NOTE: the late “Lemmy” is a beloved Brit* musician from an enjoyable rock band, perhaps with some Led Zep-type analogues? (sorry, I just didn’t know him very well; kinda before my time)


Okay, what I’m trying to explain here is how we search for things and how we find them, particularly when we include the magical word: “Lemmy” in our searches.

For example-- I can just half-awake, lazily type something like “reddit” + search term, and BOOM! Robert’s your avuncular figure.**

Now, by comparison, hopping on an instance, so far I’ve found that searches within the Lemmysphere are remarkably strong. (well, at least for lemm.ee; I love my instance)

Unfortunately, that’s not how most people search and find us, which more typically involves Google, etc.

Hence my question, laddies & lassies-- i.e. is there anything we can do to influence how this search-stuff works…?


* see, I always find a way to relate things back to Europe, haha

** like “there you go,” ie. “Bob’s your uncle,” a classic Brit pub-phrase

  • kreynen@kbin.melroy.org
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    26 days ago

    @JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee isn’t part of the point of ActivityPub to avoid vendor lockin/single point of billionaire enshittification? I read and interact with a fair amount of Lemmy content through an Mbin instance.

    You can already limit Google using site:[DOMAIN].

    If every ActivityPub driven service used a common TLD like .edus, you’d be able to limit results to that facet of Google’s index, they don’t. If they did, we’d be back to a single point of failure.

    Google supports limiting searches to content using a Creative Commons license based on the licensing metadata in the URL. ActivityPub content already has the metadata, but it took a decade to generate enough content before Google offered the option to filter searches by CC-BY-SA… and Google was a VERY different company back then.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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    25 days ago

    The only reason it works for Reddit is because they have a singular domain name you can site search and the context engine is good enough to know you’re requesting a site search of www.reddit.com. Adding “Lemmy” to your query doesn’t help, but adding the URL to an instance does. Such as “thing I want to search Lemmy.World” actually results in hits on Lemmy.World and other instances directly linked to from it. You can do it with any instance you want. You could even add “site:URL” to make sure it’s doing the right kind of search if it doesn’t understand the context.

    • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.eeOP
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      25 days ago

      I know I know, but I was half-toasted and body shutting down due to the usual CFS/ME at the time. I had to take a stab in some direction, haha.

      Give me a better analogy…?

      • venusaur@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        Yikes! What happens if you chug coffee? Do you feel anything? Maybe tired and wired? What about amphetamines?

        They’re probably more similar to early Ozzy musically, but Lemmy is a sound of his own.

            • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.eeOP
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              15 days ago

              Oh, sorry. My bad.

              I have CFS/ME, or myalgic enchephalomyletus (sp?), also called “chronic fatigue syndrome,” pretty much a working umbrella-term for those with unexplainable, chronic fatigue.

                • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.eeOP
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                  15 days ago

                  Um, I could go on for days about this curséd disease, but may I ask you where your interest is coming from?

                  Who you are and all that, mate…?

    • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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      26 days ago

      the minus would remove sites. Useful it you want to do X -site:reddit.com but that leaves all that isn’t reddit.

    • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.eeOP
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      25 days ago

      Maybe by sheer volume, but it also kinda defeats the aim of the Lemmysphere and FV as I understand it.

      And you know, there are some other major instances besides LW. If you look at the classic ‘globe-chart’ I think that’s proven out.

      But, I think you’re also kinda acknowledging that, so not trying to pick a fight with you or anything. :S

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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        25 days ago

        Oh yea, totally agree. It’s a terrible solution, but it is a solution. I would much prefer something like SearXNG being able to array filter all Fediverse domains.

        • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.eeOP
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          25 days ago

          Ooh, that’s right!
          SearXNG, yes!

          Now, I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and it seemed to work NICELY when I last tried it.

          Ugh, TBH, I’m *not* very smart upon this stuff. Hopefully we as a group can improve the situation, tho…?

  • Jarix@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    For anyone who doesnt know Lemmy, just want to say hes easy to get a bad first impression of.

    He was really well respected by people in music and was a good soul.

    Theres an good documentary on him i think was on netflix.

    Also My favourite clip of him

    Also fun fact, he was a roadie for Jimmy Hendrix

    • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.eeOP
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      25 days ago

      He was really well respected by people in music and was a good soul.

      Yeah, I got that sense, and that there was a collective sadness when he passed.

      • Jarix@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        There is a video game called brutal legend he does character for if interested.

        Yes I’m a bit of a fan.

        Inferno is probably my favourite Motorhead album, if you wanted to check em out

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      25 days ago

      I met him once or twice whenever my friends and I would end up at The Rainbow on sunset. It was always an interesting place to visit. Before he passed, you always knew Lemmy would be there. But you never knew who else you’d run into.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      26 days ago

      As someone else pointed out above, they have had a search lens to do this for some time. It’s called “Fediverse Forums”.

        • tal@lemmy.today
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          26 days ago

          No problem. I ignore most of the extra features they provide — my interest in them is really for the privacy aspect — and the ability to search the Threadiverse is one of the very few extra features that I actually make meaningful use of.

  • craig9@lemm.ee
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    26 days ago

    I just did some experimenting, and in duckduckgo.com at least, searches like this work quite well:

    “Best CPU (site:lemm.ee OR site:lemmy.world OR site:lemmy.ca)”

    Not exactly user friendly, but it’s a starting point. At least two ways forward:

    1. A browser plugin with a config page allowing you to select/deselect your favourite instances, and make a bang operator to suit: e.g. “!lemmy”

    2. Petition search engines to do this themselves.