You're viewing a single thread.
What does it mean “fetching communities on my home instance”?
Since no one answered: I think the users on the instance (copy of Lemmy) need to federate (connect) with other instances in order for the first instance to be federated (semi-permanently in communication) with those other instances.
I thought it had to do with communities
It is communities. You can be federated with another instance but until a user subscribes to a specific community it won't federate or appear in all
What is fetching
I think they mean being the first user to subscribe to a community on their instance. If no one else has subscribed yet it won't federate over. First subscriber needs to search the whole community url then after any others can find it in search just by name.
Instances only federate communities once a user has subscribed to them. Otherwise instances would be inundated with hundreds of communities no one even wants.
Yeah. The way it works with Lemmy is that communities are federated one-by-one with an instance, rather than whole instances federating with other instances.