Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?
Thats my view, I prefer that Lemmy is small, I’ve had enough of the greater internet tbh
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Was your experience different between those 3-4 servers or was it pretty much universally consistent?
One didn't allow down votes. Seemed like a good idea. I rarely down vote. But in practice, when I do it's for a reason. And I want the option.
Another went down for roughly a week. So that didn't work out.
Which is one reason I embraced Communick; a paid instance. Been here since.
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Been using Lemmy for a couple of years, not seen this once.
Also, the ux is pretty much the same as Reddit.
These people are just stakeholders in Reddit. They are afraid of change, or losing any rep they have. They sit on a pile of useless upvotes.
Really? You never ran into the endless "...furthermore, .ml must be defederated" posts?
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Honestly, if picking a server is too difficult, how have you survived this long? It's literally like picking an email host.
That's the UX people are complaining about. How far have we fallen that making a choice is now a problem? "Pick what you like" leads to people going "OMG, this is terrible, I have to make my own decisions
" No wonder people love AI, because they can't think for themselves.The only improvement would be setting a default or giving them themes to choose from which they are interested in and selecting a server for them based on that.
Have you ever been on Facebook? Ever read the illiterate moronic uneducated garbage that people post as fact? It's called 'my truth'; maybe because it's only true in their sphere (of one).
There are going to be a seriously large number of people totally flummoxed by that question.
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it feels like old reddit
Wait, when did that become a bad thing? I exclusively browsed old.reddit.com because the new layout is a fucking abomination.
Yeah, it seems most people still on reddit prefer the newer mobile UI. I never used one of the 'fancy' modern reddit apps, and I'm lowkey scared for the inevitable switch I'll have to make when Eternity finally dies. All the other FOSS apps left have a very 'iOS' feel to them that I can't stand
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this is about 0.1% of posts… quit lying
Sure, but trends seem to hit harder here, probably because we’re smaller. There have been weeks where it seemed like 60% of the non text posts in my feed were about jeans or beans or vegan cat food. Those probably weren’t more than 0.1% of posts, but they sure felt overwhelming at the time.
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Potential hot take: Do we even want the majority of people here?
I don't really want them here, but I'd rather them be here than on reddit. Reddit is more toxic than this place and a lot of that comes top down. At least here people can spin off an instance the minute admins/mods act like dicks. There, the culture just gets worse and festers and it contributes to toxicity in the world outside itself. Imagine if the r/theDonald pricks have been ostracized and started their own instance which most instances defederated with quickly.
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You seem to be conflating "the vast majority" and "people my age". They are not the same.
You're also making a lot of global UX preference claims in this thread without sources or data to back them up.
You seem to be doing the same? Majority of reddit users are younger than op. People who use old reddit are objectively the minority
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Honestly, if picking a server is too difficult, how have you survived this long? It's literally like picking an email host.
That's the UX people are complaining about. How far have we fallen that making a choice is now a problem? "Pick what you like" leads to people going "OMG, this is terrible, I have to make my own decisions" No wonder people love AI, because they can't think for themselves.The only improvement would be setting a default or giving them themes to choose from which they are interested in and selecting a server for them based on that.
I think it's less about ux and more about being confused. People aren't faking being confused. I'm pretty tech savvy but had to do a double take. Still don't fully understand the nuances of federation after over a year and a half. I don't really need to understand all of it though.
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It's not difficult though. They just can't be arsed and are making excuses for being comfortable and lazy. If there was a $100 million marketing budget and their favourite celebrity was here, they'd sit an hour long entrance exam. The best we can do is make it fun enough here that people want to comment.
Exactly. If this minimal effort is keeping people out - GOOD. If you can't put the bare minimum effort in, then you'll just be another mindless TikTok type person and we really don't need those.
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You're thinking like a designer for a slick, centralised, profit-and-growth-seeking company (no shade, I'm guessing that thinking literally makes you good at your job). The fediverse is entirely about choice; if different instances want to have a different default look and feel then that's great and new users can pick one they like the look of, but insisting that everyone should have the one that you think is best isn't a meaningful or helpful change.
You're taking zero choice away from people, All I'm asking for is better defaults and guidance
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Couldn't we design an "onboarder" where when you get started on lemmy, a "let's get you started" wizard asks you 2 or 3 questions and based on your answers, it proposes 2 or 3 servers (or directly assigns you to one)?
join-lemmy.org already has this in a way:
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This reddit post likely has tens if not hundreds of thousands of views, look at the top comment.
Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.
What can we do?
There are aspects that could be better, sure. I think communities should be like sets of posts, subject to unions, conjuctions, and other set operations. Then you wouldnt have the issue of 5 versions of c/memes, they could be virtually joined into one memes community at the user level (and the user can filter out instances icon unities risers they don't like of course). Moderation could be decoupled from communities and made a broader service that users choose to interact with, agreeing to a level of moderation comfortable for their experience.
But also, put me in the group that thinks lemmy should stay small. Corpo social has convinced us that a single big room with every idiot and literally their mother screaming into it is how the internet should be and it isn't. We can go back to smaller, focused online communities that don't openly invite everyone to come in and fight.
Centralization tendencies are all rooted in power and control. We need to fragment more.
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join-lemmy.org already has this in a way:
Thanks for sharing! Very much aligned with what i have in mind... Only difference would be to narrow down to 1 or 2 (if at all) on the landing screen - maybe all other options are under a "advanced user? Click here to expand server selection" or something like that...
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You're thinking like a designer for a slick, centralised, profit-and-growth-seeking company (no shade, I'm guessing that thinking literally makes you good at your job). The fediverse is entirely about choice; if different instances want to have a different default look and feel then that's great and new users can pick one they like the look of, but insisting that everyone should have the one that you think is best isn't a meaningful or helpful change.
I'm not saying everyone should have the one I think is best.
I've said many times I don't have the solution, it's just painfully obvious that what we have now sucks. (goes against basic UX principles)
I'm saying the instances that care about not filtering out non tech savvy people, and that want to attract more users, should care and put some effort into this.
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Honestly, if picking a server is too difficult, how have you survived this long? It's literally like picking an email host.
That's the UX people are complaining about. How far have we fallen that making a choice is now a problem? "Pick what you like" leads to people going "OMG, this is terrible, I have to make my own decisions" No wonder people love AI, because they can't think for themselves.The only improvement would be setting a default or giving them themes to choose from which they are interested in and selecting a server for them based on that.
I think the most important part to understand with lemmy is that the choice of server doesn't matter that much because you can read and post on all the other servers as well. Unless you choose hexbear or whatever it is called these days.
But it really is a problem when people can't be bothered to choose from more than exactly one. I mean if you can make a selection from several different brands of toilet paper in a supermarket then why is it so hard to choose a server?
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You seem to be doing the same? Majority of reddit users are younger than op. People who use old reddit are objectively the minority
Thank you for including sources, this was my point to AnonymousWolf.
I should have said "they may not be the same" as I didn't check either. I stand corrected.
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Thanks for sharing! Very much aligned with what i have in mind... Only difference would be to narrow down to 1 or 2 (if at all) on the landing screen - maybe all other options are under a "advanced user? Click here to expand server selection" or something like that...
I agree, but people (read: instance owners) might disagree who gets to be seen up top and who won't make that cut.
It's a tough dilemma in itself, I will say. In the end, I think we should move this part of the joining experience until after new users are familar with the software.
So new users land at "lemmy.noob" or something, and when they are ready to spread their wings, they can choose the things I showed above to go and find the right home for them.
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it feels like old reddit
Wait, when did that become a bad thing? I exclusively browsed old.reddit.com because the new layout is a fucking abomination.
i came here to say the same thing! if people actually genuinely like the new reddit ui, those people might just want and need different things out of a website than we do, and trying to onboard them might be a fool's errand. not to be a gatekeeper, i'd love if everyone quit the corporate web, but a lot of the things people complain about here like the ui and the decentrilization are why i'm here (in my case mbin) and not there to begin with
same thing with mastodon, people still rail against it's ui but the ui was a big reason i even made a mastodon long before twitter was bought out, back when they first tried to phase out the chronological timeline
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join-lemmy.org already has this in a way:
The problem here is that those are filters, and the newcomer will usually still be faced with several options, which will still make them scratch their head.
A wizard is a good idea, with simple questions, rather than filter buttons.
But it needs to end up telling you "here you go, this is the one you want!", giving you just a single instance. Doesn't matter that multiple will probably match the answers given - then just pick one at random. Chances are, they will be equally happy on either, and if not, well, it isn't very hard to switch to a new instance later on, when they have become regular Lemmists.
