Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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What did people say when you posted and asked for help?
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Some instances have very different rules on them that would affect your experience. Like not allowing downvotes, for example. Blahaj users can't see downvotes or downvote anything themselves.
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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.
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Why do we want more users? Because lemmy is insufferable. Im here, like many others, waiting for an alternative to reddit and hoping im already there.
No we dont need gatekeeping based on a users understanding federated servers. We need more people so the smaller communities actually have posts and we dont need to scroll the dumpster fire that is "everything".
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A counterargument to this is that a lot of people (who would put in the minimal effort) don't come here instead of Reddit because their niche community isn't represented well. So while it's nice to have higher effort/engagement members, you can't possibly cover all of what most people want to see without a lot of those.
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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.
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The comments here are smug as fuck.
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If a small, one time pop-up designed to solve your problem makes you give up on solving your problem then you were never going to solve that problem.
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Have you tried https://piefed.social/ ? Compatible with Lemmy (allows you to import your subscriptions list actually) and with a different approach: https://join.piefed.social/blog/
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Three is better than none. as long as the community exist and has some kind of activity even one post a month with three comments, you are doing your part to create a viable home for those who share your niche interest. In three months you might get up to 6 people, in 9 months 10, one year later 15. Its difficult going from passive consumer to one of the few active posters but you truly are adding value to the space just by trying.
Lemmy users like to present lemmy vs reddit usage as all or nothing, its not. Realistically you still use reddit for the niche communities that arent getting much interaction here. I do for locallama and dynavap. But ideally you cross post to the lemmy communities to add content here too so that those like you have a better chance to find a home.
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Hot take - I don't blame them. The who's federated with who and who can see what, and how it works is confusing as absolute fuck and extremely poorly explained.
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Unpopular opinion maybe but I like Lemmy and lemmy users and I'm glad that we're a bit different from Reddit. At least in my experience it feels a bit different.
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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.
