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.
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.
People are much friendlier here, so far.
Confusing. There are communities I can’t subscribe to because I can’t access them from my instance, and I have no idea why that is. The experience has been interesting so far, and growing the network is going to be something I’ll be keeping an eye on. For now, though, I’ll have to wait until someone creates the communities I was a part of on Reddit.
Edit: It seems a community won’t show up on your instance’s community list unless someone in that instance is subscribed to it.
Same here. Finding it difficult to subscribe to the major/main community about a topic
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.
Yeah the having fragmented communities is a risk I see, but otherwise it’s cool to see a Reddit-like space. Hoping to see it grow!
I guess it depends on how big instances get. The lemmy world instance currently hosts the casual uk community and its picking up traction across other geographic communities also.
I think migrating communities will likely find the communities in instances that are the “primary” versions, we just need those to reach critical mass.
I think the big risk is instances going dark or holding communities ransom in future. All of casual uks content being hosted in one instance it’s crazy dangerous for the longevity of that community. (Unless I’m not understanding quite how it works)
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.
Yes. To add to this, if an instance suddenly changes its rules (e.g. in response to the influx of new users), I have to either adhere to those rules, or abandon my old account. I think allowing migration should be a priority.
There’s an open issue for migration (export/import) so it’s on the roadmap. But looks like it hasn’t been high priority yet
Couldn’t you just make a new account on another instance and link to it on your old profile? Perhaps a feature to subscribe to export/import your subscribed communities would be nice.
It really would be. This seems like such a glaring issue for a decentralised/federalised system like lemmy.
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.
My understanding is that Lemmy accounts are currently locked to the Lemmy instance you created it on, if the instance goes away you lose your account too.
Hmm, that’ll be interesting as a ton of people are migrating and spinning up new instances. I’m sure not everyone will want to keep hosting long term
That would suck :/ Would your posts still last on other instances, or would those be gone too?
Good question. I think they do continue to exist on other instances, but I’m not completely sure. My understanding is that you could delete your comments and posts from other instances before you delete your account from your own instance. But I’m not sure if they get deleted automatically anywhere outside your instance when you delete your account.
Edit: I found a discussion with a Lemmy dev and it looks like “deletions are federated” - https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2977
Jerboa’s been a bit confusing for me too. Does anyone know how to find communities on other instances?
Mine is just letting me search in the second icon from the left across many instances, I don’t know if that’s all instances. But sorting by all posts on the home page I’ve been able to get more communities and instances
I’ve been doing the same, but the search seems hit or miss. I’ve found some good communities through the search (like this one), but some that I know exist don’t show up. That being said, I appreciate the functionality the app provides!
I was also a bit confused about that (also use the app) but I found this page https://lemmy.world/communities/listing_type/All/page/1
Loged in and been looking through all the pages and subscribing directly
This is an incomplete understanding as I’m new too, but I think that if you know it exists and have the URL, you can search for the URL itself to find that community.
And in doing so, I think it makes your instance aware of the specific community, so that in future other members of your instance can search with a simpler term and not need the URL.
Over time, most instances should become aware of most communities. I think…
Exactly, the issue is just with communities that I don’t know exist. If I can’t search for them from my instance, it’s really difficult to find them. Then add to that that the communities are so fragmented (there may be 100 different communities for the same topic across different instances). If I search for a topic (ex. Gaming) I want THE biggest, most active gaming community.
Lemmy has the potential to get there, but if they want to attract and keep users en masse, it needs to prioritize making it not feel like such a fragmented experience.
One place you could try is https://browse.feddit.de - this makes it MUCH easier to find communities across all instances. And it has the busiest ones at the top if you just want to join those with most people in them.
As far as I understand it you currently can’t import data from one instance to another
Not automatically - I saw someone else saying that they sat with two browser windows open and just copied their subscribed communities from one profile to another. Bit time consuming (he/she said 20 minutes), and it wouldn’t carry across your post/comment history, but it’s a sort of solution.
Yeah the app is a bit slow and clunky. Joining communities I have to press the button multiple times for it to work, and sometimes it gets stuck on pending till I leave and open it back up. Plus some other weird clunky things I’ve noticed. Hopefully it gets refined as more people join, give the devs some more incentive to work on it.
Interface is better than “new” Reddit, not as good as old Reddit + RES.
Also: if I click on a link on another instance (for example https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy when I’m signed in on lemmy.world), I’m not signed in to lemmy.ml so I have to manually search for it in lemmy.world to post there - is there a common solution to that?
How federalization works can be a bit confusing. For me the biggest hurdle to get over was how the different instances - lemmy.ml and lemmy.world - are separate websites. They can connect and interact with each other because they’re federalized, but your account is only on lemmy.world.
Now for some magic!
Relative links for communities (subreddits) can work across instances:
- eg: [/c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml](/c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml)
- becomes: /c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
As long as your instance knows the community exists the links should work.
Thanks for your reply. I feel like I 90% get the concept of federalisation, and it’s very interesting. Just from a purely user experience point of view (because this is what was asked), I’ve already had several times where I’ve ended up on the “wrong” instance without realising it. I guess it partly takes getting used to. My experience has been more positive than negative overall though.
Yeah I’m right there with you. I probably made about 5 accounts not understanding why I couldn’t interact whenever I clicked certain links.
So now I’m trying to help others figure it out when I see a fellow lost redditor!
Haha, same! I think it was three accounts for me until it clicked. I can’t recall exactly what I was doing wrong, but I remember it had something to do with replying to comments that was my main source of confusion; from my inbox it mattered somehow (this is the bit I can’t recall) what I clicked on to go to the originating community, only one way took me there in a way that preserved my login/subscription (man, I don’t understand yet how to talk about this system).
I’m so confused!! Still trying to figure out how to tell jerboa to show me communities that aren’t local (and aren’t showing in all - I did find memes and other juicy numbers there!)…
I might have made the mistake of trying to pick a server that wasn’t struggling under the load of the Reddit refugees, but I still don’t think it was a bad idea…
Quite a learning curve though. Some cheat sheets or heaven forbid, starter packs would be snazzy :)
I think your homeserver was a good choice :)
Thanks!
I’m still arguing to reach out to communities in other instances through it (or to log in on other instances where the content I’m interested in resides - is that a valid concept??),but I’m having fun and it sure is new. Edit: I have finally realized it’s done in the servers communities listing, not in Jerboas listing of subscribed communities - am doofus…/editI love the federated idea, that’s a great approach to the corporate overlording that’s going on these days.
In an earlier time, id probably struggle through spinning up another server, but I’m way too over it the days…
It’s weird, a little confusing, and a little janky. Love it so far. It’s not a novel observation on my part but it definitely feels new and exciting the way Reddit and Tumblr did back in the day.
I love how it feels like a smaller but friendlier reddit. I hope more people can join
Search is brutal. I dont want to open a new link, i just want to type what im searching for and then search for it.
cool that it’s written in Rust also decentralization (not the blockchain kind) is the future, but…
lemmy ui feels kinda unpolished, and sometimes community join requests just hang forever.Much like when I went from Twitter to Mastodon, finding “my people” is a lot more work. It’s unpleasantly easy for links to a community to take me directly to that instance instead of leaving my on my instance where I’d be able to subscribe and interact. But also like Mastodon, the experience is much nicer once things start getting set up. Really nice not getting pestered to use the app constantly!
I think my experience can be best summed up by:
404: FetchError: invalid json response body at http://lemmy:8536/api/v3/site
Jokes aside, the web portal is pretty great. Jerboa seems… like it needs some polish.
I would give them a little benefit of the doubt. There were probably less than 50 Jerboa users last week and it was a slow hobby project.
With all this renewed interest there has already been a lot of fast progress and a massive update is coming out soon (I think). There’s a community for the app though if you want to see how development is going!
