I’ve just launched dmv.social, a Lemmy community for us to chat about the area around DC, Maryland, and Virginia!

Joining DMV.Social is easy. Create an account, wait for admin approval, and you’re in! We’re excited to have you. Be sure to introduce yourself in !introductions.

Why are you running this?

I’m concerned about the direction of another popular link-aggregation site online but have greatly enjoyed meeting up with and chatting with folks in the area for the last few years. I’d like to help run a spot online to keep the local communities going.

Why do accounts require Admin Approval?

Primarily because I don’t want bot-spam and on the off-chance this gets popular, I need to ensure the server is able to keep up with load. There are limited resources to run this instance at the moment so I’d be open to finding volunteers to help out in the near future.

How is this funded?

Right now, out of pocket. I have zero interest in making money off this. If this instance becomes something you enjoy and you feel like you have to do something, thank me with a beer or coffee. Worst case scenario, in the future I might put up a “tip jar” or something but I don’t want to think about that yet.

Can I create a community here?

Absolutely! This is a general purpose instance, so create a community for anything you like – your town, a hobby, anything as long as it follows the rules.

How can I find communities?

There are two kinds of communities you can join: Local communities hosted on this instance and Federated communities hosted on other instances.

To keep it simple, if you just want to talk to folks around the area, look at this list: https://dmv.social/communities and click “Subscribe” to the communities that interest you.

If you want to branch out to communities hosted on other instances, things get a little complicated, so bear with me:

First, you want to go to another Lemmy server’s community. You can browse a server like Beehaw or use a community search tool like: Lemmyverse or https://browse.feddit.de/

When you open a community, you’ll see on it’s sidebar:

You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !community@server.org"

Do the following:

  1. Copy the “!community@server.org” to your clipboard
  2. Come back to dmv.social, click the “Search” button at the top right.
  3. Paste the “!community@server.org” into the “Search…” box
  4. Click “Search”, wait a few seconds
  5. Click the community’s name, you should see posts
  6. Click “Subscribe”.