Be the change you want to see in Lemmy
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As someone who is "stuck" here after being permabanned on all accounts on reddit I can say that the number one "issue" Lemmy has is also the greatest part about Lemmy. The fact that every instance can have its own copy of the "same" sub.
I completely understand why someone coming from reddit is going to search up "ask" and they will see a few ask Lemmy subs coming up. At a glance they won't know which one is "better" and why there are multiple.
Sadly most people will turn around and leave at that point. The average internet user will just go somewhere else the moment they feel lost or confused by anything. The few that might stick through it and make a post asking why there are multiple instances of the same type of sub are likely to be spoken down to by a bunch of condescending nerds that feel superior to outsider idiots. I know that many of you are very kind and welcoming, but enough of the user base are elitist pricks about everything that new users will notice immediately.
Lemmy can't seem to decide if they want to grow or if they want to gate keep. I think the reality is that as more people are blanket banned from reddit without any reason such as myself that people will keep slowly trickling in.
The only "change" I think Lemmy needs is its user feedback. I have been banned from so many subs for completely unrelated things and without going and looking up the mod logs for my own name I wouldnt have any clue whatsoever. I would just think that Lemmy was broken constantly since it just gives you submitting errors instead of telling you that you have been banned or anything.
The "automod" messages are basically useless as they don't tell you what rule you broke, which comment it was specifically or who actually initiated the ban. I know they aren't always actually "automatic" bans because I have gotten messages from automod for comments I left weeks ago. So either they are the slowest and least attentive bots on planet earth or the mods of those subs are using the automod to hide behind as a layer of anonymity.
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Interesting idea
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If you see anything...that could be improved, the best option is to make that improvement yourself.
Are you under the impression that just everyone is a web developer?
Besides it would be impossible to reach an agreement who this default instance should federate with or how exactly it should be moderated.
If I may make a proposition: You can look at how Pixelfed allows certain instances that meet certain standards to opt into being listed in the app for discovery, all electronically. My recommendation would be to have 2 choices for users on sign-up:
- A random choice from the list of approved instances, that's rotated periodically to prevent any particular instance from being inundated with new signups
- "Choose a different instance" where users can enter their preferred one manually.
People can't seem to make up their minds if it matters which instance you join. I really don't think it does.
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Once you've read the Silmarillion, there's also The Children of Húrin. If you start from the Hobbit > LOTR > Silmarillion > CoH, it's basically a steady progression of increasing epicness and tragedy.
I suppose the Silmarillion is the most epic, but Children of Húrin is the most intensely tragic.
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It's a very different style. I couldn't slog through it
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That's a recipe for disaster if I've ever heard of one. Fixing Jane in accounting's monitor or figuring out the routing table for the entire enterprise. All top priority!
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Unfortunately the people advertising lemmy on reddit and elsewhere rarely link join-lemmy.org, and direct people to join a few large instances. So we'll likely keep having centralization problems for the forseeable future.
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Yeah. But its nice to have this platform. Its existence shows that people dont need big tech platforms to find eachother and communicate. Its not perfect but its a stepping stone and an inspiration for others.
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There are multiple similar subs on reddit as well though, often with very slightly different names
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You make a good point. The key difference is that some instances block other instances (or at least that has been my understanding of how Lemmy works from my limited time here). So depending on where they sign up they might not even be able to access certain subs.
Plus the "duplicate" subs on reddit tend to be one of two reasons. The original moderators let the sub die or enough people didn't get along with how the original sub was being moderated and they left to make their own copy. It's pretty rare that there are two identical subs that have equal engagement.
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It’s pretty rare that there are two identical subs that have equal engagement.
It's rare here too
[email protected] hs 1400 weekly active users
[email protected] has 470
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Are you under the impression that just everyone is a web developer?
The Lemmy documentation is just text
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Join-lemmy.org can provide a subpar experience: https://lemmy.ml/post/24730483?scrollToComments=true
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Nobody is talking about updating the documentation.
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That still doesn't address the fact that not all instances are created equal. And it's not immediately apparent which instances block others.
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I got you guys, lets start with daily standup to get everyone on the same page.
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Easier
If choosing a server and signing up is too "hard" for someone, then I'd rather they stay on Reddit.
Can Lemmy benefit from your suggestions, definitely. But the easy vs hard structure to these types of conversations feel a lot like the shopping cart dilemma.
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This is only if you aren't logged in. If you login to reddit you can use a VPN fine. It is still so incredibly annoying though.
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The great thing about Lemmy is that it is an open source project and you can tweak the UI yourself if you have a bit of HTML and CSS knowledge. Do not be put off my fancy words like Bootstrap, Inferno, Tailwind, many are just HTML, CSS, or Javascript under the hood.
If anyone on here is looking for a more a more accessible Lemmy theme, I helped make one recently for the instance RBlind: RBlind Lemmy Themes (Codeberg repo). I made detailed documentation as well which could be helpful for theme developers or for those interested in helping improve Lemmy's accessibility.
Since making the theme, I've been making some pull requests (PRs) with lemmy-ui and lemmy-docs to try improve the UI and docs based on some of the things I saw while developing the theme. I hadn't done anything involving PRs before but the Lemmy team dessalines and nutomic have been very receptive so far and offering helpful suggestions. The changes are small but every bit counts, and when they trickle down to all users I am hoping it'll be a positive change for many users.
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Oh interesting to know thank you. I nuked my accounts there so am not doing that, I guess.
