New Lemmy user here...What terminology should I know?
I know the obvious things like federation and fediverse, but do we say upvote/downvote, updoot, karma? I hate to bring up the software that must not be named, but I don’t know what else to call things.
What is not mentioned is, deleting anything does not mean it will be deleted everywhere. Hundreds of other instances receive your content and who knows whether the delete action will be correctly federated, processed or accepted. Check twice before submitting.
People need buzzwords to feel like they belong to a group. We are just a bunch of nerds who already know that. It's a free spirit community as long as you behave like a human. You can try to establish some new terminology, but don't come up with the old reddit stuff, people will make fun of you.
Some apps/front ends/instances track upvote/downvote totals. Haven't run into any automated filters based on total karma yet, though.
Also worth mentioning that instance admins and some moderators can see specific users' upvotes and downvotes.
There's also a public mod log where instances display their moderator actions taken against whom for what reasons. Doesn't quite stop moderator abuse but it makes it public.
Any kbin user can see everyone who upvoted something. They used to be able to see all of the downvotes as well, but that was disabled with most kbin instances...
As far as I know, all you need to do is find a kbin instance that allows their users to see both upvotes and downvotes (or set up an instance yourself).
It's best to treat your votes here as public if you're coming from Reddit where you normally expect this to be hidden.
Lemmy once computed a total score internally, but this was removed in the later versions. There is no such thing as overall user karma or score unless an admin or other software decides to try to compute one. The platform itself doesn’t care.
most everything you do in the fediverse is very public. upvotes and sometimes downvotes can be attributed to you personally. luckily that includes the moderation logs.
lemmy is only one of many fediverse server types. there are many: https://fedidb.org/im partial to mbin because it looks more like that other place, and exposes more information like a reputation value (karma) and downvotes
Karma exists but unless I'm off we don't seem to really mention it ever. Theres up and downvotes but I just like them as a way of letting me know how far out my ideas or comments are without taking it personally. It improves your thinking and advocacy skills so its cool
I've had situations where that doesn't work for me, or like where I will start typing and it won't expand quite properly - e.g. typing !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca expands not to
!newtolemmy@lemmy.ca but like to !newtolemmy!newtolemmy@lemmy.ca. The latter repeatedly happened to me on a desktop Chrome. Also if you user-block an instance, then the name expansion process no longer works.
There are actually two types of expansions - one done after you post, another while you are still writing. Neither of which I have ever seen written up in any guide anywhere, other than release notes from as you say like a year ago. Similarly I have not seen guides to cross-posting, in e.g. the Getting started guide.
Edit: oh, and this is the first I am hearing that the former expanded links won't work - do you know when that happens? Maybe apps, or perhaps non-Lemmy Fediverse Mbin or PieFed? This is the first I am hearing of this iirc.
Finding out how things work on Lemmy, for those of us who do not use Arch btw, is a terrible process for new users. I was thinking, it sure would be nice if there was not just a single post here and there such as Lemmy.ml's What is Lemmy.ml (that is the exact link that appears in their sidebar though), but an entire community somewhere where such guidance could be posted. If not this one, then somewhere else - but this is the only one like that that I have seen.
Edit: if you know more about when links won't work, perhaps you can post the thought in that community?