Let’s compose a list of the all shortcomings so that we can address them and eventually hit 100k mau.
- The syntax of linking to users, posts, communities etc. is hard to keep a mental grip on. I know they couldn’t exactly copy reddit’s u/ for users and r/ for subreddits, but ! for communities and @ for users isn’t as schematic. I think it’s why you see it used less than on Reddit. And if you start to type a username, and an autocomplete window pops up, it inserts that format in brackets followed by a URL in parenthesis. To the right of the text box I’m typing in, I see, and I’ll approximate this as best I can:
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world
Neither has the exclamation point reminding you how to use that feature. My bipolar ex girlfriend had a more consistent UI than that.
- Linking to posts and comments is just pure moon logic. Follow me here:
This Post is stored on lemmy.world, right? Where is the comment I’m currently writing stored? on lemmy.world, or sh.itjust.works?
@[email protected] commented on this post, I’m going to use it as an example. There are two buttons next to their username. Both have the hover over tooltip “link”.
The chain looking one gives me this URL: https://sh.itjust.works/post/27359355/14761082
The…fedigon? What’s the name of the 5-pointed rainbow fediverse icon? looking one gives me this URL: https://midwest.social/comment/13230476
If I wanted to refer to kibiz0r’s comment in some other thread somewhere else, which of those links should I use? I figure in most cases I’m addressing an audience of the entire fediverse not just my fellow sh.itheads, so why would I ever use the first link? What does someone from lemm.ee see when they click on either of those links? Do they get to see it through their own account on their instance, or do they get linked directly to another instance? This really breaks the idea of “one account, whole fediverse.”
If you complain about a technical thing, you’ll end up having to justify every square inch of your existence in order to prove your complaint isn’t just user error.
Two examples from yesterday:
It can be hard to find the right community to post a link in. Figuring out the rules and knowing who’s reading them (and sometimes what they’re really about) might cause someone to give up. (Especially when people complain about ‘this isn’t the place for that’ without stating the better alternative.)
When you block someone, you can still see that they replied to you. I don’t want to know of their existence period, that’s why I’m blocking them and they shouldn’t have a chance to respond to me period. It’s not blocking if they can reply to me and I still see a notification that they did.
Can’t filter out non-English communities. On any given day, I could scroll through my feed and a third of them would be languages I can’t read. I wish I could, but I can’t.
I have to block the subcommunities one by one, and then block them again and again for every other instance that hosts that sublemmy
You can set your languages in the settings. As the warning say, make sure to keep “Undetermined” check along English
When you block someone, all the subsequent comments made to that person’s comment are also unable to be viewed.
If a post is deleted for any reason it nukes everything, even the comments.
I can’t go back and view any comments that I was replying to or that I had saved, I can only see my own comment.
It’s my own observation, but a lot of people on Lemmy are smug assholes, including many mods.
Shockingly familiar to early days Reddit. There was a sweet spot before Reddit got as big as it is today. I can’t tell you when it was but it was there somewhere.
How did someone describe it? Like 14y/o 4chan users with the cynicism of a 45y/o?
Hey wait a minute I resemble this strawman
That feels shockingly accurate
Yeah well that’s just, like, your opinion man.
Not enough video game communities. I think that was a huge part of Reddits initial success. Even to this day I still search “Problem + /reddit” on google whenever I have issues in a game. Reddit often holds the core community off a video game. It’s often detrimental to a games success to have a Reddit community. Lemmy has communities for some games, but they are mostly inactive or have only 10-60 users. So don’t even have the latest patch notes posted.
There was this post 2 months ago on [email protected] to list all the video games communities: https://lemmy.world/post/19252451
Maybe you could start another one?
Maybe I wasn’t clear. I meant community’s for specific games, rather than gaming communities in general.
Did you open the thread?
Briefly, just skimmed through it. Should’ve paid more attention. Thanks.
That it’s not well known.
As a non-US user myself, beside the lack of participation on Lemmy, I think the kind of replies and the instant escalation to this comment, in this very thread is a great example of why Lemmy can suck, hard.
The world, exactly like the Internet, does not end at the US borders.
And yep, even though many US citizens seem to be on the verge of slicing each other throats, it doesn’t mean the rest of the world should behave the same. Lemmy users should still be able to discuss freely even between people of varying opinions, or even of completely opposite opinions.
This is comedy gold 🤣. Things get political so fast on here
It’s funny, cuz i remember tons of responses like that when i used Reddit, too. But the onslaught was often worse cuz the larger user base had more power to bombard you with insults about how wrong you are, and give you 49 downvotes in 10 minutes just cuz you give some criticisms about a popular game you didn’t happen to enjoy and forgot to add reluctant praise to (“i recognize it’s a great game and well made, but its just not for me sad face.”)
I think this is just a bad part of the internet, in general. Similar things would even happen in AOL chatrooms if someone voiced a disliked opinion, I remember Diamond chat would get crazy
To be fair it kinda is a bad part of even real world communities. Try going to a biker bar, animecon or any other community and saying “Gosh darn I don’t like ____”. Best case people would look at you funny and leave, worst - you getting a knuckle sandwich
As a US user, with a bit of an organization compulsion, I do wish it was a little more structured.
The problem is not that community x is us-centric, but that it’s not called x.us
That talklittle went to tildes instead, which, fair.
If there’s something we’re not short of, it’s mobile clients
Finding instances for sure. Just learned in this thread that sorting by ‘all’ doesn’t show me every instance
Wait it doesn’t?! What does it do then?
Here are some great instance discovery resources:
Here are some great instance discovery resources:
Yes thank you, I’m aware of those. :) I meant via your own instance. I’m registered on a very small instance, and being able to discover other instances from your own would make it much more usable.
…Unless that is already possible. Lemmy isn’t that intuitive, at least for me
Hello,
Any reason you chose an instance this small? There are only 53 monthly active users. Lemmy.zip or lemm.ee would probably work better for you
Too many terrorist simps, too much mod abuse, too much disinformation, too many Tankies, discovery of communities is hard with how federation works and kinda requires third party apps.
I believe it’s just obnoxious trolling users who’ve been banned multiple times from Reddit now come flooding here to pull their shit again.
Its always about one of two things:
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Instances going down forever. - kbin, even though its not lemmy, had a more appealing UI to me and my little brother. We’re on fedia now, but I only really use it to lurk when Lemmy.world won’t load randomly. I don’t think he even uses it at all anymore.
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De-federation. - Beehaw caused several other people I know IRL to go back to reddit within a week. The timing was so perfect to wreck the API boycott that I’m almost convinced the Beehaw mods work for reddit. “Everything was broken” and now lemmy is dead and gone forever in their eyes, some even assuming the whole thing is literally gone now. They’re not willing to try again.
Nah, I have a different gripe:
When the reddit exodus happened, Lemmy was flooded with copycat communities for every popular subreddit. That’s fine with me. But what’s not fine is that very few of these communities use the same posting rules (if any at all) so they’re homogenized. Like what is the difference between nostupidquestions and asklemmy?
I have another one that’s not specific to Lemmy but absolutely applies: meme “communities” where it’s all reposted content. I used community in quotes because these communities/subreddits/Instagram accounts are just…meme archives. You’ll find the same shit in every single meme archive on the internet. It feels like it’s less about sharing and more about having the biggest bucket.
Like what is the difference between nostupidquestions and asklemmy?
On Reddit at least, NSQ was supposed to have a “well, that might seem a stupid question” gist to it. But I agree that nowadays on Lemmy they are the same.
Reddit means pointless or stupid repetition (I forget which). I guess that whole homogenized thing is baked in if they were to migrate.
As much as I hate what reddit has become, it was a LOT less of a problem over there. And despite its reputation for having power tripping mods, the communities with strictest rules were almost always the best ones
A well-moderated community is a good community online. Self policing doesn’t work when it’s thousands of strangers
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