Why YSK: right now, Lemmy's autocomplete for the !community syntax isn't working correctly.
It will appear to work, like so:
But the link produced will redirect you away from your home instance and leave you unable to vote/subscribe...
To fix this issue, you'll need to manually edit the autocompleted link like so:
BAD LINK: [!youshouldknow@lemmy.world](https://lemmy.world/c/youshouldknow)
⬇️⬇️⬇️ Remove the domain (i.e.: https://lemmy.world) & append the @ identifier (i.e.: @lemmy.world)
GOOD LINK: [!youshouldknow@lemmy.world](/c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world)
Removing the domain like this transforms it into a local link which prevents the instance redirection. Doing this will make it easier for newcomers to join your community and participate in discussions!
Those interested can monitor Github issues #369 & #1048 for when this UI bug is fixed!
There is an issue with this. If nobody on the instance of the user that clicks the link is subscribed to that community, this will result in a 404 error. If at least one person on the instance is subscribed, it'll work. In a browser. Not in Jerboa.
As a temporary bandaid, it looks like every instance needs a sacrificial user/volunteer to subscribe to every community they can find.
For those interested in taking on such a task, here's the most complete community browser at the moment: https://browse.feddit.de/
Sounds like the perfect job for a bot to monitor that list and autosubscribe to every new community.
I suspect that this may be somewhat frowned upon. The whole point of not grabbing all communities from all instances by default is to avoid massive traffic dumps every time a new instance joins the federation. Doing this via a bot is basically the equivalent of DDOSing your home instance!
It's less bad when a human does the same thing because:
Is there a french instance? I can actually do the French and German ones since I am already creating and involved with those communities.
Yes, unfortunately. This is one of those situations where it's technically less user friendly to browse on a smaller instance (since large instances are more likely to already be subscribed to a given random community). Of course, this issue affects anyone who tries to visit a given community via their home instance, not just people using this particular link style.
Right now this problem is being tracked on the backend Github as #2951. Hopefully they manage to sand off this particular rough edge ASAP.