this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Hello all. Like many new users, I am a reddit refugee. Please forgive me if this isn't the best community for my question; I am still learning my way around here.

I am used to google searching "[THING] site:reddit.com" when I want to see the opinions of real people on a topic rather than the flood of clickbait articles you get nowadays with Google.

What is the best way to execute this type of search within the Fediverse rather than Reddit?

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[–] jon@lemmy.tf 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Search is the one thing Lemmy needs to focus on right away, current search sucks and will run off lots of Reddit refugees their first day.

As of right now, a user in your instance has to search and/or sub to a community from another instance before it gets indexed. You could make some dummy account and sub to hundreds of remote communities so they're locally indexed without having to sub to them on your main account, but that's pretty time consuming and still not a great solution.

[–] lunarshot@beehaw.org 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I agree with everything you’ve said but I also think refugees need to be patient. I remember being there 12 years ago and reddit was not very sophisticated. And hey, it’s been 12 years and their own search still sucks! Agree that we should be aiming for a better service and work together to provide it but everybody needs to be patient in this time of transition.

[–] Kaldo@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You can always use Google to search reddit content though, and that's actually the preferred and optimal way to do it. Afaik that doesn't work with the fediverse since every instance isn't going to get indexed?

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

That's kinda bad that stuff doesn't get indexed by default, it segregates the internet, just like Facebook and Disord stuff is not indexed.

[–] ndr@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We really need a better way to search :(

[–] a_new_sad_me@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] ndr@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

nah, this is better

[–] nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In the same vein as dedicated forums, discoverability is harder, and that’s sadly just the nature of the beast.

One day someone may create a full indexer and scraper, but it’s still too early for that.

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

There are 2 indexers. The community browser and lemmy.directory. The former is a searchable list of all communities in the federation, and the second one is a Lemmy instance with sign-up disabled so that his server doesn't explode that auto-subscribes to every community it sees.

[–] overlordror@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I was gonna say, I'm getting Geocities webring vibes. Not sure how I feel about that haha.

[–] netburnr@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Shoot I'm going to have to bring back my Alicia Silverstone site. It killed on the old banner exchanges.

[–] nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev 1 points 2 years ago

Sadly I don't even remember what my site was called so I can't resurrect it

[–] Veraticus@beehaw.org 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’m used to this too.

I want to think it’s actually an anti-pattern; as we are seeing many Reddit people are deleting their accounts so searching Reddit might be less useful in the future.

Not sure what the alternative is though. Some of the communities I participate in went to Discord instead but that has search problems as well.

[–] ndr@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I find Discord extremely chaotic and disorienting for searching and referencing old information. I despise this trend of moving all types of discussion to Discord.

[–] V4uban@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

Completely agree. Different strokes for different folks I guess

[–] Accidentaladult@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

Search is definitely going to be the crux of the issue for the average user.

If they want to attract and retain the reddit users that aren't especially tech savvy (I totally admit that I am one of those people).