There have been various posts here in the last days describing how difficult it is for new people to start using Lemmy. In fact they are absolutely correct, it is much easier to get started on Reddit. But what many forget is that Lemmy is not a corporation employing dozens of full-time designers, running A/B-tests and so on. Lemmy is an open source project run by volunteers, with only @dessalines and me working on it full-time. Neither of us is a particularly good designer, and our time is mainly spent working on the backend (database, federation, api), and preparing the upcoming 1.0 release.
If you see anything on join-lemmy.org or in the Lemmy UI itself that could be improved, the best option is to make that improvement yourself. Both of them use standard web technologies (nodejs, tailwindcss, inferno etc). The userbase here is quite technical so there are many of you able to contribute. We rarely reject any pull requests as long as they make a real improvement. Though it usually requires a little back and forth to review the changes and then address the review comments.
You can find the source code for join-lemmy.org here and follow development instructions in the readme. Regarding the default Lemmy UI go here and read the documentation with development instructions. If you are not a developer you can still help, for example by improving the documentation. Additionally you can make changes to the texts for joinlemmy and lemmy-ui.
All this said, there have also been some suggestions to make onboarding easier by directing new users to a hardcoded default instance. This may sound like a good idea at first but won’t work well in practice. Running such an instance would take significant time for administration and moderation, but we maintainers are already too busy. Besides it would be impossible to reach an agreement who this default instance should federate with or how exactly it should be moderated. So if you want to get nontechnical users to Lemmy, the solution is to link them directly to a specific instance based on their interests.
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Hey if an old guy like me can figure it out its not hard .
They are entitled and don’t want to expend effort
FWIW, I think the design and layout of lemmy is superb. Way better than reddit, old and new.
You guys made a lot of good decisions.
The great thing about Lemmy is that it is an open source project and you can tweak the UI yourself if you have a bit of HTML and CSS knowledge. Do not be put off by fancy words like Bootstrap, Inferno, Tailwind, many are just HTML, CSS, or Javascript under the hood.
If anyone on here is looking for a more a more accessible Lemmy theme, I helped make one recently for the instance RBlind: RBlind Lemmy Themes (Codeberg repo). I made detailed documentation as well which could be helpful for theme developers or for those interested in helping improve Lemmy’s accessibility.
Since making the theme, I’ve been making some pull requests (PRs) with lemmy-ui and lemmy-docs to try improve the UI and docs based on some of the things I saw while developing the theme. I hadn’t done anything involving PRs before but the Lemmy team dessalines and nutomic and other contributors have been very receptive so far and offering helpful suggestions. The changes are small but every bit counts, and when they trickle down to all users I am hoping it’ll be a positive change for many users.
“Which server do I join?” seems to be a sticking point for a lot of people.
The “Browse servers” page does say at the top “You can access all content in the lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn’t matter which one you choose”, but on showing this page you immediately scroll that message off the screen. Maybe if you kept that bit visible it would help.
Also I think comparing it with email servers might be helpful. People already know they can email anyone from any email server, and that signing up to, say, Posteo, doesn’t mean you can only email other Posteo users.
it doesn’t matter which one you choose
That’s not really true though, every instance has it’s own rules, and it’s own federation policies, not to mention the other instances that don’t federate with it.
I’m already on lemmy, so it’s not like I haven’t gone through this before, yet I still haven’t made a pixelfed account despite being interested because I don’t want to just go for the biggest instance and I have no idea how to vet the other ones.
I think it’s better to keep it simple for new users. Tell them it doesn’t matter which server since that is theoretically true in a general sense. No need to overwhelm them with all the asterisks. Once they start engaging, they’ll learn the nuances and can change instances.
As someone who is “stuck” here after being permabanned on all accounts on reddit I can say that the number one “issue” Lemmy has is also the greatest part about Lemmy. The fact that every instance can have its own copy of the “same” sub.
I completely understand why someone coming from reddit is going to search up “ask” and they will see a few ask Lemmy subs coming up. At a glance they won’t know which one is “better” and why there are multiple.
Sadly most people will turn around and leave at that point. The average internet user will just go somewhere else the moment they feel lost or confused by anything. The few that might stick through it and make a post asking why there are multiple instances of the same type of sub are likely to be spoken down to by a bunch of condescending nerds that feel superior to outsider idiots. I know that many of you are very kind and welcoming, but enough of the user base are elitist pricks about everything that new users will notice immediately.
Lemmy can’t seem to decide if they want to grow or if they want to gate keep. I think the reality is that as more people are blanket banned from reddit without any reason such as myself that people will keep slowly trickling in.
The only “change” I think Lemmy needs is its user feedback. I have been banned from so many subs for completely unrelated things and without going and looking up the mod logs for my own name I wouldnt have any clue whatsoever. I would just think that Lemmy was broken constantly since it just gives you submitting errors instead of telling you that you have been banned or anything.
The “automod” messages are basically useless as they don’t tell you what rule you broke, which comment it was specifically or who actually initiated the ban. I know they aren’t always actually “automatic” bans because I have gotten messages from automod for comments I left weeks ago. So either they are the slowest and least attentive bots on planet earth or the mods of those subs are using the automod to hide behind as a layer of anonymity.
There are multiple similar subs on reddit as well though, often with very slightly different names
You make a good point. The key difference is that some instances block other instances (or at least that has been my understanding of how Lemmy works from my limited time here). So depending on where they sign up they might not even be able to access certain subs.
Plus the “duplicate” subs on reddit tend to be one of two reasons. The original moderators let the sub die or enough people didn’t get along with how the original sub was being moderated and they left to make their own copy. It’s pretty rare that there are two identical subs that have equal engagement.
It’s pretty rare that there are two identical subs that have equal engagement.
It’s rare here too
!movies@lemm.ee hs 1400 weekly active users
!movies@lemmy.world has 470
!fedigrow@lemm.ee discussed some consolidation in the past to centralize activity due to the smaller userbase
This is what I’m seeing so far. It seems very hard to find very active communities for various topics. Movies should be an easy one with broad appeal but even the ones you posted here are not that active.
And the seemingly most active one for television is called !showsandmovies@lemm.ee Why does it have movies in its name when the header is Shows and TV? Confusing and it’s not even that active.
That still doesn’t address the fact that not all instances are created equal. And it’s not immediately apparent which instances block others.
I usually go with
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/ if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
That way people are pointed to two reliable instances.
Easier
If choosing a server and signing up is too “hard” for someone, then I’d rather they stay on Reddit.
Can Lemmy benefit from your suggestions, definitely. But the easy vs hard structure to these types of conversations feel a lot like the shopping cart dilemma.
It’s not that it’s “too hard”, it’s that even a tiny set back for something that someone is already hesitant to do can be enough to make them not do it. It’s just easier to call that “hard” or “confusing” than say “even a tiny set back for something that someone is already hesitant to do can be enough to make them not do it.”
Then they don’t want to be here. Part of the reason this community is so great is because it’s fueled by those who actively want to participate in a place like this. It doesn’t have to be a place for everyone to be the best place for those here.
You can actively want to do something but be bombarded with minute ultimately irrelevant details and still get frustrated.
I honestly think most people will figure it out. I did. :)
In terms of the “default instance” suggestion, I have an interesting hybrid suggestion. What about having an “easy on-ramp” instance where you get registered for one month with a hard-exit (auto-migrate to other instance, perhaps using some kind of federated-auth/token system for the migration, and forced password-setup on first use of the new instance). At any point during on-ramp the user could configure destination-instance from a list in the settings (or configure auto-export for manual import to any other “auto-migrate-unsupported” instance), with optional early-migration if the user has decided before the end of the month. Optionally a recommendation engine could iteratively curate a list of suggested instances based on usage during on-ramp (admins of those instances could provide - limited number of - tags of their choosing for the engine to use for matching). That part could be opt-in because probably a lot of users would find it creepy. The UX would need to be very user-friendly “pointy clicky” because that would be the overwhelming target demographic of such an instance. I think “on-boarding and educating” is better than “gatekeeping” (which feels like the “if you need to ask the price you can’t afford it” shopping trope). A nice side-effect is it already painlessly introduces users to the killer-feature “easy migration” between instances due to data-portability.
That would take a significant amount of work to implement, and we dont have the resources for it. But all the code is open source, so youre welcome to give it a try yourself.
Can start with people not directing anyone to the .ml, or .ml like instances for starters. Maybe even sticky that the top.
Removed by mod
We haven’t banned anyone for trying to contribute. If you’re talking about bans from lemmy.ml, that doesn’t prevent anyone from contributing on Github. Besides, the whole purpose of Lemmy is that there can be different instances with different moderation policies.
Removed by mod
If you see anything…that could be improved, the best option is to make that improvement yourself.
Are you under the impression that just everyone is a web developer?
Besides it would be impossible to reach an agreement who this default instance should federate with or how exactly it should be moderated.
If I may make a proposition: You can look at how Pixelfed allows certain instances that meet certain standards to opt into being listed in the app for discovery, all electronically. My recommendation would be to have 2 choices for users on sign-up:
- A random choice from the list of approved instances, that’s rotated periodically to prevent any particular instance from being inundated with new signups
- “Choose a different instance” where users can enter their preferred one manually.
People can’t seem to make up their minds if it matters which instance you join. I really don’t think it does.
Are you under the impression that just everyone is a web developer?
The Lemmy documentation is just text
Nobody is talking about updating the documentation.
The userbase here is quite technical so there are many of you able to contribute.
As a project manager, I can help by ballooning the scope and setting the deadline to yesterday! Doing my part!
I got you guys, lets start with daily standup to get everyone on the same page.
Oh, I can do project management too!
Your next task is waves hands around … the thing … waves hands around some more … like the other thing … but different.
Don’t forget about asking how the project is going too!
Didn’t be so hard on yourself. You can also pester us about the status of Jira tickets.
Also, why haven’t you closed that low priority ticket and you keep working the high priority tickets that are new.
My old company solved that problem by making everything high priority by default, with efforts directed by the whims of the CTO.
That’s a recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard of one. Fixing Jane in accounting’s monitor or figuring out the routing table for the entire enterprise. All top priority!
Honestly, if my PM never pestered me about the status of my tickets, I would never close them. Some of us need the pestering!
I’m doing my small part.
Went from 100% lurker on Reddit to regularly active lemmy commenter
Same. I still occasionally browse Reddit, but I have a rule that I don’t post or comment there. I do post and comment here.
Don’t forget to adblock them so you’re draining the resources, minutely and slowly, but draining nonetheless.
I don’t internet without uBlock. I honestly couldn’t imagine it any other way.
Same, I only lurk to see what’s popping but dont comment here.
It’s so much easier to comment and get replies here.
I don’t really agree that it’s much easier to start on Reddit. Especially nowadays.
-Post from an IP that was once used by a banned account? Also banned (after first being shadowbanned)
-Try to post in any niche sub of your choosing after making an account? Forget it, wait three weeks and farm 3K karma first (which encourages shitposting and reposting, lowering quality)
-Deviate a fraction of an inch from whatever sub’s 500-page rulebook? Banned.
-Try to argue an unbanning? That’s a permanent mute.
-Post anything - and I do mean anything - in a “wrong” sub, get immediately permabanned by a slew of subs you didn’t even know existed.
-Some mod doesn’t agree with something you posted? Even if it was 5 years ago in a sub that has since been deleted? Banned and muted.
Reddit is an absolutely terrible experience for new posters. How they even manage to retain a tenth of them is beyond me. I encourage them to keep it up however, more traffic for Lemmy.
Another to add: Caught an IP ban for “report abuse” after reporting several bigots. Couldn’t have been more than 5. No warning or previous infractions, just straight up IP banned. Appealing did nothing, of course. Eventually just stopped caring.
Saw quite a few people saying they had the same thing happen. The general consensus of those threads was just not to report *anything *anymore…
Yeah new users are like, semi-shadow banned for a while
This post is about UI and onboarding tho, not about mod behaviour.
Here’s another for your list:
- Use a VPN? Blocked from accessing it. (I try to get info from internet searches sometimes and they block me, I have to use a VPN because am in China.)
This is only if you aren’t logged in. If you login to reddit you can use a VPN fine. It is still so incredibly annoying though.
Oh interesting to know thank you. I nuked my accounts there so am not doing that, I guess.
I’m the OP of one of the posts that blew up about UX.
This is great news, I will look into building something like join-lemmy/onboarding that could guide users, or improving join-lemmy
Its best if you improve the existing site, that way you dont have to worry about hosting, or directing users to your new site.
Nice !
