Compared to established, age-old platform? Yes, we’re less developed. But do you know what’s even worse? Corporate greed! Rest assured, we’ll improve and mature over time.
The problem with federated services and I include Lemmy in this, is that first impression REALLY sucks. When you go to join it says “join a server” but it doesn’t explain in straightforward terms what that even means. Maybe some people know what federated means but most don’t care. Why are there multiple servers? What does it mean if I pick this server over that one? Why are they ordered like this? It’s the same issue with Mastodon. “Join your server” but wtf does it mean???
People are used to single services, not federated ones and it is confusing. Attempting to explain it (or not) will confuse people even more. It’s so confusing that some people turn tail and run, hurting uptake.
Change the initial sign up flow on join-lemmy.org. Don’t say “join a server”, say “join Lemmy”. Don’t show a randomized, indecipherable list of servers, just pick one for them from the a curated core set. If someone wants to learn about federation or wants to choose a server, then provide an option to do it, but don’t just throw that in their faces. In other words, make it as simple as possible to sign up.
After people get over this hump and sign in, things become a bit less confusing but there are issues there. The ordering and even naming convention of communities is chaotic. It would be useful to think how to clean that up too.
That’s a good point. To add to this, default to showing all communities and all federated posts instead of local communities and posts.
Yeah true i once visited a website that you just inputted what you liked, what your language was and the max and min of members on that site and it would make a list for you. They should do it like that since you join the server that you most fit in.
I gotta admit, it’s very confusing trying to figure out where and how to sign up. You got a bunch of separate servers, I mean instances, and each has different things going for it but they’re also all connected, it’s kinda hard to wrap your head around at first. If you want to sign up for reddit, you sign up and you’re there. That’s what we’re used to, that’s the norm. Also, the overload of lemmy.world is a bit sour but that’s inherently because the fediverse isn’t too well explained.
But this is actually really nice. Knowing where the server is, and who runs it, it’s much more personal. The (what do you cal subs here?) communities and also the infrastructure are run by passionate people, and huge props for that. That’s just so cool.
And the community subscriber numbers are extremely low. Like more people join and leave the reddit-equivalent subs every day than have ever joined some of these.
That’s true but it is getting better. As twitter and reddit continue to drive into the ground, more people will get fed up and look for better options. It’s a snowball effect. The reason so many previous social network alternatives died off was that people were annoyed by facebook/twitter/reddit but it was still all fine. With the latest changes, the reasons to leave are getting stronger and stronger. The more people migrate, the more people will have a reason to migrate as well. So I’m optimistic about the future.
as someone who just abandoned their decade old reddit account, I feel like the primary difference is exactly what it seems like it would be: the giant userbase. Don’t let’s bullshit, social media is a skinner box. It’s a place where you can press a button and get a quick hit of some sort of shallow social interaction. Whether it’s approval via an updoot, a comment, or even just someone trolling, every time i hit the button I get a little reward center stimulation. It’s not there with lemmy, yet. Federation is dope inasmuch as I can simply choose not to interact with huge swaths of the population that, in a centralized service, are just always there like seagulls on the shore, hollering and shitting all over everything. I love that part. But that also means that when I have a few seconds to kill and am looking for a quick pop of social media dopamine, I load up lemmy and the same posts are on the front page that have been there for two days now. This will improve a bit as there are more users and more communities within a few given instances, but for the most part right now Lemmy feels like a “once every couple of days” thing whereas reddit was generating (admittedly shit) content as fast as I could consume it.
All websites suck, but some are more sucky than others.
I feel like Lemmy needs to make the signup process easier. I shouldn’t need to hunt down an open community to register under. At least give people an option to default to a community like @lemm.ee (which sounds like it never closes registration) otherwise the site could lose people due to mere confusion. Example: I tried registering under the Linux portion of lemmy.ml, but was told I couldn’t because registration was closed. Had I not gone to Lemm.ee and tried, I would’ve simply moved on with the thought of “too confusing”.
I’m open to the idea that I’m way off base with how Lemmy works, though I think that kind of frames the issue I’m getting at - familiarity & ease of understanding.
I just joined - I understood the process from checking out Mastadon when the wave hit Twitter a while back, but it was confusing for me then, so I agree. What frustrated me off the bat here was that I created my account, verified my email, and just couldn’t log in. The page just wouldn’t even react. If I wasn’t so stubborn, I would have abandoned this for sure, so if that’s happening to anyone else, would be a problem.
Do we really want the people who can’t figure out how to sign up? I know some of the explanations of federation are bad, but it doesn’t take more than three minutes of reading to get a grasp on what it is.
yes, actually. we want all flavours of people, including those who aren’t technically minded. artists, musicians, etc. plus; if it’s hard to join, you might put off those who, once they understand the site, actually end up contributing to its development. nobody is going to put in pull requests for a service they don’t use, and if there are objectively worse but easier to start using alternatives out there, they’ll use them instead
technological knowledge is no indicator of moral standing, you know
I’d argue signing up for a website isn’t technically challenging in 2023. And I wasn’t implying it had anything to do with morals. Someone turned off by the thought of having to learn to use a platform isn’t likely to bring anything valuable to the table.
Regarding user interface, I dont know how polished people really need, and polished how? Simple is good. Lemmy browser app is already way better than reddit ads and popups crap.
Lemmy browser app is already way better than reddit ads and popups crap.
Yes, but people aren’t coming over from the new reddit, they’re coming from old reddit with RES, which lemmy cannot even begin to resemble. I mean we don’t even have keyboard navigation yet!
The only issues I’ve had so far were being utterly unable to find a community in another instance regardless if using [email protected] or [email protected] or any other combination.
If I can’t find it just searching for “community”, it simply doesn’t show and I can’t subscribe.
Reddit refugee* (2 e’s lol) here- I definitely gave up the first time I tried to sign up for Lemmy. Only the absentminded attempts to open my old Reddit app convinced me to keep trying here lol.
I was pushed this way from the Sync developer, as apparently a few other folks were. Still working out how everything works on Jerboa in the meantime.
Just out of curiosity, what have you found difficult about Lemmy?
I’m not the OP here but my biggest hurdle has just been finding similar communities to the ones I regularly browsed on Reddit. I don’t totally understand how the difference instances work here, or if that affects different communities being visible when I’m searching for something. It seems that if I am signed out of my account on one instance and search for something then I get a lot more results vs if I’m signed into this account and try to search.
I’m also using Jerboa, but was a Sync Pro user for years before. I’m looking forward to those devs releasing an application for Lemmy in the future.
Yes, discoverability is a large weakness of federate systems. As I understood it:
- Instances host communities
- You can access communities from other instances
- To find a community hosted on another instance via search, at least 1 user has to have explicitly interacted with that community (search for it using the full name including instance name)
- This registers it to your ‘home’ instance
- This means, if no one searched for it explicitly, you won’t find it and won’t know it even exists.
Second, due to instances being separate, there can be multiple variations of the same community. For example, a community “Technology” could exist on 10 different instances and is entirely independent from any other with the same name.
First of all - we need a good mobile app. Jerboa on android is usable, but definitely not worthwhile. I can’t tell how many times I accidentally quit the app while swiping. I believe Boost for lemmy will push it forward. Just give it time…
Edit: Jerboa was just updated and it’s fixed!
A good app is key. Even though the mobile website works pretty well lots of people prefer having an app. Have you tried any other apps? Here’s a comprehensive list of current apps in development: https://lemdro.id/post/4319. Maybe you can find an available one that works better for you than Jerboa until Boost is available. I think most of these apps are very new, so like you say we have to give it time while they get improved through further development.
I’m waiting for Sync. Sync for reddit was amazing and it will be converted to Lemmy in about a mont.
I used Boost for Reddit for a long time and now looking forward for it for lemmy. I’ll try out Jerboa while waiting.
This article reads like a true reddit dick rider. If you were on reddit pre 2015 you would know lemmy feels like old reddit. I actually kind of love it
Pre 2015 Reddit had quite a bit more activity even back then. But I like the small community feel rn. It’s just that most communities are lacking and content discovery is hard in this federated universe
Part of me is wondering if the whole reddit-style format will die with Reddit the way blogs kind of aren’t a thing anymore.
Stephen Colbert flashed the reddit alien on the Colbert report in 2009 I think. Reddit was very usable with a lot of traffic even back then. Lemmy isn’t going to get a shout out on a major mainstream show anytime soon is my guess. It’s not a fair comparison, it’ll take a long time for Lemmy to get to 2015 Reddit levels as far as polish and traffic goes.
I’m fine with that. I would take a 2011 reddit polish and traffic.
