Defaults are crucial for good UX and getting more users on the Fediverse
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This looks so nice!!
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Default instances would go a long way
No, suggesting actual websites to people, rather than "Lemmy", would go a long way.
Default instances result in centralization. In recreating the existing structures that, ostensibly, we're all here to reject.
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It's a very easy change to default 'Auto expand media' to true for half of new users, and see what effect it has over a few months. It's also a fun experiment with no real drawbacks.
Writing the code to do that is very easy, determining what metrics are actually important and impact user success and what metrics accurately track user success is much harder.
I do generally agree though! Personally I just asked the instance admins of lemmy.ca to redirect
lemmy.ca/r/...URLs tolemmy.ca/c/...URLs as a tiny user facing feature for Redditors coming over, and they did it in a second. -
Yeah, if I hadn't been so committed to Rexit, I doubt I would have stuck around long enough to find a UX that I liked. Just to name one, it'd be nice if MLMYM were a default skin.
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That's my point, it's so many loops people aren't going to jump through.
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Sure pulling the metrics might be a little harder. But it costs us basically nothing to experiment.
Small changes like the one you mentioned is a big win, these things add up.
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There's faster ways to get data. We can do a few surveys on existing users. We'll get hundreds of responses easily. Perhaps multiple surveys, one for each setting.
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But it's all public, right? You can't block people from seeing stuff you post publicly.
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If people went as far as registering in a Lemmy instance, they clearly have some affinity towards the Fediverse. Getting through Fediverse to work nicely for them is what bridges the gap. It's the same with anything people do. Better defaults is a trivial low hanging fruit that can help perhaps significantly.
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That's a great point and a really low hanging fruit that would likely help with adoption and retention. The defaults weren't great for me either.
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We have a few different frontends available on feddit.uk, you can easily tell a new user that there are different ways of viewing the same content and to pick their favourite
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Agreed. And the default UI hasn't even gotten attention in the past. It's just there. My experience with Lemmy has been that the devs fix bugs, but they're mostly focused on the backend. I'm not sure aboit the consequences, though. A lot of people seem to be using phone apps, so their default might not even be Lemmy's UX.
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What makes you think it sucks? That's just your opinion, do you mainly just look at image posts? Personally I prefer posts being collapsed by default so I can scroll through and find the interesting ones. Arbitrarily setting one thing as the default is just as bad as setting another.
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I agree, a gateway drug is what we are looking for. Imagine trying to learn how to run before you learned how to walk. We are asking a lot of the masses if we want to see user growth here without a simple and easy to understand starting place.
I think the hardest concept for beginners to grok is that they can’t login with one account to all instances. If we were to improve the UX around that experience solely, we would see greater adoption.
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