I want to welcome you all to the fediverse, piefed and retrofed specifically. If you need help starting out you can either try [email protected] or you can comment here, post in this community or message me or @[email protected] directly. We are here to help.
Some basic things:
Usernames are usually written out as @[email protected]. The @ in front indicates a user. It looks like an e-mail adress by design, Because there can be users with the same name on different instances. For example: @[email protected]
Communities are usually written out as [email protected] . The exclamation point indicates a community. This also looks like an e-mail address because there can also be communities with the same name on different instances.
Sometimes new communities will not load. This usually means that the community is not yet federated. You can either manually add it to lemmy-federate or you can subscribe. That way the community is federated and posts will show up. If you make a new community it is always good practice to add it to Lemmy federate. To make sure it’s federated to all participating instances and maximize your user spread.
This wiki from piefed.social can help out with further questions
Some good resources for finding communities:
https://lemmyverse.net/ - A website dedicated to finding new communities. Be sure to set your home instance using the domain name: for example: “retrofed.com”. This is to make sure that if you click a community, it automatically links it through your instance.
[email protected] - a community dedicated to promoting new communities.
[email protected] - same as above.
[email protected] - same as above.
Apps
There are loads of apps for your phone on the stores. Many of them were refitted from reddit/lemmy apps to PieFed. Here’s a wiki page on apps compatible with PieFed - via piefed.social
We hope you have a good time here!
We also have “Feeds” which are groups of communities together: https://retrofed.com/feeds
I made [email protected]
And don’t forget [email protected] if you still want to see the local retrolemmy posts.
We really have no communities (on retrofed.com — I’m aware retrolemmy.com has them)?
Can we talk about what is expected of a community? I briefly created a community on Lemmy (that is to say, I have this PieFed/RetroFed account, and I also have a Lemmy account on another instance) but no one was interested and I ultimately closed it. Mainly, can we talk about how retro is retro (like is it okay if it’s from 20 years ago or does it have to be 1990s or older?) and how much interaction is required with the community you create? I mean, I’m not gonna post daily in a community no one else is interacting with. I love helping people with the games I love, but I’m not a blogger. I’m interested in moderating communities for some of the games I love, but I can’t be the only one posting and creating content, and that isn’t a community anyway.
A community has to be retro or retro inspired. What is retro is different for certain things. A 25 year old game is retro, a 20 year old phone is retro but a 20-25 year old house is not. But I think it’s mostly something you can be nostalgic about.
Retro inspired things are retro in spirit. Like pixel art, it’s made today, but has a retro feel. Modern stuff with old feelings.
TL;DR: retro stuff is retro, and retro is in the heart.

