Lemmy search works pretty well on larger servers, and they're indexed by major web search engines.
The microblog side of things is worse, with Mastodon long having near-useless search because it might "encourage negative social dynamics" or some such. Some other software, such as Akkoma has had better search, and Mastodon has recently improved somewhat for accounts that opt into being searchable. Mastodon directs search engines not to index most pages.
Some people get very upset about attempts to build general-purpose fediverse search tools.
I think it's a small, but very loud minority who have unrealistic expectations about how other people will use data they share in a manner that's inherently rather public. I kind of see where they're coming from, but ActivityPub with open federation doesn't work that way.
The history of the internet is full of examples of companies taking data about or creative output from people and trying to make money from it without permission, in ways the original creator might not like. Nobody has gone there with a Fediverse scraper or search project that we know of yet, but it's going to happen if the Fediverse gets big enough.
Some people want to be able to easily share things with a certain audience without them being easily discoverable by a different audience. There are of course privacy settings to control visibility and software like Matrix that provides not only access control by cryptographic security, but those add friction. It's only possible for this group to have it both ways if nobody develops good search tools, which turns some of them into bullies.
I agree. I also notice a constant push to ban anything that is deemed offensive, which in most cases is just a statement of opinion that someone did not like.
There are various websites that catalog all the instances they can find, but I can't remember the one I used back in the day an don't know if they search communities too or just instances
When you hit reply to a comment from the web client, there are several editor buttons you can press, like 'B' for bold font, 'I' for italic, etc. The farthest to the right is a circle with a '?' mark in it. The link I supplied is the same as pressing that button.
So if you don't trust the link I gave you, go to https://lemmy.world/ in your web browser, and hit the reply button for any comment, and then press the circle with a '?' inside of the circle button, and you'll be taken to the same page as "https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/users/02-media.html".
I feel like you're missing the point. Maybe I wasn't clear. Yes, Lemmy World does use it, however it's a feature of Lemmy itself, not just of Lemmy World. Lemmy World is just one instance of Lemmy and they all use the same markup.
My point is calling it the Lemmy.World markup is inaccurate and potentially misleading. Lemmy is more than just Lemmy.World.
I feel like you’re missing the point. Maybe I wasn’t clear. Yes, Lemmy World does use it, however it’s a feature of Lemmy itself, not just of Lemmy World. Lemmy World is just one instance of Lemmy and they all use the same markup.
My point is calling it the Lemmy.World markup is inaccurate and potentially misleading. Lemmy is more than just Lemmy.World.
I understand, but also, I was speaking directly to the link that exists in the Lemmy.World's web-based editor, I have no access to any other web-based or otherwise editors from other servers.
If the Lemmy.World web-based editor is maintained by the Lemmy devs themselves, then it is a Lemmy editor, agreed.
I'm not aware either way though if it is/not, and I've been arguing with people that take any slight ambiguity from me as ammo to attack me with, so I was being very specific, based on my own personal use-case and the specific server URL of the link I was speaking of.
I can only comment on my experience searching for communities in lemmy and people to follow on mastadon, but in both cases I am not sure I'd say "works quite well" would describe my experience.
But also that's not what I think OP was talking about.
They want a search engine for a random fact like google. It's been long true that you need to add "reddit" to the end of any google search to find the info you needed.
I can only comment on my experience searching for communities in lemmy and people to follow on mastadon, but in both cases I am not sure I’d say “works quite well” would describe my experience.