I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?
I’m a new user myself but have found the experience to remind me of Reddit back in the day, lol. It’s definitely giving me old-school yet modern vibes and it’s great to see something that isn’t Reddit growing in popularity!
I think Lemmy desperately needs to integrate two things:
- The ability to search for communities across instances inside of Lemmy (I’m aware of the search option outside of Lemmy, but that’s less than ideal)
- The ability to easily search within posts A) in all local communities, B) in all subscribed communities, and C) across all communities in the whole Fediverse. Yes, I’m aware that C) is a huge ask. But I think it’s vital to the success of Lemmy.
There’s a learning curve with “how do I know which instance to join?” and then “how do I find communities from other instances?” But I’m getting the hang of it.
What it needs most is a UI overhaul. If Apollo came to the fediverse it would be a game changer.
I like the concept
But it feels very much like its been designed by nerdy developers and has had little to no-input on user friendly design.The federated idea can work but it needs to be more seemless than this.
- Communities with the same name should be merged when viewing it from any instance, so you can see all the posts from these communities, they can be moderated seperatley and for advanced users you should be able to select which communities make up the merged community.
- By default you should see all of the merged communities in a central place and be able to subscribe to them easily, at the moment its handled different per instance but you have to seek out these communities to subscribe or follow them.
- I strongly believe there should be a centralised log-in system, so you can log into any instance with an account from another instance, this means if your instance goes down your account is centralised and is safe.
Regarding point three: I want to be able to migrate my profile to another instance if my current instance has performance issues or admins going rogue.
I think even better, you should be able to sign into any instance via some type of centralised federated login, though I guess the argument is you can’t do that in multiple email clients as email is the most popular federated example.
This may unironically be the first time I’ve ever suggested this: this may actually be a use case for the block chain.
If the user data from all I stances was being saved to a distributed and verified ledger, it would fix the problem of one node going down losing all of those users, and would be a decentralized yet centralized way to go about it.
… I feel dirty, I swear I’m not a cryptobro
That sounds like a pretty novel way to go about it!
I wonder how hard it would be to implement in practice?
I like the concept
But it feels very much like its been designed by nerdy developers and has had little to no-input on user friendly design.Pretty much this. I love the idea - it’s like the purest form of Reddit - it’s operated and moderated by community, but nobody’s is taking any profit here.
The app is a main downside - I’m using Jerboa and I feel like I don’t see a lot of posts I would get on the web. There is quite a few bugs there and there too.
Community is not as active too. I’m looking for some memes communities like 196, dankmemes and shit posting. Reddit, because it is such a huge audience, I could always find people to help me out with 3D printing or fixin my motorbike.
Your point #3 is by far my biggest concern with lemmy, and the reason that I made an account on lemmy.ml. It seemed big and populated enough to feel confident it wo t go away. The devs need to find a way to make that happen. Partly because of what you said but also because it’s super confusing to click on a link and suddenly appear to be logged out because it took you to a different instance.
I fully agree that for more casual users these 3 things are BIG turnoffs.
People are much friendlier here, so far.
Echoing many things that other users are saying already:
Signing up/choosing a home instance is confusing. I don’t think it’s very confusing conceptually, but it is confusing from a UX/UI perspective. Subscribing to outside communities was the toughest part, I had to find them through a different instance using a search engine, then manually paste the community-specific URL into my home instance search, wait several seconds, then click into the community home page and finally click “subscribe.”
Not something a casual user is going to want or even figure out to do. I trust that many of these growing pains will be fixed in the coming weeks/months. I just hope that it’s not all a flash in the pan and then fizzles out totally.
Once using it though, I like the general feel of it. Better themes and some cleaner UI choices and it will be really nice imo. People are friendly so far and that’s worth a ton right there.
Not a fan of Jerboa, but I realize that it’s early days. Hopefully we can get some of the UI people from the 3rd party reddit apps on here to develop a better client.
Feels like this might be the fediverse flavor that sticks with me. I tried mastodon and diaspora, but they didn’t stick. Didn’t help that I hated Twitter and Facebook.
This feels chill so far. I like it
I’m enjoying the concept behind the fediverse, and while communities are small right now, they’re eventually gonna get bigger and be more centralized.
I think the UI/UX does need a little more work, but that’ll come with time.
The app I’m using (Jerboa) is a bit lacking, but I’m sure it’ll improve. I’m unsure about how accounts work with the servers, can I migrate my account if the server I am using shuts down? Communities are tiny and a lot are missing, but I’m sure those will grow and fill in as more people join.
I will make this my first ever Lemmy post:
Overall, this definitely feels like a promising alternative with some growing pains. The bigger communities are decently active but the decentralized nature of Lemmy carries the risk of some communities becoming too fragmented where communities are duplicated in different instances. As some other users have suggested, This could be remedied by creating “Super communities” spanning the Fediverse which could help with growing to a scale large enough to rival Reddit and incentivise even more Redditors to make the switch.
I’m still a little confused but it’s sinking in. The difference between an instance and a “sub”, as well as how to join or interact with other “subs” without having to join each individual instance, was the part that was toughest to adapt to. I love it, though. Lemmy is giving me the feeling Reddit did when I first joined it a long, long time ago on my first ever account. It feels organic.
I am enjoying it so far. I usually tend to lurk but the community is, as many have said, very welcoming and it creates an atmosphere where it encourages you to contribute (not just with up/downvotes but also comments).
True! Also I’m putting more effort in commenting and participating to try and make lemmy gain traction. When I’ll be satisfied with the amount of content I’ll go back to lurking lol
Heck, I might even quit the lurkin’ life if the trend stays that positive hehe.
It all reminds me a bit of the good old times of early reddit. People who are ready for conversation, relatively few trolling (and worse) and just a community or rather communities in the truest sense of the word.
But also I dont know how it is from a mods perspective.
Quitting the lurking life would be an unexpected turn of the events, but a welcome one for sure.
Yeah, the mods get rid of the trash before it gets to us, so our perception of that is definitely more positive than it actually is. Also I hope to be wrong, but I expect tons of sh*theads coming to lemmy during the blackout days, just trying to ruin something good to kill time.
Let’s stay vigilant and use the report button whenever necessary. Don’t want our fellow stranded redditors to have a bad first impression of lemmy!
Confusing. There are communities I can’t subscribe to because I can’t access them from my instance, and I have no idea why that is. The experience has been interesting so far, and growing the network is going to be something I’ll be keeping an eye on. For now, though, I’ll have to wait until someone creates the communities I was a part of on Reddit.
Edit: It seems a community won’t show up on your instance’s community list unless someone in that instance is subscribed to it.
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I love it here and I’ll express myself and show love to all with manatees
