this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2023
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Lemmy
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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.
For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.
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I just switched too, this is actually my first comment. Idk why everyone on reddit said lemme was too confusing
Every single time you offer an alternative to people, if it's not a perfect clone they complain that it's too confusing. What they're really saying is they didn't want to have to learn a single new thing at all.
I dont mind those people not joining.
I do. Many times, it can be from a failure in UX or bad choice of on-boarding steps by the referrer, and not from their incapability of learning and building. Those people aren't less valuable just because they didn't overcome a circumstantial hurdle.
Personally, I'm taking steps to lower that hurdle. I refuse to link anyone to the Join Lemmy page. That's a bad on-boarding practice, and we had Mastodon to prove it, because it drove away even plenty of valuable techies. I'm linking everyone directly to Lemmy.ml and Beehaw, which can be explored without committing, and telling them to consider explore the fediverse "later" if they like the way these vanilla instances work. Let's first show that the content and feature set is perfectly capable and there's nothing to dislike.
Its really better to link to joinlemmy so that people get distributed across different instances. We dont want everyone to be on the same instance, that would cause many problems.
Yes, but that's the thing, that's a culture, philosophy and safeguard concern. We want the ecosystem to be distributed because of many reasons we can go copy paste off of a fediverse explanation page or video.
But in these times, when people are looking for social media replacements, they do not share those concerns. Not initially at least. I see it like a hierarchy of needs but for social media consumption. We risk tiring people out at the understanding and culture step when all they're looking for in that moment is for ease of access to content and discussion. We can have our cake and eat it too by showing them that, yes, this platform can fit their needs, and also hint that it has these interoperability, customization, privacy and so on advantages that they can easily find about.
Look, I'm just saying, Mastodon has a bad rep. I met plenty of supposedly smart people who treat the whole Twitter migration thing as "those dumb evangelists with their stupid platform that doesn't even have a functional tag search ahah". People who had no trouble going back to other, older platforms. I'm not letting that happen again, at least not from my hand. I'm going to sell from the bottom of their pyramid.
I think it's good to have a mix of both, personally I have no qualms with you or anyone else linking lemmy.ml, beehaw.org over join-lemmy.org.
Even Reddit started off as one page for everything, then added subreddits with reddit.com/r/reddit.com still as the catch-all, before locking it in 2012. I think having two or three big catch-all sites is fine and anyone interested in specific topics create another account elsewhere.
Question as a new user: what would be the point or purpose in creating an account elsewhere if lemmy.ml has the c/ communities which are basically like subreddits that you can subscribe to? If I'm interested in specific topics, why not discuss those topics under their communities here rather than join a whole different instance for it?
lemmy.ml, beehaw.org would most likely host generic versions of those. But as the network grows there may be more and more specific categories people may be interested in, that don't have to or shouldn't be on one server.
E.g. technology. lemmy.ca could feature Canadian specific tech. Feddit.de would have most articles in German. A FOSS-oriented instance would have most articles to do with open source
The server you sign up with mainly controls what you see by default in your home. If you want to see less politics and more tech related stuff then you would sign up on a tech-focused instance. Or if you don't like the rules or the moderator of your current server, then you can create an account on another server. You need to abide by the rules of the server you post to if you post outside your home server.
This is better in an ideal world, but not practical right now. Let at lease one lemmy instance reach critical mass and become popular, then people will be more interested and learn about federation, and then people will start to branch out to other instances as they learn about what the differences are.
People need a smooth transition. That's the most important right now.
If you wanted to maintain distribution while also lowering onboarding friction, couldn't you round robin 301 redirects to the signup pages on the instances listed on the joinlemmy page or something? I guess with each instance being moderated differently, having different rules, and having a different culture/focus that might not fly, idk.
I think the very tiny barrier of entry to the fediverse helps keep it feeling mature. It's not flooded with teenagers who got their first phone like Reddit is
Aside from the whole Fediverse concept (which as a current Matrix and Mastodon user I didn't have to relearn), the most confusing concept for new users I'd say would be that there can exist the same community on multiple servers (like, say, politics). But when you realize what this service is really doing, there's not really another way to do it and maintain moderation control on each server. It's actually a strength IMHO. I'm really impressed with what I'm seeing. More people coming onboard is going to make this place really fun. And if it ever becomes not fun, there'll probably be another server that would be more your idea of fun.
Yeah, ive just been subbing to all of the ones for topics I like with the idea to whittle them down later once I see which ones are the best match. If anyone has a recommendation list that would be a great post
Yeah I'm seeing a lot of communities(?) Being created not even 15hrs ago that I'm subscribing to. It's too early to tell which ones will work out or be properly moderated, but it's important to be active in the communities to determine the culture moving forward. Be the change you want to see!
I mean, trying to subscribe to a community that wasn't on my instance took my much longer than I would have liked. Most people are used to have their onboarding very streamlined so I get that it's a bit jarring
From what I understand, beehaw has been struggling a little with their user count more or less tripling overnight. I think we're going to have to expect some growing pains like when Mastodon was overrun a few months back.
Yeah, I was hoping the communities were more tightly federated. That is, the community name was simply the community name on all servers rather than having local vs All.
But what if the mods on a community go rogue? If the politics community in one instance goes to shit because of a corrupt mod, you can join one from another instance rather than have no option.
You'd end up with having to go to a different community regardless. It would just mean using a new community name rather than the server+community federated name.
Currently if something like /c/technology goes rogue, you'd end up either joining c/technology@beehaw.org or someone creates /c/tech.. or both. In tighter federation, /c/technology is toast so you move to /c/tech or something like that instead but there's no option for a /c/technology@some-other-server. In some ways more limiting but it ends up easier for the end user.
I'm still not sure how to do it, to be honest. But at least commenting is easy!
Edit: I agree with the people saying the onboarding is too complex. It's not because people are dumb. If a whole bunch of people all have the same problem with a system, it's because it's poorly designed for humans. Even though people who are used to the system or good at learning new systems in specific contexts can easily forget that the skills they have are learned skills, similar to how gamers forget that handling a controller is a learned skill and not just as automatic as walking for everybody out the gate.
Flashbacks to the first hour using reddit as an former digg user...
It's fine. If people want to switch they will do so.
What separates the smart from the stupid is not the ability to adapt to something new, it's the ability to overcome obstacles they may encounter when trying the new thing.
Oh I'm def. getting deja vu from the digg meltdown lol. I remember being hesitant to jump ship over to reddit but i did and never looked back. So sad to see reddit also go down that path but it's been trending that way for a while now.
Welcome! The biggest hurdle is right at the beginning. Choosing which server to register with.
After that it's got enough similar to Reddit, that it should be easy to post to your registered server and other federated servers as well.
Am I going to regret signing up to lemmy.ml rather than a more specific instance? Still wrapping my head around all this. Could I sign up on another instance w/ the same username if that instance wasn't federated?
I don't think so, but if you notice a server that has significantly more of what you want and less of what you don't want you can go and join them later!
So long as the user isn't already taken on the other server!
Awesome, thanks!
You can sign up on any and as many instances as you want, and still be able to view any content and community from any other instance. This is the point of federation.
Got it, makes sense!
The only thing I don't get, is I've seen posts on a different site (beehaw) showing up here. I kind of know how the fediverse works sort of, but is beehaw basically the same as Lemmy running the same software? I managed to sub to a couple of beehaw things from here which is cool, but it looks like a separate site. Do you need to sign up on both?
I'm also new to this, but I think I understand the basics;
If any of what I've written is wrong, hopefully someone will correct me à la XKCD
Welcome, glad to have you!
Yeah I'm not sure why people think this is so intimidating. Click signup, get signed up, then start commenting / posting / creating communities. No one has to understand the term fediverse to do any of that.
Honestly if the current sign up process is too hard for some people, maybe it's a good user filter to have lol.
Click signup. Research servers to try to find one that looks good, wonder if you can sign up for multiple, or change account to other server, or what all the implications of having tons of servers even are, encounter choice paralysis. Quit and go somewhere that hides the federation.
Part of email's success is that for most people the federation has been hidden. You got your email through your university or employer (pre eternal September), then through your ISP (post eternal September), then later through gmail. There's no apparent meaningful choice to setting it up, you just use the default. The choice in the fediverse is just as meaningless, but it's a huge focus of the process for no good reason.
I think it just needs time to develop. Devs need to realize that most people aren't interested or don't have time to think or care about what federation is. Stop trying to teach people and just give users a one-click way to immediately start scrolling and browsing posts.
@exterstellar @Eufalconimorph this is exactly the same conundrum with Mastodon, all the technical mumbo jumbo confuses users, simpler words and a quick start experience is everything to really gain traction and maintain engagement during the few first days and obviously over time.... Federation, Activity pub, instances should be Directory, plain and simple
At least from what I've read, here's some of the confusion.
Most of it seems to revolve around the federation being rather loose. You have to pick a server to join first and your ID exists there. Probably easy enough as most are either joining lemmy.ml or beehaw.org, at least from what I'm seeing of new users.
The second problem is in some community confusion and local vs All. Communities are per server then propagated out. That is, you can have /c/hockey on lemmy.ml and a separate /c/hockey on beehaw.org. You then have to select the specific community you want to join, meaning some will see it as /c/hockey and others will see it via the federation name. The federation isn't simply hidden and behind the scenes more like IRC or usenet.