Asklemmy

Asking such a question to current users may lead to a survival bias. As people are already here it means there were no critical difficulties which could make them leave . More helpful would be to ask ones who have dropped attempts to be here because of some difficulties. Probably a way to leave a feedback or report an issue on a joinlemmy website could be helpful.

I made a GitHub issue on this already, but being able to go to a community or user from a federated instance by typing in a plaintext URL, instead of going by community and user IDs, which change depending on the instance you're viewing from, would be great. Something like domain.tld/c/[email protected] for the community on that instance. I've definitely had the issue of taking a while to find the same post or community on another instance.

Many respond with specific issues, but for me it's just the federated structure. For non tech persons this may be a difficult concept to grasp and even though I programm a lot, some things got me confused, because I've never used anything like it. List for readability:

• if I remember correctly I had to choose one instance for my account. (I had no idea if I get any restrictions depending on what instance I choose)
• How can I visit or follow another instance and more importantly where can I find a list of instances? (I am using lemmur, but this may be a general point of confusion)

Maybe I missed some obvious things, but a getting started video would be great :)

Muting communities. Unsure if this is a lemmy or lemmur issue (I only use lemmur) It has been mentioned/asked before and I will +1 it. With the amount of c/ and instances growing, not having this will be chaotic in the long term. I like to see what is outside of my subscriptions for serendipity, but there are c/s that I would really like not to see ever.

A getting started video tutorial? I think a video will be useful for new users. Most of the users from Reddit will probably be able to use lemmy without any issues

The option to list only the local communities in the Communities page.

This would be very appreciated by the instances other than lemmy.ml, specially the little ones where it's difficult for local users to find the existing local communities. You can see an example here: https://lemmy.eus/communities

Perhaps the default value of this filter could be managed by the "subscribed | local | all" option on the settings, like the posts on the home page.

A cross instance subscription button. If you are on a Mastodon instance where you don't have an account you can still press the follow button and it will ask you your federated account name and pop up a small window where you can automatically setup the subscription in your home instance. This also works cross systems, so I can for example press that button and have the popup window show the subscription interface from a Hubzilla instance.

I access Lemmy almost entirely through Lemmur. Generally everything works super smoothly for my use case (Thank you!), but there are some limitations (eg quoting when responding to comments). Could I just go to the source? Yep. Will I? Almost never. I am guessing the more you can work with the app folks (I am just guessing that they are different people) to make all of your hard work easy to package the easier it would be for a newbie to pick it up.

I still think a theme precisely imitating the old reddit design would go a long way in helping new users navigate the site. I am still bothered by the fact that lemmy's interface looks and acts like new reddit. I know its more "modern" but I feel like reddits modern users are exactly the opposite of who we want to target if were aiming to keep quality high on the site though I suspect as the flagship instance keep quality high will be difficult no matter what.

Make #hashtags work as filtering categories of posts with similar, or related themes?

being ablle to @ people on mobile like on desktop would be nice

Most people here now come from Reddit, the interfaces are similar so I don't think most people would find it that difficult.

Maybe have a tutorial that highlights key buttons and describes what they do?

I don't think ease of use is the problem here, but rather the general appeal – like an incentive why someone would join Lemmy instead of some other community with similar features. One approach could be spreading posts on other sites that take the user to Lemmy with the option to sign up to comment or vote.

Then just let the network effect do its magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

I think a way to search for new federated communities from your instance would be nice (unless I'm not seeing it in the UI). Pasting the community URL into the search works, but it's a bit unintuitive. Perhaps a checkbox to search federated communities, or a dropdown of federated instances? Element for Matrix has an "Add a new server" option when you explore rooms, so something like that might work too. I guess I'm suggesting a little bit more of a discoverable UI.

I also think that this ticket here would be nice as well: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1540

The user profile in responsive 1-column mode lists the posts and comments you made before that your configuration and subscribed communities.

That makes editing your profile difficult by making you to have to scroll a lot.

It would be great to set a tab for editing your profile, other for the posts and comments you made and a third one for the communities you subscribed.

Just one thing. I'm pretty sure it isn't possible yet to "fold" or collapse comment threads on the web client, correct me if I'm wrong. That would be a really nice improvement now that there are longer conversations on some posts.

I'm particularly interested in suggestions to make the front end more user-friendly. Especially giving examples of current sites / apps.