So, I'm assuming everyone has seen links like https://beehaw.org/c/news and clicked through to find it doesn't work right because it's a different site (I'm assuming a different instance here).
Well, I just stumbled across an interesting feature: if you enter a link in the following format, it works for everyone regardless of instance of origin:
This is kind of an annoying feature of this website, like I don't want to create a separate account just to check out another community? It can't get ported here?
You don't have to create a separate account to participate.
If you click the "News" and "My User" links above, they open content from beehaw.org and reckless.dev inside whatever Lemmy server you're curerntly using. Your account is on lemmy.world, so I'm assuming that's where you're browsing. Note the first URL becomes https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected].
Yes but I need to search where that community is first and then what the search is correct? For example maybe there is a r/rance community, maybe it's on the French language website, I don't know. I have to search on the German search bar first to find the result, then go to where the community is and find that search thing.
If you're trying to find communities, you'd use the communities page or search function. You can filter both to only local (on this server) or all (any server this one hasn't blocked).
The settings page lets you select which languages you see. I think posts and communities that are set to a language you haven't selected aren't shown, so if you have Undetermined, German, and English selected, a post or community that's marked as being in French is hidden. That could be a little confusing I suppose - maybe the language filter should be disabled by default.
While I understand the benefits of ferated servers, I think the inherently fragmented nature of the infrastructure is the biggest hurdle to the adoption of (for e.g.) Lemmy and Mastodon as replacements for Reddit and Twitter.
There is an extra layer of complexity, and the less tech-savvy users who want a simple process to follow diverse communities across many instances are going to run into issues. That group likely comprises the vast majority of potential users.