When I go to a community page (not signed in) I see thousands of subscribers, but when I access the community from within my account, I am shown dramatically less subscribers. I am a new convert from Reddit and don't understand what is going on.
Another community I wanted to join with 1.5k subscribers and lots of posts, came up as zero subscribers and no posts when I searched for and went when signed in. It showed that it was the correct community page, but nothing there.
Am I on a bad server?
I don't understand, and I think that would actually be some kind of bug. If a specific server shows different numbers logged-in vs anonymous.
Are you mixing up the words "community" with "instance"?
Instance means server. Lemmy.ml vs. Lemmy.world
Community means topic, such as !historymemes@lemmy.ml is a community
A Community has a "home instance" (server) that is where the community first originated and was created. Typically the home of a community is where the full copy of all comments, posts, votes are kept. But I suppose it is possible for even them to purge content to save storage or improve performance (or some other reason).
A Community can be subscribed to by remote instances. This is where there is a lot of end-user and new admin (new isntance) confusion. It is not automatic to get all content from all other instances. The very first Community subscriber on an Instance starts the flow of content from the "home instance" of a specific Community to this specific now-subscribed "remote Instance".
ALSO NOTE: there are bugs in Lemmy "replication" logic. Such as delete of a comment not going to all Instances for a community. As of version 0.18.2, the actual side-by-side comparison of two instances for the same Community can show such inconsistencies. I have personally run such comparisons with !lemmy_helper@lemmy.ml code. There isn't currently a mechanism I'm aware of to fix these issues.
Back to what you said:
If your remote instance has never had a subscriber to that specific Community, flow of data begins at the time of your subscribe. It does not do what is called "back-fill" of votes, comments, posts that may go back 4 years of Lemmy servers being online.
Does that sound like your situation?
I think I got it now. The reason I saw history from other communities on my server is because others had subscribed (from my server) and started a history for my server from the time they subscribed. In this case now, I was the first and so no history. Is that correct?
Also when I see a very low subscribed number for a community on another server (from my server) it is because that number shows how many people from my server are subscribed only. When I visit the server where the community is hosted and see a large subscribed number, does that represent the total number of subscribed to that community across all servers or the number of subscribed only for the server that hosts the community?
Thanks
yes, that is likely the explanation and why people get confused. if you are on a popular server, it is unlikely you are the very first and it can appear that it is automatic.
Yes, which I actually consider a bug, not a feature ;) It under-represents the community and makes it look unpopular.
So is there a place I can see the total subscribers for a community over all servers? Is that the number that shows when I visit a community on the server it was created on?
yes. The "home instance" of a community has the total subscribers list. But replication has been imperfect, especially in 0.18.1 and earlier. There were a lot of problems with stuck subscribe "pending" and lists not being accurate. And just a few days ago I was testing Lemmy's latest server code and found that a user deleting their account does not unsubscribe from the communities they follow... so the number can also be inflated.
Got it. Thanx