A way to list and allow subscribing to a remote instance's communities (inc. NSFW) from my home instance

[davidgro]

Requirements

• [X] This is a feature request and not a bug report. Otherwise, please create a new bug report instead.
• [X] Please check to see if this request (or a similar one) already exists.
• [X] It's a single feature. Please don't request multiple features in one issue.

Describe the feature you'd like

Please add a way (a type of page/URL) to open the Communities page of a remote instance while logged into my own, which shows All of the communities that it federates if my local user settings allow showing NSFW, minus any communities that I have already blocked, and has the usual subscribe buttons, including current subscription status. Each community listed should have a link to view that community through my home instance.

Currently discovering and subscribing to remote communities is a very cumbersome process involving at least copy and paste, and/or manual URL rewriting. For instances that don't allow user sign-ups, it's currently not even possible to see the full communities list unless they patch the server-ui code.

This new feature would allow for a much more streamlined experience for users who find an interesting instance and want to discover and subscribe to communities that it has.

How to expose this feature: Perhaps easiest would be a text box and go button on the local Communities page to submit a different instance to view, and an associated URL format to open such pages directly. I have another idea, but it would deserve its own feature request later if this is implemented.

[luthis1124]

This is really needed, it's incredibly difficult at the moment.

To the point where I didn't even bother and just made yet another account on another instance because I couldn't be bothered with all the copy pasting.

There should be a way to view communities in another instance from your home instance. I think this is one of the major things holding back Lemmy.

[Die4Ever]

currently not all communities would be listed though, only the ones your instance already knows about

I think Lemmy should save the name of every community on every federated instance, it would make things smoother, searches quicker, and it shouldn't take up much disk space if all you're storing is the community ID and name

with "Remote Follow" maybe this feature request isn't as necessary anymore, but it would still be nice