Are you testing from there? I'm surprised any link works, local subscriber or not. I went to Moist, and could see that 'The Onion' community had been resolved, but when I tried the link from a 'trendingcommunities' list on Moist, it didn't work, because mbin puts everything at '/m/' rather than '/c/'.
If you're testing from lemmy, I made a video the other day of what happens when you click on a link that doesn't already have a subscriber. It errors at first, but if you wait for the backend to complete everything required, a refresh will bring it through.
I can't test what happens with mbin, because instances don't typically resolve remote objects if you're not logged in, and I don't have a mbin account. It's possible that a 'wait-and-refresh' brings it through, but - like I say - I'm surprised any link works on there.
things may have changed recently, but the /c /m thing is kinda of irrelevant if the links are crafted the right way
communities dont 'just exist' in every instance they are created as they are 'seen'. if a user clicks on a link with the expectation it exists (direct to /c/%com, /m/%com) it will fail with 404 if it has never been seen
if the link is crafted to push through the search of the instance, the user can get to the community regardless if the instance has ever 'seen' the community.
if the link is crafted to push the the search function, it works no matter what:
I happened to see on another post that mbin will resolve links beginning with a '!' - I signed up to moist to check, and they go to the '/search?q=' link. This is an mbin specific thing, so maybe I misunderstood when you mentioned crafting links to go there.
I changed all the links today to use these ! links. This is how the very first post was on this community incidentally, and the very first comment was someone saying they don't work on Jerboa. This is the official lemmy app, so I changed to the /c/ version. Since then, Jerboa has changed to support them, and I tried the links on other apps, and other front-ends, and they all work.
Future posts in this community will use this link format, so they'll be compatible with lemmy, mbin, and whatever other fediverse apps support it (I tried with Mastodon, but I don't think they like relative links of any kind).
(shit, sorry, replied from the bot account - freamon)
i love these posts, and using them to find new communities to subscribe to.
im really just rooting for the most universal access method, which this seems to be. i specifically requested mbin be modified for this reason as it used to utilize the @comm@host instead of !comm@host, eliminating a differentiating pathway.
again, thank you for helping us all link together!