What are some valid criticisms of Lemmy do you hear from people who tried out the platform?
Let’s compose a list of the all shortcomings so that we can address them and eventually hit 100k mau.
Not enough people around to discuss some more niche topics and hobbies.
Specific video game subs are what I miss the most. I used to be very active in r/stalker and r/teslore, r/trueSTL. There is nothing like that here that sees more than one post per month, and I'm not sure that I have the energy to commit to reviving it myself.
Same, same. I miss hobby electronics projects. And some of the communities about AI topics (and more detailed descussion than just the hype) really lost momentum.
Have you tried being more in to US Politics, Linux and Privacy? I've found several very vibrant communities for those here.
Yeah, I think the main issue with that is both people watching the All feed and then complaining they get to see all the posts about all topics. And also people asking their Linux questions on c/asklemmy and other general purpose communities. I've given up on the US politics, though. That's something we currently all have to go through. Remedy might be a keyword filter or turning off internet and TV for the coming weeks.
I keep hearing this. And I get it. But I think as a community our interests are so niche that we also miss out on more mainstream content I would like to see. For example there’s some prime time network TV shows I watch, there’s comms for them with subscribers but they are not active.
Sure. This wasn't meant to take away from anything else. I think at least theoretically, both can go along. It's just that it's more obvious with the niche things. But probably applies to all of the topics. And there is a demand to discuss all kinds of things and I think we have the potential to let the user decide what they're interested in... Whether that's popular/mainstream or not. It just takes people to talk to to be present... somehow.
For example there’s some prime time network TV shows I watch, there’s comms for them with subscribers but they are not active.
Feel free to open threads on !showsandmovies@lemm.ee, we are the most active TV shows community
It's too fractured, posts in one community on one instance have separate comments and interaction to the same post in the same community on another instance, even if you use crossposts properly, and it clutters up your feed with multiple of the same post
This is a big one. Its probably doomed to imperfection and hold out Mods who don't want to do it but I think some kind of Community Sync option would be huge.
One problem is that the API call that returns the feed doesn't provide crosspost information (unless that's changed in 0.19.4+ since i'm still developing against 0.19.3).
Crossposts in the feed have to be done client side, and you can only "roll up" ones that have the same URL (Tesseract can optionally roll up on identical titles if there's no URL). However, that's limited to just the ones that come through in the same fetch (unless you store all posts locally, which is something I'm considering in the future for offline support; most apps don't).
The API call that populates the /post page does provide that crosspost data, and I've thought about making an option to combine the comments from each into one "megapost". But there are a few problems with that:
c/cars and c/fuckcars by different people with different intentions.The tone of the comments would be wildly different since the two communities are basically ideologically opposites. The replies to comments that came in from c/fuckcars would be responding to car enthusiasts from c/cars and vice-versa. It would basically be a form of soft brigading.
I've wanted to do a feature like that for a while now, but every time I've tried to plan it out, it always seems like it would just make things worse. Even with indicators as to which community the comment came from, it's still not ideal.
…is it weird that I actually like this part of it? It feels like it allows there to be different “flavors” of communities, and I can decide which flavor I like and which one I don’t.
I can see how it would get frustrating as a poster trying to figure out which community will get the most reach.
I don't think it's weird. Right now it probably isn't great cause the pool of commenters is already small, and this dilutes it further, but I think in a world where we had plenty of people in all those communities it would be fine.
It does suck on the posting aide, though, and it also seems like there might be some use to a tool/feature that merges them somehow so you're viewing it all together and respond to whoever you like in one place.
Reddit has the same issue. People will post an article in like 6, somewhat related subreddits and the feed would be quite repetitive.
What the hell I didn't even know this existed. I just chose all posts and thought I was seeing the aggregate content from every instance. Also, Seeing the usernames (with different instances on it), it made me believe everyone's interactions are saved and visible.
Posts within the same community are synced and you can see communities from different instances. The point is that news@instance1 and news@instance2 are different communities even though the names are similar.
The counter argument is that reddit has the same problem even without federation. /r/games, /r/gaming and /r/gamers are three different subreddits with very similar names and you have no way of knowing which one is the "main" gaming community unless you check each of them. With time, this will probably sort itself out with lemmy as well. It just takes time for one of the similar communities to become the de facto standard.
That usually happens when there's a LW world community and then the alternative
Not sure why the posters on LW want to keep those active when the alternatives are more popular (e.g. !showsandmovies@lemm.ee has 2.4k monthly active users, !television@lemmy.world has 1k), and LW centralization is causing federation issues with aussie.zone but that's why they are both kept alive.
Too much focus on discussing the news and politics. And rarely is it an inspiring and new perspective. (Sometimes it is, though.)
this election is among the most important ones in the history of the country. if not the most. i am also looking forward to it just being fucking done with and having other things on the feed
Aside from being important for the US, it could easily impact relations with other countries.
2020 was the most important. Before that it was 2012. Then 2008. 2004 no more war!
So yea. This is the one. The one election to vote them all for something.
They say this every time lol. Its all bullshit.
I recall another thread a few weeks ago where someone suggested a no political discussion day, and everyone down-voted him and gave them angry responses. I recall one up-voted response saying "everything is political".
This place has become an echo chamber for cranky old Linux users and is really uninviting to anyone else.
One of the things I miss about Reddit is the diversity of opinions and viewpoints on the platform. (I didn't love the insane amount of reposts and bot traffic)
Hehe, btw, I'm one of the cranky Linux users slowly growing old...
I can tell you this isn't really an echo chamber for people like me. I'd say the majority of people here are more "normal" people. My take on things often gets opposed. And it feels quite different to the old school places where Linux users and admins mingle. Often times the mob mentality (if there is underneath a post) is against me. A Linux forum feels very different. Especially the way they talk to each other. Here, people argue about opinions, while the "proper" nerds discuss technical facts and then something is objectively right or wrong (or solves something). Which I don't see happening here that often. So I'd say it's not it.
You're right. Everything is kind of political. And arguing about politic sometimes is stupid and tiresome. And I also like diversity of perspectives and opinions. I wouldn't need to talk to other people if I wasn't interested to hear what they got to say...
(And the downvoting here is just silly. I also think it's way more pronounced than on Reddit. I regularly see urban legends getting upvoted. While nuanced and longer perspectives get punished. And being human surely includes ignorance. It just doesn't help anything once it gets part of the dynamics.)
Ha that was my shower thought post. I was not expecting to be hated on so much for a little idea.
I ultimately believe "everything is political" is true in the sense that everything interfaces with and influences the political system...but some people just use it to devalue any discussion that does not mention governorship, and any stories that are not propaganda.
At least I feel like I’m heard here. I posted comments so many times on Reddit and I rarely get any engagement. It feels like talking to yourself among an absurdly large and loud crowd.
Politics is big on instances like 'world' (which, despite the name, seems very US-centric), but others I have an account on its less of a thing.
I have a mostly politics free feed that I've cultivated. Some always leaks in here and there, but if it's an account that only posts that kind of content I just block them.
I definitely can see how relentless the politics posting is when I go to all, though.
I don't see how you would Escape that especially this week
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
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.
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 !newcommunities@lemmy.world to list all the video games communities: https://lemmy.world/post/19252451
Maybe you could start another one?
Its always about one of two things:
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.
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?
That feels shockingly accurate
Hey wait a minute I resemble this strawman
I feel attacked
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion man.
The politics is very left wing and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.
Tankies gonna tankie
if a "viewpoint" is based on lies coming from a convicted felon rapist traitor to the country, than anyone holding that viewpoint can actually go fuck themselves
edit: as a reminder, we're talking about people who cause and advocate for this
Staunch Obama and Biden supporter here ... I've read Obama and Kamala's most recent books...
You do not need to be a Trumpie to get annoyed with the "everything is emshittified", "fuck capitalism", etc posts and comments.
The default web interface is very poorly designed and looks uninviting. Sure, there are great alternative interfaces but people will be turned off before they could check them out. Also, it's usually the first thing you see when someone's sharing a link.
There not being an official app is also something that will confuse non-tech users.
The default web interface is very poorly designed and looks uninviting.
A redesign is on the way. It will use Leptos with DaisyUI.
There not being an official app is also something that will confuse non-tech users.
Jerboa is official.
The default web interface is very poorly designed and looks uninviting.
Disagree. I find it rather clean and functional, even on mobile. Maybe because I liked old reddit. Maybe younger people are used to Instagram-like feeds so they don't like the compact forum style.
I thought Jerboa was the official app.
Indeed an official app would ease the user on-boarding.
I had to read through some articles first to get the concept of the fediverse first and the look out for my home instance. That’s way too techy
We need a guide to send perspective users to signup through Lemm.ee and voyager to onboard them.
Original content could entice them to more willingly join Lemmy.
Wait what? I love the look currently
Wait what? I love the look currently
Many instances have domain names that look invalid and/or like scam sites to non-techies. Dot world? Dot social? Dot [obscure country TLD]? There's also no guarantees that the domain will indicate that it's a Lemmy site. Both of these become problematic with sharing, as the default (? been a while since I've used the web interface) share function links to the poster's instance and not the community instance. A year and a half ago, the shared links section in my messenger was mostly a Reddit flood. Today, it looks like someone spilled alphabet soup.
Just today I was about to share a link and the URL was like "shit just works" and I was like damn, fuck that, I can't share this shit. Not even joking
When you block someone, all the subsequent comments made to that person's comment are also unable to be viewed.
When they post asking for help with Windows and get an entire thread of answers from obnoxious elitist wankers who couldn't even decide on a distro between them
Gee maybe they should try using Windows tech support then
The fact that many on the internet haven’t gotten past the largest hurdle, creating a Lemmy account.
We’re currently at 462k created accounts.
I said this a while ago on another thread, but if I was a Dev on the project I would be working to create a website that automatically signs you up for an instance. The high level concept is instances would opt into this pool, the user would simply put in their username like any regular website, and then the system would create them an account on whichever instance was best for them (maybe based on ping/trying to spread population around).
This would majorly reduce the barrier to entry in my opinion, because a lot of people just want to browse, and don't care about the federation aspect at all.
Which instances would you put into this pool besides lemm.ee and lemmy.zip?
https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/ filtered by MAU
This one is my biggest challenge too… I wish there was, like, a “trial” instance that folks were automatically signed up for and then after 30 days they had to switch and find another instance.
Once you’re in the door it’s lovely, but that first barrier to entry scares people off.
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.
You can set your languages in the settings. As the warning say, make sure to keep "Undetermined" check along English
I use the Connect app to browse Lemmy and I didn't see such a setting. I'm guessing I have to do this on desktop. I haven't logged in through there since I signed up but I'll check it out, thanks.
I have to block the subcommunities one by one, and then block them again and again for every other instance that hosts that sublemmy
Personally quite like reading things in other languages, just like a paragraph or so, and then checking my comprehension afterwards with an online translator. Only really partially works for Western European languages though!
Here are some great instance discovery resources:
Wait it doesn't?! What does it do then?
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.
Generally mods of the communities still suck to an absolute extent, not as bad as reddit but still nowhere near acceptable.
I hate not being informed of bans, and I think they are all permanent.
They're not all permanent, Lemmy displays the duration in the mod log. I agree that there should be some kind of notification though.
Gosh the permanent bans being handed out like candy to someone being rude is often too much.
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.
This Post is stored on lemmy.world, right? Where is the comment I'm currently writing stored? on lemmy.world, or sh.itjust.works?
@kibiz0r@midwest.social 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."
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.)
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:
That talklittle went to tildes instead, which, fair.
If there's something we're not short of, it's mobile clients
also fair
That it's not well known.
Nothing is deleted, just slightly obscured, and some apps don't even do that. Child porn, illegal revenge porn, hate speech, everything is stored forever.