If a search for a particular magazine, e.g. name@instance.tld in the magazines section, does not yield a result, it means that you are the first person to search for it. In this case, search for name@instance.tld in the general search (magnifying glass icon on the top right). Then a federation with that magazine will be created.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Huh! That seems like an oversight, I expected it to start federating when you search for magazines, even when you're the first to look for them; I expected the main search to search for threads/posts only.
Doing what you said worked immediately, but it says the (local versions) were created 31 minutes ago, so I don't think I was the one to fix it for these two particular communities.
When someone searches for an off-site community for the first time, two things happen: One, the local site sends a query to the remote site, asking of that community exists, and two, if it does, the local site creates a local space for that community that links back to the original.
If you're doing this on a lemmy-based website, it'll also, I believe, pull in the 20 most recent posts from the remote community.
But that's it. Thta's as far as it goes. The back catalogue doesn't come with it, and new posts don't show up until someone on the local site subscribes to the remote group. Someone needs to actively signal that they want the future content, otherwise it's just taking up bandwidth and CPU cycles and disc space.
Right, but that's what I did maybe 15 times before it finally worked today. I have no idea if kbin did send any queries, or if it didn't get any replies, or if I did something wrong (such as searching under /magazines and not the main search icon -- I only tried under /magazines until today), but there were no hits and it didn't create the local space.
The site's still hiccuping, I guess.
I have the same problem with a particular guild wars 2 community:
guildwars2@lemmy.wtf doesn't appear in searches.
I'll admit, it doesn't always work, but if you search a few times it seems to come up eventually.
Have you guys also seen communities not federate fully? Like if you browse https://lemmy.world/c/tampabaylightning from within kbin, you see 2 posts. But from an instance like lemmy.ca, you'll see the entirety of 6 posts.
Obviously, this community is pretty well dead but it's interesting to me that it appears to be federating, but is still missing part of the content.
The community on kbin (i.e the federated version) was created 3 days ago, I don't think posts older than that are ever going to be visible on kbin.
They will be if someone who can see those posts boosts them.
That's what boosting does. It republishes posts so that newer users can see them, too.
I wonder if some of it also has to do with how federation works. Once a user visits and follows another instance the two instances start to federate. The more instances and sites of lemmy/kbin and the more users the harder it might get.
Are the communities on lemmy or kbin you are looking for?
On Kbin looking for lemmy or other federations: /m/community@lemmyinstance.tld
On kbin looking for the geddit info community on geddit.social: https://kbin.social/m/geddit@geddit.social
On lemmy looking for /m/KbinMeta: /c/magazine@kbininstance.tld
https://geddit.social/c/kbinMeta@kbin.social
They are on lemmy. If I try to visit them on kbin I get a 404 though, as they are not federated yet. I'm not sure how I can trigger that. Visiting the links doesn't work, and searching for them to subscribe doesn't work.
https://kbin.social/m/slaythespire@lemmy.ml
https://kbin.social/m/slaythespire@lemmy.ca
https://lemmy.ml/c/slaythespire
https://lemmy.ca/c/slaythespire
I feel like kbin in general was a bit slow a couple hours ago. Maybe you should check again now? I just accessed the first two links from kbin and can see the communities (although it doesn't show any posts in the first and only one in the second).
Thanks for sharing these I love share the spire and subscribed to them now.
I can find the mod's profile on kbin: https://kbin.social/u/@donmildreone@lemmy.ml
and I know other communities on lemmy.ml work as I subscribe to the /m/linux@lemmy.ml from kbin. Might need time or more posts to start the federation.
Search like this: !name@instance.tld
I don't think that works on kbin. If I search for a big community like "science@beehaw.org" I find it immediately, but "!science@beehaw.org" gives no results.
The way to do it in kbin is to go to the magazine section specifically. The normal search doesn't find magazines I believe. Then search in the following format: syncforlemmy@lemmy.world. I use that as an example because I had to learn this very thing a few minutes ago.
That's exactly what I've been doing maybe 15 times since yesterday. It finally worked earlier, but according to a top comment you should not use the magazine search if the magazine doesn't already exist on kbin.
Good to know. Thanks!
Ah!
And if you search for the original community url? For example: https://beehaw.org/c/science
Haha, uh, it did find a community when I searched for the URL, but it found science@mander.xyz -- that's pretty bizarre.
I think this is either a bug (I mean, in one sense it's certainly a bug) or just that something needs to change in the community before it shows up and is created locally (which kind of is a bug too).
If the kbin codebase wasn't so complex I'd try to check the code to see how this all works.
it's probably related to the bug that is known about and getting fixed - that kbin is currently case sensitive - which breaks things a bit when it comes to remote communities.