Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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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?
When it comes to software things, I do tend to err on the side of supporting new users - I'll be the first to argue that a person should not have to learn how to use the terminal in order to use Linux.
That said, this situation is honestly bewildering to me. I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That's the very thing that makes federation great.
You're all seriously overthinking this. Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice because on most instances you're going to see all the same content as soon as you press the All button anyway.
One thing I can imagine that would make the experience better, is maybe if there was a one-click way to join or migrate to another lemmy instance, using an existing login. Personally I don't think it's a big deal to just quickly sign up for a new instance if I want to. But I did see that Pixelfed has the option of signing on by using a Mastodon account. So maybe something like that can help?
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How did people figure out what email provider to use?
They didn’t, they signed up for gmail.
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To be entirely honest if anybody like that comes here and bounces off that's great.
But that's not great. It's great if you're not interested in a social networking forum and want a meme feed sure but I don't. I want people, I want the damaged ego people and I want to ask and talk to them about how they ended up like that
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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?
For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.
The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.
It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.
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These people must have been paralyzed with fear when they had to choose an email provider.
I doubt they even know there's anything other than gmail.
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But that's not great. It's great if you're not interested in a social networking forum and want a meme feed sure but I don't. I want people, I want the damaged ego people and I want to ask and talk to them about how they ended up like that
I get you.
But honestly come I'm kind of liking the vibe here and it's not just a meme feed. More often than not you can have a real conversation with somebody you disagree with, you concied, they concied, learn a little bit about each other, follow a couple people maybe block a few assholes.
The first few redis exoduses filled the place with the people with the lowest tolerance for bullshit. Every time Reddit has a new Exodus, We get topped off with the next level of people that just want to watch everyone be pissed off.
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An improved version of old reddit with a good mobile view, which old reddit lacks.
That's UI. What they're talking about is the barrier to entry for new users, which falls under User eXperience
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You're confusing UX with UI. UX = user experience, the entire experience, UI = the interface.
UX is the entire user experience, and for example for joining reddit, you go to reddit.com and join.
For lemmy you learn there are dozens of large instances, with intricate politics between them and if you join the wrong one everyone thinks you're a tankie....That's terrible and i can imagine people are put off by it.
The interface of lemmy itself is indeed ok, and is close to old reddit, which at least the people here prefer.
I am aware of the difference
I was only commenting on one part of it
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For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.
The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.
It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.
Maybe this is a terrible thing to say, but I actually like that registering for federated sites requires a bit work.
IMO, the internet was more enjoyable when it was just full of us nerds
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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?
Maybe it’s personal bias but I’d put a lot more weight into the comments about
- too few members
- wtf is multiple servers?
While I understand the power, the ideal of multiple federated servers, I still see it as an impediment for use. I know there’s online descriptions but I fail to see why I need to research and choose a server, especially when none really have the membership to support smaller communities yet
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Who cares? If someone can't figure out how to join a server, then I don't want them here. If people think that reddit has some amazing UX, then I don't want them here.
The post about Lemmy has 500 upvotes while the crybaby replies only have like 100.
The question is: do we want people to leave corporate services, and join the fediverse, or not? By showing such hostility towards such "crybabies" we will never get any traction.
We are facing a problem. "Crybabies" are arguing about lack of content and/or difficulty on signing up. People on Lemmy are arguing that they don't want such users in their communities. Other people, thinking of onboarding, may not join after seeing hostile users like you.
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When it comes to software things, I do tend to err on the side of supporting new users - I'll be the first to argue that a person should not have to learn how to use the terminal in order to use Linux.
That said, this situation is honestly bewildering to me. I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That's the very thing that makes federation great.
You're all seriously overthinking this. Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice because on most instances you're going to see all the same content as soon as you press the All button anyway.
One thing I can imagine that would make the experience better, is maybe if there was a one-click way to join or migrate to another lemmy instance, using an existing login. Personally I don't think it's a big deal to just quickly sign up for a new instance if I want to. But I did see that Pixelfed has the option of signing on by using a Mastodon account. So maybe something like that can help?
"I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That's the very thing that makes federation great."
Because for every choice presented, people want to know the consequences of each one before proceeding. It's a well understood problem in sales and marketing. People do not want to put themselves in a position where they have to undo. Companies like Apple do this very well. In computer shops, the reason staff are hired is to help get the customer from "wanting a laptop" to "choosing one laptop", rather than walk away feeling that they need to think about it more.
"Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice".
Maybe if they said that on the signup page it would help. I think it would have helped me. But just because you have a sense of what "looks good" doesn't mean the average person does. It's the average person that I want to interact with on the internet.
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Could there be an option for a sorting hat that could either: look at the redditor's post history and determine a good server for them or simply spin the wheel. Either way would get the lazies shit posting without them having to learn anything about fediverse. I know I would have just spun the wheel.
simply spin the wheel
That’s how the Lemmy info page (what comes up when you search for “Lemmy”) does it, and the experience isn’t great.
Before I knew how Lemmy worked I just clicked the first option it showed, which (for me) was a non-English instance. The second option was that LGBT-focused instance that defederated with lemmy.world a few months ago. Of course I didn’t know anything about either community so I just picked randomly. I went right back to Reddit until they pulled the next anti-user thing.
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Maybe this is a terrible thing to say, but I actually like that registering for federated sites requires a bit work.
IMO, the internet was more enjoyable when it was just full of us nerds
That does come with the unavoidable side effect that the majority of the people will simply not participate. It then follows that sites like Reddit will continue to be the place where the majority of the people will go.
If your goal is to participate in small communities and you are okay with the slow pace of those communities, then that's fine. If your goal is to move people away from corporate-sponsored media for whatever reason, then this won't work.
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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?
donald glover saying good dot gif
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"I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That's the very thing that makes federation great."
Because for every choice presented, people want to know the consequences of each one before proceeding. It's a well understood problem in sales and marketing. People do not want to put themselves in a position where they have to undo. Companies like Apple do this very well. In computer shops, the reason staff are hired is to help get the customer from "wanting a laptop" to "choosing one laptop", rather than walk away feeling that they need to think about it more.
"Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice".
Maybe if they said that on the signup page it would help. I think it would have helped me. But just because you have a sense of what "looks good" doesn't mean the average person does. It's the average person that I want to interact with on the internet.
When I recommend federated sites to people, I literally just pick the ones I'm already on and send the link. Problem solved. They can learn more and try new things in their own time. It's also not hard to just tell them, "It's like email, but for the whole internet."
"Of Earth’s estimated 400,000 plant species, we could eat some 300,000, armed with the right imagination, boldness and preparation. Yet humans, possibly the supreme generalist, eat a mere 200 species globally, and half our plant-sourced protein and calories come from just three: maize, rice and wheat."
Would you consider biodiversity to also be bad ux? Maybe consider that the benefits of decentralization far outweigh the cons of your marketing programming, and that the issue is more one of education. Dumbing down and patronizing people like we need somebody to make our choices for us sounds like a solution that's worse than the problem.
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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?
Good UI (in my android app) is the reason I came to Lemmy.
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Right, but that's the issue. It can give them an extremist instance
Yeah but that's just join-lemmy, someone could make their own website that doesn't have this issue, even without overloading the user with info. It should only show instances that are middle of the road general instances.
Yes, that would be a good addition to the Lemmy ecosystem.
What I'm saying is, you can't agree that we should help them avoid extremist instances AND say that the instance doesn't matter.
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Joining is a bad experience. "Please commit now to a server on this service you know nothing about... Then you can try it out!" I understand the concept of decentralization, but it's ass-backwards...
Is it really a "bad" experience?
A "bad" experience is something like applying for a job online, submitting your resume, then manually entering all the information that's already on your resume into a thousand little boxes. A "bad" experience is trying to unsubscribe from a service that relies on the pain of that unsubscribe process keeping people paying every month.
Having to choose a server is at most a speed bump. Is it a "bad" experience to choose an email provider?
If that mild speed bump is keeping people from joining, that's fine. If someone cared enough to make some kind of a GUI that hand-held people through the process of choosing a server, that's fine too.
IMO, if we're talking bad experiences, ads on Reddit that are designed to look like posts, that's a bad experience. Ads that are designed to look like comments, that's a bad experience. And, the feature coming soon of communities locked behind a paywall, that's a really bad experience.
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Good UI (in my android app) is the reason I came to Lemmy.
UI =/= UX, and UX is what the comment on the post was about
