What to do when a instance or magazine/community you know exists shows a 404?
For example, I just tried to go to https://kglitch.social/m/theonion@midwest.social to subscribe to it, but it shows a 404. At least https://kglitch.social/d/midwest.social worked, but https://kglitch.social/d/compuverse.uk doesn't (nor does https://kglitch.social/m/talesfromtechsupport@compuverse.uk)
One really bad and confusing thing about kbin is there are two searches. There is one at the Community List and another behind the magnifying glass.
The community list (called "magazines" on other kbin instances) only shows communities that someone else on this instance has already subscribed to. So if you search there for something mainstream then chances are you'll find it. But something niche from a small server, like theonion@midwest.social won't show up as no one from here has subscribed to it before so kglitch.social doesn't know about it.
The magnifying glass search is the way to subscribe to a community that kbin doesn't know about yet. If you put in theonion@midwest.social into the search (NB, no ! on the start, like lemmy does it) then you'll be subscribed to it straight away and from then on it'll show up in the Community List for everyone.
Also.
Because those communities have only just been subscribed to by someone here, no content from them has been sent here yet. They didn't know we existed, so couldn't send us anything. Now that someone has subscribed, content in those communities will start to flow here as it is posted.
Do we happen to be defederated from beehaw? It didn't work for animals@beehaw.org
Edit: It seems beehaw.org is down. Maybe hacked like blahaj and lemmy.world?
Yeah, they're having a bad time.
I've subscribed to some beehaw communities before so it should work again soon :)
Apparently searching for the full exact community name in the community list insgeneral search/ins works.