Hello @ofelia, @VocalConstructivists and @eaon and welcome to post.lurk.org!
The Fediverse and Mastodon are not super intuitive to get started with so here is an introduction in two parts!
The most difficult thing is to discover content and people you find interesting.
For that there are generally two strategies: first you can post and subscribe to hashtags. This is currently the best way to find particular conversations. For example you could look at or post to #fediverse to find others interested in that topic. Most commonly #introductions is used to describe briefly what you are interested in, that way people can follow you. If you do I can boost you for visibility.
The second strategy is to make use of both the 'Local' and 'Federated'/'Global' timelines. The local one shows all posts by people on post.lurk.org. The 'Global' timeline shows all posts by people followed by people on lurk.org but who are themselves on a different part of the network. See here for a visual explanation:
https://dev.glitch.social/@cassolotl/99942225799392803
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@ofelia @VocalConstructivists @eaon If you know of other people who could feel at home on lurk, please invite them by generating an invite code: https://post.lurk.org/invites
Our moderation policy can be found here: https://post.lurk.org/terms
Mastodon has quite granular visibility settings for your posts, you find them in the message compose field. Here is how they work: https://dev.glitch.social/@cassolotl/99942225799392803. In addition to those we have another option (the chain link) which makes your posts not federate, meaning they are only visible on post.lurk.org.
It is possible to switch to different color themes and even a multi-column layout in your preferences: https://post.lurk.org/settings/preferences/appearance
If you want to move to another instance you can migrate your social graph here: https://post.lurk.org/settings/profile
If you wanna do some serious reading on what else is possible, here's a good place to start: https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon
Lastly if you have any questions or issues you can contact me or one of the other mods:
@320x200 or @rra
happy lurking!
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@jboy We like to get to know a bit more about the people who join the instance, so we advise you to send us a message telling us why you would like to join this instance in particular: https://post.lurk.org/about . Hope to hear from you soon!
@lidia_p ok will do!
@lidia_p thank you for that warm welcome! Might be able to think of some people that would fit. I just have to make a habit of mentioning this instance/the fediverse to them often enough so they get curious 🙃
@lidia_p lurk looks like a nice community, I think I'd like to move there. can I get an invite?