On join-lemmy.org, the project is described as “A forum and link aggregator for the Fediverse”. In the previous post, multiple people mentioned that this is not a good description. However I have a hard time coming up with anything better.
So please post your suggestions below, and upvote the ones which are both accurate and easy to understand for new users. Later I pick one of the most upvoted options for the website.
By the way the second title “Follow communities Anywhere in the world” will likely go away (see the pull request for frontpage redesign). After this is decided I may also make another post to get suggestions for the longer description text below (“Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. …”).
Edit: Please only post concrete suggestions in top-level comments, and use replies to discuss. And here you can see how a few other Fediverse projects do it:
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Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I collected the ones which subjectively seem best, here is the list for a quick overview:
- An open source discussion platform for communities.
- Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities
- Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums
- A decentralized network of forums
- Discuss interesting topics and join communities on the Fediverse.
- A discussion platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
Based on these suggestions and the discussion, the best option seems to be: A decentralised discussion platform for communities.
I will keep making more updates to join-lemmy.org based on this post and the previous one. Once that’s done I will likely make another post to show the results and gather additional feedback.
I think the shortlist is good and “A decentralised discussion platform for communities” is a concise and quite easy for a layperson to understand! I would like to hear copywriter’s/marketer’s idea for an even shorter “slogan” (“frontpage of the internet”, “dive into anything”, “what’s happening?”). This is the type of stuff people will remember and gives an overview of what the service is about, not only what it is. Keep up the good work!
I would honestly drop the “link aggregator” part completely and just call it “discussion forum” or “discussion platform”. “Link aggregator” sounds pretty technical and like it just collects links which seems almost pointless. And the links aren’t even mandatory when creating a post.
Yes I agree, others have mentioned the same thing. The purpose of this post is to gather concrete suggestions, so please edit your comment with a sentence that you would use instead.
Lemmy is a next-generation, open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums, allowing you to interact with a federation of sites where no single entity holds total control.
I’m not saying your sentence is inaccurate, but send that description to a regular person and it will either cause their eyes to glaze over or cause them to run in the other direction.
It is what it is. I didn’t want to spend all day thinking about it so I posted what came to mind. If it helps, cool.
This one is too long, I would only use the first part:
Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums
Whatever works mate 💚
Lemmy: the Mastadon of Reddit.
Absolutely no way, this will never work. It should be “Lemmy: the Mastodon of Reddit”
Think results based for the end user and not technically.
- A place to find your people
- A place to find your community
- A place to converse in the fediverse
- A place to find your interests
- A place to share your interests and find new ones
- A place to discuss anything with anyone
- A community of digital communities
- A modern digital discussion forum to share ideas in interest groups called communities
Every time I described Lemmy or Reddit to my friends I’ve always said that it’s something like “A forum with more fora inside”, and then I explain the federated part.
fora and flauna?
? Forum is singular, Fora is plural, just like Medium, Media
It’s really hard. Here’s my best shot:
A discussion platform for communities.
Sounds good, but I would keep the Fediverse in somehow, eg “A federated discussion platform for communities”.
My friends still think fediverse are for federal agents.
I think leave the federation out, it just confuses new people. People who don’t know what the Fediverse is won’t understand what federated means, and those who do likely don’t need to be told Lemmy is federated.
Still its the main feature. Plus the sentence is a bit short like this. Or mention that it is open source instead.
“Open source” would be good. That phrase is now widely understood by the layman. From my point of view, however, people are unable to keep a thought. The shorter, the better in the marketing world, I would say.
Not bad, but I personally don’t like centering the attention on platforms because then we are drawing attention away from the instances. By centering attention on instances, we normalize instances and allow them to thrive.
I’d say something in the direction of Discussion Instances for communities.
people don’t know what instance means. they aren’t all object oriented programmers.
I very much like the simplicity of “A discussion platform for communities”. If one wants to highlight the one feature that sets Lemmy apart from others, then adding “decentralised” would do the job for me. As others have already said, I am not using “federated” because that can only be used when “federation” is a known word, which it absolutely is not. If you understand “federation”, then you probably already know about Lemmy. So,
“Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities”.
“Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities”.
I like this one the most out of all the ones I’ve read here up to now.
I think the main problem is “link aggregator” which doesn’t make a lot of sense as the main function is discussion. For a minimal change you could go for “a discussion platform for the fediverse”.
If “fediverse” is too obscure; you could try just “a decentralised discussion platform”. Decentralised isn’t technical, you can’t fully describe the fediverse in a sentence but “decentralised” gives a clue.
“Decentralized” may not be technical, but still its a long and complex word. “Fediverse” seems friendlier to me.
I think the word “open instance” could be used in place of decentralized. So when we frame it as open discussion instance, it is a reference to how the instance is decentralized.
I get your point, but I agree with RobotToaster. We’re still at a point where the Fediverse is a very niche thing and a very niche term. For most regular people “Fediverse” is a nonsense word that tells them absolutely nothing, while “decentralised” (albeit a technical term) is at least a concept most people can grasp.
But if you tell them fediverse they can look it up and see there are tons of other sites that are part of the same group. If you say decentralized it sounds like you’ll be alone and separate
But how many will actually do that, though? That doesn’t really sound like how regular people would react. Like, if regular people were capable of reading up and looking into things on their own accord as part of the sign-up process we wouldn’t need to have this conversation about a snappy and succinct summary sentence about Lemmy in the first place.
Yeah I guess mastodon has it as ‘decentralized social media’ so it would be more in tune with that
I’d argue most people would know what centralised and decentralised mean, at least in abstract terms, while anyone that hasn’t encountered it before would have no idea what the fediverse is.
When I first heard “fediverse” I thought it was a joke about everyone on mastodon being a fed 😆
Lemmy talk about it: open source for open discourse.
I vote this one.
Why not shorten ever further and make it: open source discourse
Yep, you’re right!
I think this has the issue of making it easy to confuse it with Discourse, which is another very prominent (non-decentralized) open-source discussion forum software.
“Like Reddit, but owned by the people”
deleted by creator
Reddit without corpo
leave it be. there ain’t any one reason for the influx of new users or the absence thereof. do your thing to the best of your ability and if you happen to stumble onto something better along the way, that’s a job for then. for now, it does its job.
Drop the “Fediverse” verbiage, or even “federated”.
You may be speaking to potential instance admins but only those familiar with AP know what federation means. Otherwise it’s a term with no meaning.
Ironically, even “Lemmyverse” means more than “Fediverse”, so “linked together through the Lemmyverse” actually works better.
Communities, free from corporations.
Share and comment in communities, free from corporations
Lemmy has limited federation with Bluesky and Threads. Lemmy itself isn’t being given with a non-commercial license so if any Lemmy instance grows large it’ll likely monetise and become a corporation.
The decentralized forum for countless communities
