this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy

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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!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Been here 6 days and here are some of my thoughts:

Pros:

  • the community is great. I've been more active here than on reddit and I noticed people answer your posts/comments more to discuss than criticize your POV.
  • it's nice to have a lot of options in terms of instances
  • the app is surprisingly good. It's no Apollo/Joey, but for something that's in its initial stages is surprisingly useable
  • on browser, kbin.social is nice (I don't use lemmy on pc)
  • many of the subs I follow on reddit have their own communities here

Cons:

  • it can still be confusing, specially for new members or people who aren't used to how the Fediverse is set up
  • I still miss the niche subs I follow on reddit. i know I can start my own but I don't have time nor the experience to effectively moderate communities
  • there is, of course, a big difference in terms of activity (again compared to reddit) due to the massive difference in the number of users

Is it a reddit replacement? No. Reddit is too big and established (and mainstream) to be replaced in such a short period. But imho lemmy is a great alternative. Like I've mentioned before, just participating here has drastically lessened my reddit usage. It can get better. I'm excited to see there it goes.

Edit: sorry for all the typos. I'm new at using flosiboard and it doesntl't have spell check yet lol.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's just something to get the hang of. Currently somewhat confusing, but not insurmountable. It does feel a lot like Reddit did some thirteen years ago. This is a nice blend of modern and easy to use, and has a whiff of my early days on the internet (bb's, forums, etc) without measuring internet speeds in kbps, which is nice.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

I think it's got all the potential, and I really mean it. I want to be here and I will try to contribute wherever I can. The onboarding of the platform is confusing, but everyone already knows that. I can see the growing pains, but that's totally fine.

I enjoy the format, and I very much like what Lemmy is meant to become.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So far im still confused, but I’ve learned a lot in the time I’ve been here, so i think I’ll come around. I feel like the main issue I personally have is population of communities and actually finding communities. Ive found a couple ill look at in an asklemmy thread and im sure itll grow over time, but I personally dont have much I can contribute yet, so im not sure how much I can do personally.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I find it easier than using mastodon for the first time tbh

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Sorry if this has been asked before. But my front page seems to dynamically add new posts as I'm scrolling. It makes me lose my place during the scroll. How can I have it just load once at start, and then allow me to scroll through?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I'm brand spanking new to Lemmy ( like under 30 minutes) and I do feel that navigating isn't as intuitive as it is on Reddit, though I suspect as I learn to use it more, I will get better.

What I would like to know is if there is a mobile app I can use to access Lemmy since I really dislike using a mobile browser

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Very similar to how Reddit used to be. I expect higher quality content here, and so far, I've found it. Just waiting on a few niche communities to be created, but I expect they will pop up in time. Good riddance to Reddit.

And the less said about other social media sites the better.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Too confusing for the average user.

I dislike many things about the UI and UX.

Nevertheless, it's useable, and interesting enough to keep using for now and see how it goes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Very happy and reminds me of the old pre-digg Reddit days! My main concerns are

  • If I pick a popular server it will go down due to performance issues, but if I get a smaller one it may go offline because it's just a small hobby project. I don't want to lose my account.

  • I'm worried about communities duplicating on other instances and me not being able to ask questions to the same pool of people with xposting

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

The instance system definitely makes it a bit confusing. I'm a programmer and I've played around with some Mastodon stuff during my study. Still, as a user, it's quite chaotic sometimes.

I'm kinda wondering what this will converge towards. Is everyone going to join the same instance? Are different communities be kinda randomly spread over instances, where for every community in the end one instance dominates? Or will there just be chaos?

There's also some buggy behavior every now and then, but that's easily forgiven imo.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (13 children)

This is way too confusing for an average reddit user. Too much undefined jargon like 'fediverse'. And jargon based on other jargon, like an average user is going to know what 'federated' means, to be able to suss out any words based on it.

And finding communities with '!something@community' is not going to work for that average user longterm. If every search requires an exclamation point, just add it on the backend. And if it requires two pieces of data separated by an @ symbol, just have 2 inputs.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

its just reddit tbh

much better experience than mastodon imo

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Getting signed up was a bit hairy. I tried going through the lemmy.one server and still hasn't gone through, so I went back and signed up through lemmy.ml and that got approved pretty quickly.

Aside from that still getting a hang of things. Not sure how to search for communities for specific interests, not sure how many of those exist yet.

I downloaded the Jerboa app on Android and the UI is pretty familiar coming from the Boost reddit app.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The interface is nice and friendly, but the way the fediverse and the different instances works is kind of confusing. Still not sure what that's all about

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

It's gone quite smoothly so far - found an instance local to me and joined, subscribed to a bunch of communities, installed Jerboa and set it up - didn't hit any roadblocks.

The cross-server subscription thing is a bit counter-intuitive, but this seems to be an issue that people are already aware of. The Fediverse lengthy signup ritual of choosing an instance is there, but that's just a feature of how the medium works and I'm already familiar with the issues from Mastodon, so it didn't bother me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

It’s really growing on me. I love the idea of being able to browse and participate in communities outside of my “home instance”. Where to actually set up as a “home instance” was a bit confusing, but once I picked one I kinda just forget about it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've been a Redditor for more than 16 years, and it's a little complicated understanding how this works. But I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The one thing I'm struggling with is how do I find a subreddit equivalent? For example r/formula 1 or r/UKpolitics on Reddit might be.... What?

Also is it possible to find these communities using Jerboa or so I need to login on my desktop?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

The website is super clean, the Mlem app is kinda not as great yet (presumably cuz it's in beta) but it runs really well! only worry is how easy it will be to find communities I want to join, I haven't been here long yet. That and moderation with how many people will be coming in.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

'm new to this. I've always been a lurker and never really had the urge to connect to Reddit or other social platforms like twitter. But this feels better. It's daunting at first but after being on the platform for a very short time I see something good and its interesting. Some new but very familiar. So I connected and I want to contribute. That's how it makes me feel.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The web is okay, kind of, but the mobile apps (what I mainly use to browse this stuff) are sorely lacking, especially on iOS.

I decided to write my own client (mostly for myself) and so far the API seems very straightforward. Might eventually publish it to the stores, if its mature enough.

It's heavily based on Apollo (in case it wasn't obvious). One might even call it a rip-off 😅

What I'd really like to work on after the basic navigation is done is discoverability. I think the platform really needs some improvement there.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

I love it. I am genuinely excited to be on here, and it is literally the only social media I use at the moment.

The single feature I that I think would improve the site tremendously is some kind of indicator to know if I have posted in a thread before. It is silly, but sometimes discussions blow up and I cannot remember everything I write.

Like, just a colored dot next to the title in topics I have posted in would make the experience so much better.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I've been here for a while and i still don't like it for a number of reasons, many which have already been mentioned here. The UI/UX isn't as nice as old reddit and there a lot of complexities due to the fediverse that are just not easy to overcome. Why i think reddit will ultimately win out in this because most users will go back to it after a few weeks.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The community has been way more friendly than any other social media I've been on. Th UI/UX is confusing and at times bad, but it makes do. It has been a nice experience.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

the UX can be a bit clunky, such as opening links to other communities and not being able to subscribe, but overall it's been quite fun so far. a lot more fun than mastodon as its quite serious (as any twitter substitute would be)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Really liking it! I just want some simple tweaks here and there to this instance’s ui.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

I'm definitely not utilising all the features of being in the wider Fediverse yet, but I'm starting to get the hang of the Lemmy-verse. This federation stuff is really cool and definitely the future of social media in some form or another. Ironically this is closer to a real metaverse than Meta has ever got.

There are definitely rough edges everywhere, the joining process could do with being streamlined significantly and I have some issues with accounts being tied entirely to a single instance. Generally though this is perfectly usable and the main issue is the lack of content. It's annoying coming back to my front page after several hours and everything is 16 hours to 2 days old, hopefully this will improve quickly as the migration gains steam.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm kinda hoping someone will point out this feature already exists, but I wish there was a way to subscribe to a topic. Right now it feels like multiple instances are forming their own, say, gaming community, and it feels like this is splintering the community rather than growing it?

Other than that, I actually really like the decentralised nature -- and, while this is likely due to the very early nature of things, man is it nicer here. Weirdly feels like early Slashdot days...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I think this is my only real issue. It would be amazing to have an app that would allow you to create a gaming "folder" of sorts that you could drop all the gaming communities into under one heading.

Since you can already post to different instances, having a way to better organize them would solve for the fragmentation pretty well. Then even with multiple gaming communities, they all still show as #Gaming or whatever on the user end.

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