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?

screenshot

  • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    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?

    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.

    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.

    Yes, which I actually consider a bug, not a feature ;) It under-represents the community and makes it look unpopular.

    • opt9@feddit.chOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      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?

      • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.