doing it wrong. Please be nice to the bots. And also users that use VPNs, privacy plugins, etc. You'll false-positive block them, and that's not very nice.
  
  definitely agree. I don't control our host's policy but i will pass that along. some bot traffic is allowed- we were on the join-lemmy site two days ago and i have a bot running this very minute- i think they're still just trying to dial in the right balance between two much and not enough security

It says i can't downvote on beehaw , but going to this (beehaw community post) and downvoting workds.
- Does this mean that Beehaw users can't downvote on any other instances whereas users from other instances can downvote Beehaw content?
  
  I read that they just ignore incoming downvotes, so on Beehaw you'd never see them, only locally on the instance where you voted.

The new user registration doesn't map to the recommended setting of admin approval only. There have been massive spam account registrations waves in the past and if you can't monitor your instance 24/7 this is the only way to prevent having your instance blocked because of that.
- The NU field is determined by checking the registration_mode field in the API. If that's set to closed then I say No. Otherwise, I mark it as Yes.
  So if it's open or require_application, I list it as Yes.
  Is there an issue with how I've set this up? If so, please name a specific instance and what it should say vs what the table says.
  
  Ah, I managed to mis-read the table. Seems ok for my instance (slrpnk.net). However we do allow users to create new communities.

93 comments