to start: after some consideration, we’ve altered our entry question a little bit so that entry is not guaranteed. during the daytime you can basically expect waits of 30 minutes or less when it comes to approval/disapproval, but overnight it’ll be anywhere from 6-12 hours. just FYI
if you’d like to introduce yourself without it getting lost in all the posts already made, i just made a thread for that over here
our sidebar should give you most of the information you’re looking for about us, but to reiterate some: we are pretty relaxed here, but we have a well carved out understanding of what we want to be. if you would like more elaboration on that, you can find elaboration on that at length in the following two posts:
for some less lengthy and more relaxed elaboration, see the discussion in the comments of this post.
as for funding: we are 100% user-funded. if you would like to contribute to our ability to keep the website up, you can donate on OpenCollective, which supports both one-time donations or monthly donations.
a few other questions occasionally pop up like “why do we have the set of communities we do?” and “why can’t people make their own?” (the latter is a feature of lemmy). for elaboration on that, you can see the following post and the discussions here. we are open to suggestions and creating communities as demand sees fit; see also discussion here.
downvotes are disabled on this instance and that’s a thing we’re not liable to change. if you’d like elaboration for why that is, see this comment. this may be a point of friction for some coming from reddit, but i hope you’ll understand why we’re doing it even if you don’t necessarily agree with it.
if you’re interested in our governance to this point and a brief idea of our long term goals, see the comment here.
feel free to sound off on other questions you have; i’ll try to update the OP with those and our ability to answer them as time goes on.
The fediverse is basically tricked-out email with different UI tweaks. My account/address is @[email protected] and since beehaw is a part of the fediverse that means it agrees to use certain communication protocols that can be read and understood by any other fediverse server.
While email only has direct communication, the fediverse standard let’s you make a public post, with different versions of the fediverse having a few local extras. If your server runs the same version as another server (like Lemmy and Lemmy) then they can interact practically as if everything is centralized. If they use different versions (like Mastodon and BookWyrm) then some features may not translate very effectively, but basic communication is still possible.
One thing I haven’t found out is whether or not everyone is using a browser to access fediverse or is there an app that can be used? I can see Beehaw posts and comments on Mastodon but I can’t login via my Beehaw account.
Right, so your account on a Lemmy website cannot be logged into from a mastodon app. You would need a Lemmy specific app for that. If you have android, use jerboa. However, personally I find the mobile website to be suitable. I believe there is an IOS app as well, but I forget it’s name at the moment.