What's up with @ and ! across the fediverse?
If I have understood things correctly, communities can be tagged across the fediverse by including an @ for the community name, for example @kbinMeta . In Lemmy ! Is used instead, making !asklemmy@lemmy.ml the preferred format. Lemmy still, however, seems to be displaying posts from other fediverse platforms linking the community using @.
The problem with the @ is obvious, and especially so when clicking one of those links from kbin: there's no way to distinguish users from groups. ! seems to solve this problem, but effectively isolates Lemmy from the rest of the fediverse.
Is there a logic to this, or is it still work in progress? What is the best (platform agnostic) way of linking communities, and when can users expect their posts to show up in the relevant Lemmy/kbin communities?
kbin and lemmy are two different services that interact with the activitypub fediverse. As you mention, they have different standards for linking communities/magazines. There's not really a fix yet. Notably, there's a kbin browser extension to convert ! community names into the proper link.
you can use [link for kbin](/m/kbinmagazine@kbin.social) and [link for lemmy](/c/kbinmagazine@kbin.social] to link a kbin group to kbin users or lemmy users respectively in a way that will work 100% of the time (albeit two separate links). This is what's suggested in lemmy's @newcommunities group.