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!

  • BobQuasit@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    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.
  • MentallyExhausted@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    There’s a learning curve with “how do I know which instance to join?” and then “how do I find communities from other instances?” But I’m getting the hang of it.

    What it needs most is a UI overhaul. If Apollo came to the fediverse it would be a game changer.

      • hllywluis@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        1 year ago

        I think you can just use whichever one you find most convenient, I would wager lemmy.ml would be your best bet as it’s the most active instance. The other accounts I think you could just keep as a backup in case the main lemmy.ml instance goes down.

        • DelusionalAI@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Is there any point to having more than 1? As long as the instance isn’t shut down it shouldn’t really matter which one is “Home” right?

          • Evkob@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Right, as long as your instance’s server is up, you should be able to interact with any content using ActivityPub.

    • Silviecat44@vlemmy.net
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      1 year ago

      Mlem is an Apollo inspired iOS app for Lemmy. Very barebones at the moment and in beta but inproving

  • Sploosh the Water@vlemmy.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Banana@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I like the concept
    But it feels very much like its been designed by nerdy developers and has had little to no-input on user friendly design.

    The federated idea can work but it needs to be more seemless than this.

    1. Communities with the same name should be merged when viewing it from any instance, so you can see all the posts from these communities, they can be moderated seperatley and for advanced users you should be able to select which communities make up the merged community.
    2. By default you should see all of the merged communities in a central place and be able to subscribe to them easily, at the moment its handled different per instance but you have to seek out these communities to subscribe or follow them.
    3. I strongly believe there should be a centralised log-in system, so you can log into any instance with an account from another instance, this means if your instance goes down your account is centralised and is safe.
  • petrichorbreeze@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Not a fan of Jerboa, but I realize that it’s early days. Hopefully we can get some of the UI people from the 3rd party reddit apps on here to develop a better client.

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Higante@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Feels like this might be the fediverse flavor that sticks with me. I tried mastodon and diaspora, but they didn’t stick. Didn’t help that I hated Twitter and Facebook.

    This feels chill so far. I like it

  • YourBrainOnScience@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Z3DT@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • egg sandwich@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I’m enjoying the concept behind the fediverse, and while communities are small right now, they’re eventually gonna get bigger and be more centralized.

    I think the UI/UX does need a little more work, but that’ll come with time.

  • domsch@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Stone4D@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    It’s pretty nice. I do hope it picks up more activity of course, but it’s just been a chill and low key sorta thing for me so far. Way less toxic than most other sites I’ve used.

  • kneekon@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I must have taken the wrong turn somewhere, I came here because I’m a Motörhead fan.