Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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I found a beautiful web client for Lemmy that I wish was the default experience. It would surely help Lemmy in gaining popularity.
here's the link: https://phtn.app/
something in the same direction can be found under https://blorpblorp.xyz/
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Well ot kinda was true for the time of the big reddit exodus, there were very active and massively upvoted threads about one instance defederating from another, instances debating on whether they should defederate, beehive publicly wondering whether to ditch lemmy etc
Indeed, but by now everything seems more or less stable.
There might be a future event when instances decide to defederate lemmy.ml, making effective that there is actually two large spheres in Lemmy
- .ml, lemmygrad, hexbear (whatever their future name is)
- LW, SJW, feddit.org, Blahaj, lemmy.zip, sopuli, discuss.online etc.
Some instances want to stay connected to both (lemm.ee, lemmy.today, SDF), but they're not that many
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Wait wait wait... This implies people like new reddit... That shit makes my eyes bleed wtf
I like new reddit. It works well, I just wish I could keep it the same as it is. I HATE Lemmy desktop UI and nearly went back to Reddit because of it. Voyager for mobile and photon for desktop. Honestly photon for both might be better but I'm apparently the 1% of people on Lemmy that actually prefer an app over a website
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The transition to what? Why am i using piefed?
You mentioned that Lemmy was insufferable, so I offered an alternative.
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The reddit concept of subreddits also doesn't work well with federation IMO (at least no Lemmy's implementation).
Want to talk about video games? Well, there's no /r/games, instead there are bunch of different /c/games on different servers with varying amounts of activity. You basically gotta make the "pick a server" decision again whenever you post something. If you make the wrong choice, your post might not get seen by anyone, and even if you post to the biggest sub, you'll be missing out on eyeballs from people on other servers who aren't subscribed to that instance for whatever reason.
For example, lemmy.ml/c/linux_gaming and lemmy.world/c/linux_gaming have around the same number of subscribers. Should I post to both? Maybe the same people subscribe to both, so that's pointless? Or maybe I'll miss out on a lot of discussion if I post only to one? There's no way for me to know.
For me, it makes Lemmy less useful than reddit for asking really niche questions and getting useful answers. For posting comments on whatever pops up in my feed though, it works great.
I don't have any good solutions to this, and I'm sure it has been considered already. When I first joined, I remembered seeing people bring this same issue up, but it doesn't seem like it went anywhere? (Or maybe it did?)
I think this is a wrong mindset, you are supposed to be posting for the community, for the members of that community, not to be seen and praised through all the instances because that's how we got to the problem of getting the same post repeated over and over by the same person/script in all.
Of course that's my old man way of thinking, things should be posted once and let it federate, if it didn't reach an instance someone else might post it there, no need to hold all the glory, karma is just a number on lemmy anyway.
Unless they are a seller, then I'd see a reason for them to be creating spam. -
What's there to understand? Does the average person understand that reddit consists of a frontend written in a frontend framework that compiles to HTML, CSS, and JS? Do they understand that HTTPS is used to make the request between the client and server on port 443? Do they know that the request is processed by a back end connecting to postgresql and redis or memcache for faster responses? That most assets are probably delivered by a CDN?
Probably not. And why should they? They don't need to understand how the fediverse works, nor do they have to understand how email works. All they need to do is select a server, create an account, and start interacting. Same as email.
There's no mystery. The fediverse isn't complicated unless you freak out and start realising that the entire internet is more complicated than the shiny, glossy thing on top of it - which doesn't need to be understood to have simple interactions with.
What’s there to understand?
Starting off way too obtuse and disconnected from reality to have a conversation. Later.
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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?
I personally love Alexandrite.app as a UX. I'm so used to it that I get confused when I follow a link and see a default Lemmy instance, lol.
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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?
but it feels like old reddit
Yes, and that's a good thing.
There are lots of Lemmy apps that display posts in different ways. If you want "bells and whistles", then find an app that gives you that.
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Not necessailly federation, but I've seen a lot of people prejudge commenters for what instance they're a part of, most commonly calling people from .ml or hexbear tankies just for being on .ml or hexbear. It gets old really quickly.
I don’t think that’s what the person on Reddit is referring to, but judging people by their choice of instance is dumb.
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There are a few .world posters who make two to three posts a day about how much they hate lemmygrad hexbear and .ml.
Well that’s just a waste of time really.
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Not necessarily. That's just what I did.
The point is, they aren't making a permanent decision. They can switch or move at any time for any reason.Yeah but you have to see it through the normal-user eyes, for them just creating a new account is a whole ordeal, then they see that ordeal makes them investigate the server before picking and then it turns out they picked wrong... For them that's that and they delete the app (never deleting the account, mind you), branding the whole lemmy experience under whatever server they picked first.
If there was some sort of... Quiz? That could help them pick... But a brutally honest one, since some instances have pretty extremists opinions, new users have to know what they are dealing with.
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You mentioned that Lemmy was insufferable, so I offered an alternative.
Isnt that a lemmy clone though? If the userbase is the problem why would a new interface help?
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I think that's more of a feature, not a bug. It means if one group is doing a shitty job of running their community, it's easier to find another group of the same nature. I've noticed a lot of communities on .world are run a lot like the most popular subreddits where moderation of posts is highly aggressive, and seems aimed more at curating "high quality content" than actually being a community. Okay, easy enough, I just start posting to similar places on other instances, or start my own.
a lot of communities on .world are run a lot like the most popular subreddits where moderation of posts is highly aggressive, and seems aimed more at curating “high quality content” than actually being a community.
Also
- name squatters mods who never post anything but just stay there as the sole mod because they were there first
- powertripping [email protected]
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The UX once you figure out what works for you in Lemmy is nice, the UX getting to that point is terrible, as many have said.
Most will quit before getting to the good part.Yeah, the UX of alexandrite, Voyager or even the Voyager web app for PC are sublime. I don't see any difference from reddit tbh.
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Really? You never ran into the endless "...furthermore, .ml must be defederated" posts?
Cofigure swipes to hide posts and just swipe them out? Idk, it's not hard.
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What would prevent the same happening in the next wave of rats jumping ship? They don't know anything about the servers or their niches, so they pick whatever. Listing all the servers and their missions is a good start for those motivated to join, but for those more on the fence, how do we ease the transition?
I’ve mentioned a list with info of some nature a few times, with people shutting down the idea. It always boiled down to “the instances may lie about what their instance is about”. In their heads what their write may be the truth, even if it isn’t. This would leave it up to a third party to make summaries of these instances, which may or may not be agreed upon. There may be too many drastic and conflicting ideologies.
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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, Lemmy doesn't need morons like these
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It’s why my less “tech savvy” friends won’t join. They don’t understand what federation is, and No they don’t want to take 2 minutes to learn.
It’s annoying, but it’s reality. People don’t understand the whole different servers thing, federation, and how to pick one.
I realize marketing isn’t a strong suit (nor should it be), but I’m proposing two solutions (well maybe not solutions, but something to help):
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A quick animated video showing the benefits of Lemmy and how this all works (if it hasn’t already been done yet)
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A service that basically simplifies and centralizes the signup process to one screen. During server selection, users can see the most populated servers and click on them to learn the specific rules for the server, etc.
Idk, maybe we already have all this…or this is just complicating the issue. Or maybe we only want people willing to take 2 minutes to learn about how it all works. Tbh that’s a pretty good natural filter for the types of users I want to be interacting and discussing with.
Agree. It's not about being smug or entitled or whatever. Getting a simple lemmy client on your phone and signing up for the most basic instances takes literally 5 minutes of reading tops. And that's for non tech savvy readers. If you can't put 5 minutes of effort into an online discussion forum setup, then how can you be expected to put even 5 minutes of effort into a discussion post or in reading an article before commenting?
It's a natural filter indeed. And a good one at that. Keep the short attention spanners who need tiktok level ease of use on reddit.
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https://piefed.social/ has user-level instance muting similar to Mastodon
Does this extend to users? Currently, blocking on Lemmy.World with Thunder, if I block instance A, and a user from instance A interacts with instance B, I see that interaction.
Mastodon et. al. block everything coming from that instance, unfollows everyone, the whole nine yards. So far, I can only block the communities for sure, and have to continue blocking each user I come across.
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The UX for both Voyager and Sync seem really good. I've tried it out on a device, you can scroll before logging in, and when you try to create an account there aren't loops to jump through and a default instance is pre-selected
Voyager is just Apollo for Lemmy is why I use it
