Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
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Technical aptitude != emotional maturity
Fuck end users I wish people still had to write dialup scripts to connect to the internet.
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Uh yeah. I’ve got no clue how to find new communities? Instances? Groups? Whatever the hell the equivalent of a subreddit is called. It’s not user friendly at all.
Whatever the hell the equivalent of a subreddit is called.
That's communities. Did you have issues with the communities link at the top of the page? You can switch it to the "All" view.
Also what the other comments said is good too, like for finding a very niche community I'll use https://lemmyverse.net/communities
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I've gone on this diatribe about PIxelfed's onboarding process, where they have a website that says "This page will help find the perfect server for you" and then is designed to present as little meaningful information about each server as possible. Looking at join-lemmy.org, it's marginally better. "You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which you choose" 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn't matter why make the choice?
Here's a question I have, because I'm honestly not sure: Let's say most of the communities I'm personally interested in are on example.lol. But my account is on sh.itjust.works. How much am I burdening sh.itjust.works by mostly reading and posting to example.lol? Would I be decreasing people's operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?
"You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which you choose" 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn't matter why make the choice?
This is a great point. If it doesn't matter, why not randomly assign you to an instance? The reality is that it does because some instances are political, and some federate with other instances that could give a negative impression of Lemmy. By people recommending particular instances to sign up to, shows that there's an element of calculation as to which instance to pick.
Onto your second point, your impact would be negligible. I wouldn't worry about that scenario.
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I've gone on this diatribe about PIxelfed's onboarding process, where they have a website that says "This page will help find the perfect server for you" and then is designed to present as little meaningful information about each server as possible. Looking at join-lemmy.org, it's marginally better. "You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which you choose" 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn't matter why make the choice?
Here's a question I have, because I'm honestly not sure: Let's say most of the communities I'm personally interested in are on example.lol. But my account is on sh.itjust.works. How much am I burdening sh.itjust.works by mostly reading and posting to example.lol? Would I be decreasing people's operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?
I guess even though you would be reducing their costs, in the spirit of the fediverse getting back to the internet’s roots, changing your instance based on the communities you interact with would kind of be like moving to a new email account host because most of the people you email are using it, which isn’t really a good or bad reason so much as a personal decision based on what you value.
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One central server is created. Users finally have an easy time joining lemmy and most are content with staying right where they are. A large amount of content is now centralized to one place. Suddenly, financial interests take notice of a large amount of untapped potential. Caving in to the opportunity to live an easier life under the warm blanket of money, the central server owner sells the server to the highest bidder.
The new central server owner defederates from smaller instances, eventually cutting themselves off from all other lemmy servers. Enshittification begins.
I'm sure there's reasons this couldn't happen but I think the biggest strength of lemmy is having users just randomly pick and then figure later. I started out on .world but didn't like their moderation and deceleration practices, so I moved.
Maybe you're right, but I think that the issue isn't that everyone was on one server, but there was nowhere for them to go without loosing touch with the people they connect with there. The fediverse can easily give people an out and they can still stay in touch with the people they want.
"I started out on .world but didn't like their moderation and defederation practices, so I moved."
That works for me. But most of us here have been running linux boxes on ARM devices for so long that we have trouble relating to the average user. I met someone recently who makes great contributions to Reddit posts like fact checking and providing digestible research. They're not tech savvy and I doubt we'll ever have the value of their contribution here while things are as complicated as they are up front.
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About the lack of an algorithm: do we really want to recreate the addictiveness of for-profit platforms? Is that actually a healthy feature? Perhaps it's better for society if our social media isn't as addictive as possible.
And on manual validation for sign-ups: before the mass migration from Reddit, most instances didn't seem to have validation, and then as it became popular, we got hit with trolls mass creating accounts posting CP and racist images, making it a game of whack-a-mole to stop it. As Lemmy is all volunteer run, we don't have paid content moderators always watching for that stuff, nor did they have an automated content filter. The main solution is to validate sign-ups so that the moderators and admins are not overwhelmed with spam.
And on manual validation for sign-ups
permissions/roles could improve this a lot https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3375#issuecomment-2657753039
Give thumbs up reactions on Github so the devs know what to prioritize
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I don't get how people get hung on choosing a server when people have been chosing a starter Pokémon since 1998 without any major issues. And you get just about the "same" amount of practical info.
Really, what tiktok does to a generation...
Picking a starter is easy. Everyone knows that pokémon is a game about collecting creatures, and everyone knows what fire/ water/ grass is, so no one's gonna be stumped. Not everyone is gonna immediately know what an instance is, or what it does, or what it's there for
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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". My god, imagine actively preferring the new reddit UI. Let them keep their shiny jangling keys instead of coming over here and pestering the devs for a snoovatar feature or whatever nonsense.
The 'maybe read for 2 minutes to figure it out' miniscule barrier to entry is a feature not a bug.
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I don't get how people get hung on choosing a server when people have been chosing a starter Pokémon since 1998 without any major issues. And you get just about the "same" amount of practical info.
Really, what tiktok does to a generation...
I suggested it to a few ppl and even offered to show them how to use it but they said it's "too hard to understand" sad times we live in.
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About the lack of an algorithm: do we really want to recreate the addictiveness of for-profit platforms? Is that actually a healthy feature? Perhaps it's better for society if our social media isn't as addictive as possible.
And on manual validation for sign-ups: before the mass migration from Reddit, most instances didn't seem to have validation, and then as it became popular, we got hit with trolls mass creating accounts posting CP and racist images, making it a game of whack-a-mole to stop it. As Lemmy is all volunteer run, we don't have paid content moderators always watching for that stuff, nor did they have an automated content filter. The main solution is to validate sign-ups so that the moderators and admins are not overwhelmed with spam.
Well, it's not because something has the potential to be addictive that it's necessarily bad. After all, a video game that isn't addictive at all could also be called boring.
I think the line between an enjoyable experience and unhealthy addictive features is drawn in user choice and the absence of malicious intent.
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my feed is full of communist vs communist vs non-communist drama. Can we frickin’ chill?
Block those communities?
They're not communist fight communities explicitly though. I haven't joined any communist-themed communities. It's just content that kinda bubbles up left and right.
I COULD start avoiding everything ".ml", but that sounds counter-productive.
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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 reddit was coming up, a big issue people had was it was too confusing with bad UI. People didn't know which subreddits to follow. Its very similar, theres just a whole other layer.
Just find a popular instance that is federated with similar instances. And making accounts are easy too, so just do it in two or three instances. Yeah it's a bit much compared to reddit, but it's very very easy.
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I've gone on this diatribe about PIxelfed's onboarding process, where they have a website that says "This page will help find the perfect server for you" and then is designed to present as little meaningful information about each server as possible. Looking at join-lemmy.org, it's marginally better. "You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which you choose" 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn't matter why make the choice?
Here's a question I have, because I'm honestly not sure: Let's say most of the communities I'm personally interested in are on example.lol. But my account is on sh.itjust.works. How much am I burdening sh.itjust.works by mostly reading and posting to example.lol? Would I be decreasing people's operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?
Would I be decreasing people's operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?
Likely no. If one person on the instance is subscribed to a remote community, everything is synchronized anyways. If no one is subscribed to the remote community then it's probably a very small and low activity community anyways, which means it's a drop in the bucket difference.
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This is intentional. There’s a contingent of Lemmy power users who are actively sabotaging a push to make it more accessible. Every time this comes up, they openly admit their intentions are to keep it niche, and continue gatekeeping.
If that's true then the problem will solve itself when Mbin or PieFed overtakes Lemmy. The content will be there anyways, we just need to see who brings the best UX/UI
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If selecting a server is too much, then directing them to a random on that fits their criteria should solve the problem. Which joinlemmy, joinmastodon, joinoixelfed, and so on do.
If even that is too much, then I'm totally fine without those people as I question what kind of stuff they'll be saying.
And this isn't even elitist. It's not "you have to have the ActivityPub spec memorised" or even know what ActivityPub is. It's like "which email host should I pick". No deeper than that.
If Facebook and Apple have eroded people's brains to the point where such a simple question cannot be answered without freaking out, then we're in trouble.
Upvoted.
If Facebook and Apple have eroded people's brains to the point where such a simple question cannot be answered without freaking out, then we're in trouble.
Yes. Thinking ability is gone. That's of last century.
Maybe I've just written my/our answer. Fuck that's depressing. Happily I'm old - I'll be dead soon. This will be your problem.
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The lemmy servers could also provide how much headroom they have for extra users and the selection wouldn be weighed based on that so that smaller servers wont be overloaded and larger servers get enough users. They could implement some of this into the lemmy api itself.
Good point
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JUST LIKE EMAIL YOU NITWIT!
We have very different perceptions of how people approach emails.
Guess how tech illiterates(?) approach email? They sign up on Gmail - perhaps with some handholding - and that's it. That's all they know or care about.
And before you say they don't deserve to be on the internet: they are all using Facebook, Youtube, Whatsapp, etc. Unless platforms like Lemmy actually treat new users better, there's not much incentive for people to switch.
They sign up on AOL or Yahoo Mail or Gmail. Or get an email address through their ISP.
"Here's your address." They use it.
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While I agree in general, there is a bit more as unlike email... Defederation is a thing.
They don't really need to know about that until they have had time on Lemmy to hear about what those defederated instances actually do
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People always use the email comparison but it's really not the same, it's more complicated than that. We know it's not too much of a big deal but it is when you don't know what it means to be on a server.
I remember being presented with a choice of servers myself and wondering what on earth it meant, and just wanting to join the "default" one. Ultimately it doesn't matter too much but at the time it feels like a big hurdle.
Maybe it's more like picking a football team
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None of that affects me, but if I switch, which one should I switch to?
The one I suggest the most lately is https://discuss.online/
