I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?
I’m a new user myself but have found the experience to remind me of Reddit back in the day, lol. It’s definitely giving me old-school yet modern vibes and it’s great to see something that isn’t Reddit growing in popularity!
I think Lemmy desperately needs to integrate two things:
- The ability to search for communities across instances inside of Lemmy (I’m aware of the search option outside of Lemmy, but that’s less than ideal)
- The ability to easily search within posts A) in all local communities, B) in all subscribed communities, and C) across all communities in the whole Fediverse. Yes, I’m aware that C) is a huge ask. But I think it’s vital to the success of Lemmy.
People are much friendlier here, so far.
There’s a learning curve with “how do I know which instance to join?” and then “how do I find communities from other instances?” But I’m getting the hang of it.
What it needs most is a UI overhaul. If Apollo came to the fediverse it would be a game changer.
Echoing many things that other users are saying already:
Signing up/choosing a home instance is confusing. I don’t think it’s very confusing conceptually, but it is confusing from a UX/UI perspective. Subscribing to outside communities was the toughest part, I had to find them through a different instance using a search engine, then manually paste the community-specific URL into my home instance search, wait several seconds, then click into the community home page and finally click “subscribe.”
Not something a casual user is going to want or even figure out to do. I trust that many of these growing pains will be fixed in the coming weeks/months. I just hope that it’s not all a flash in the pan and then fizzles out totally.
Once using it though, I like the general feel of it. Better themes and some cleaner UI choices and it will be really nice imo. People are friendly so far and that’s worth a ton right there.
I like the concept
But it feels very much like its been designed by nerdy developers and has had little to no-input on user friendly design.The federated idea can work but it needs to be more seemless than this.
- Communities with the same name should be merged when viewing it from any instance, so you can see all the posts from these communities, they can be moderated seperatley and for advanced users you should be able to select which communities make up the merged community.
- By default you should see all of the merged communities in a central place and be able to subscribe to them easily, at the moment its handled different per instance but you have to seek out these communities to subscribe or follow them.
- I strongly believe there should be a centralised log-in system, so you can log into any instance with an account from another instance, this means if your instance goes down your account is centralised and is safe.
I will make this my first ever Lemmy post:
Overall, this definitely feels like a promising alternative with some growing pains. The bigger communities are decently active but the decentralized nature of Lemmy carries the risk of some communities becoming too fragmented where communities are duplicated in different instances. As some other users have suggested, This could be remedied by creating “Super communities” spanning the Fediverse which could help with growing to a scale large enough to rival Reddit and incentivise even more Redditors to make the switch.
I’m enjoying the concept behind the fediverse, and while communities are small right now, they’re eventually gonna get bigger and be more centralized.
I think the UI/UX does need a little more work, but that’ll come with time.
Not a fan of Jerboa, but I realize that it’s early days. Hopefully we can get some of the UI people from the 3rd party reddit apps on here to develop a better client.
Feels like this might be the fediverse flavor that sticks with me. I tried mastodon and diaspora, but they didn’t stick. Didn’t help that I hated Twitter and Facebook.
This feels chill so far. I like it
I am enjoying it so far. I usually tend to lurk but the community is, as many have said, very welcoming and it creates an atmosphere where it encourages you to contribute (not just with up/downvotes but also comments).
True! Also I’m putting more effort in commenting and participating to try and make lemmy gain traction. When I’ll be satisfied with the amount of content I’ll go back to lurking lol
Heck, I might even quit the lurkin’ life if the trend stays that positive hehe.
It all reminds me a bit of the good old times of early reddit. People who are ready for conversation, relatively few trolling (and worse) and just a community or rather communities in the truest sense of the word.
But also I dont know how it is from a mods perspective.
Quitting the lurking life would be an unexpected turn of the events, but a welcome one for sure.
Yeah, the mods get rid of the trash before it gets to us, so our perception of that is definitely more positive than it actually is. Also I hope to be wrong, but I expect tons of sh*theads coming to lemmy during the blackout days, just trying to ruin something good to kill time.
Let’s stay vigilant and use the report button whenever necessary. Don’t want our fellow stranded redditors to have a bad first impression of lemmy!
So far so good - sh.itjust.works was showing off a solid looking infrastructure (which is so far seamless), so I joined there.
It feels a lot like 2010 era reddit in terms of content, with a whole bunch of people trying to resurrect memes and communities that grew up organically on reddit. I’m not sure if it’ll work that way, because there’s a natural difference in userbase, but best of luck to them. I worry that the difficulty of getting NSFW content online is going to give reddit a perpetual competitive edge, but totally appreciate the legal/moral difficulties wherein.
It took a bit to figure out how to sub to new communities, and along with a lot of other newbs, I’m hoping that that’s something that can be tightened up. Like, a browser extension or something that could recognise you’re logged into some instance, and then create a subscribe link on the page rather than the weird copy-paste-into-searchbar dance that seems to be the standard at the moment.
Overall, great to see that this works and grows. My thanks to the instance hosts and mods.
Fully agree about subscribing to communities outside your instance. That’s something that needs to be cleaned up if were aiming for widespread adoption. It’s too confusing for casual users as it is.
Considering Reddit’s desire to IPO and some of the comments on the spez AMA, I wonder how long reddit would really have an edge on NSFW content. It wouldn’t surprise me if they consider slashing that content similar to Imgur in trying to appease advertisers.
I’d be interested in hearing someone’s experience in moderating NSFW subreddits, since to my untrained eye that seems like it could be a grueling job. Not to mention mitigating legal risks associated with users uploading illegal content to a self-hosted instance.
Point on reddit being likely to shy away from NSFW stuff as much as it can. One day, there will be a mainstream advertiser that goes for an “edgy” brand image and allow for their ads on to appear on porn, and then all hell is going to break loose. I look forward to that day.
I’d also be interested in hearing from anyone who has dealt with moderating NSFW subs. Also the more sfw ones, like r/sex or r/bdsmcommunity, where they raise the hackles of conservatives in the US, but don’t constitute as porn.
The app I’m using (Jerboa) is a bit lacking, but I’m sure it’ll improve. I’m unsure about how accounts work with the servers, can I migrate my account if the server I am using shuts down? Communities are tiny and a lot are missing, but I’m sure those will grow and fill in as more people join.
It’s giving me some early reddit days vibes. I remember searching for communities that fit my interests, it felt less based on recommendations and more ‘pick your content yourself’. never felt the urge to post much myself on reddit, this feels like a place I would though.
Biggest downside I see right now is user base size and UI of mobile apps. Have only tested Jerboa right now, which feels like a very basic app (still working fine though!). once I get some customization capabilities back on mobile I’ll be happy!
And the user base will grow, the fediverse approach feels kinda nice.
Im testing out Mlem (iOS app) and it also feels pretty bare. It looks like Lemmy will gain more popularity and hopefully the new users stick around.
I’ll be honest. While I like the idea of decentralized social stiff, its also a huge issue. First you have to choose an instance, which isn’t too bad, but you can’t move. I hear Lemmy.ml being under pressure and I want to move somewhere else to help.with that. My account is 4 years old though and I can take nothing with me. Additionally this means all my content is on one instance. If that ever goes down, the network as a whole my keep existing, but my user and all I’ve put into Lemmy will be gone. And while I trust Lemmy instances more than reddit in terms of privacy, I’m not so sure when it comes to uptime and longevity. Finally, the whole concept of decentralized is hard to wrap my head around. My instance being separate from others but still being subscribed to communities of other instances feels unintuitive. Its the she issue I have with mastodon. I keep loosing track of instances, communities, apps etc. All with different names and logins etc.
For now, I’m trying to get used to Lemmy and just search for communities I’m subscribed to on reddit and see how it goes. It definitely works well enough. Just some conceptual issues I might have to get used to.
It’s pretty nice. I do hope it picks up more activity of course, but it’s just been a chill and low key sorta thing for me so far. Way less toxic than most other sites I’ve used.
