As an average OG ex-redditor, Lemmy needs to move away from it's base barebones UI to something like Photon by default, here's why.
As an average OG ex-redditor, Lemmy needs to move away from it's base barebones UI to something like Photon by default, here's why.
As a strong supporter of open-source and community-funded projects like Lemmy, which prioritize serving users over investors, I believe Lemmy has significant potential, and that's why I am here. However, it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form. Despite the surge in users following Reddit's API changes, Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users, and those accustomed to old Reddit. For Lemmy to reach the broader average general audience, meaningful changes are necessary.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter. This same ease of use is what Mastodon lacked, leading to its initial hype fading quickly. The average user is unlikely to adapt to something that feels complicated or unfamiliar, and this challenge also applies to Lemmy.
As someone who started as an average Reddit user and became more tech-savvy over time, I can confidently say that first impressions matter. When users first visit lemmy.world, the default UI is often enough to discourage them from staying. Most will not explore the homepage sidebar to explore, figure out and switch to one of the alternative UIs available, which is unfortunate because a better UI could make a huge difference.
This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface. Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit. It makes excellent use of screen space and provides customization options like compact and cozy views. Unlike some other alternative UIs, Photon is actively maintained and ready for widespread use, although in no way is it perfect, this can also help bring in more contributors to the project development.
While it is important to continue offering other UIs as options, I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user. First impressions are crucial, and the current default UI has turned off many potential users. If we want Lemmy to succeed as a true Reddit alternative, we need to prioritize user experience and accessibility. Thankfully today, Lemmy still continues to be THE biggest Reddit alternative, while our userbase is still considerably smaller than Reddit, it's the biggest of any alternatives, and Lemmy continues to somewhat be in the spotlight for those seeking alternatives, we can't let growth stagnate, it's high time we make the platform more welcoming and appealing for the average joe.
You really trying to convince us with a screenshot of the ugliest ui i ever seen huh
Yeah I used old Reddit. I don't want something that looks like new Reddit
That’s too much padding. It needs to be more like Hacker News.
Lemmy will be getting a new, more modern UI sometime soon.
It is being actively developed and you can even try it out today: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui-leptos
Nah, the current UI is fine. We don’t need fancy shit on a link aggregator. Reddit went to shit after “updating” the UI.
Your opinions of “good” or “best” aren’t the same for everyone.
Bluesky looks like old Twitter and was even "created" by the former head of Twitter.
It's not surprising such a guy knows how to succeed.
Lemmy could use a face-lift, sure, but since Lemmy is largely centralized now with Lemmy.world, I'm not sure I care so much about it. It was more fun when Lemmy was started and we had a dream of an distributed network of interesting instances. That didn't happen and like-minded instances shut off federation with the others.
It's like children in a sandbox. "That guy said this, I will tell on the teacher".
The Lemmy UI is easy enough to use IMO. Where the problems show up are:
-
Unreliable linking to other comments and posts. It is annoying to no end to receive a link to someone's comment and be unceremoniously ripped out of your home server and put onto the federated one no longer logged in etc... This behaviour should somehow be prevented
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a quick reference to the text commands easily found somewhere (ie: sidebar)
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I'd prefer more theme and colour options
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Fix the text interface so it respects carriage return entries properly. If I want to start a new line directly under the current one (edit: AFI knew after 4+ months of use) there is
no way
to do
it.
Make it so a single carriage return is acknowledged and correctly starts a new line right underneath, or automatically forces a blank line between. This needing double entry is unintuitive and wrecks many new user's first hundred post's appearance.
Finally, the premise: Lemmy.world should be more welcoming is itself undesirable. That instance is already taking up an inordinate number of users so IMO every other instance (except the awful ones, we all know who they are) should be using a better UI, not L.W
no way
to do
it.
your can use
two space at the end of the line
to achieve thisFor the links, it's being worked on, should be part of 0.20: https://lemmy.ml/post/23245384
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I love the Lemmy UI.
But I'm a gen Xer.
There's some great analysis floating around of how different generations actually interpret UIs (and make decisions about how or whether to engage with them) very differently. So there is no "one size fits all" that will make everybody happy. Change the Lemmy UI to something like Photon and I'd be like... "this is dumb." Making a bunch of very different options is a lot of work. If you want to do it... no one is stopping you. The Lemmy project is opensource and you could go start contributing and making pull requests today. You could go run your own instance and make it look like whatever you want and get the average redditors to join that. I run my own instance. We have a whole two users. It works exactly the way I want it to and federates with exactly who I want it to.
Frankly, I'm not sure Lemmy needs to go out of it's way to appeal to the average redditor in order to have a thriving, healthy community. Sure, there are some things I miss about having a giant user base to engage with, but honestly, I'll trade them for the MUCH MUCH lower toxicity. I don't know that "growing Lemmy" should be our focus. It's not like we're getting paid.
This is a good take.
Speaking from the same neutral pragmatism, it makes sense to let the default Lemmy web UI be a lightweight, actually-mobile-friendly derivative of old.reddit, rather than a more committed default like Alexandrite or Photon.
Keeping things similar is a good jumping-off point, and if we do want to make some large change, different generations and cultures have heavily varying default preferences. Wouldn't it be wiser to pick a common ground, something these differing peoples have grown used to, as opposed to some new style A or B or C likes?
(Fun fact: if you think that ppl sticking to old designs is silly, Panasonic has a whole $$ niche in Japan selling modern-internal, vintage-external laptops with DVD drives and old-style keyboards. https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/v0t06p literally has both a VGA and a thunderbolt lol)
I love the Lemmy UI, and am a Gen Z. There's nothing worse than a UI that's slow, takes more time than necessary to load and is overloaded. I would much rather have bare HTTP forms or just make curl calls than using (new) reddit or Photon.
I personally really dislike new reddit and the Photon theme. I'd say no to any change to my main instance.
I would actually prefer this: sacred.computer
Have you tried https://next.lemm.ee/ ?
The information density in the UI is crazy high.
I've only used it on mobile. I don't know what the desktop looks like. But i like the smaller font. It's more "crisp" than the default UI.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter.
I think many people use Bluesky instead of Mastodon because of its UX, not its UI. Both looks great (I think Mastodon even nicer!).
I personally use Mastodon, but I've seen people complain about their experience with it.
The ootb experience is what matters to most. As people seem to just want it to work. I personally love the bare bones.. but most users don't really customize much or want to conduct a whole study on alternative apps or settings. I would be fine with polished and basic settings complemented with an advanced settings menu and other apps.
most users don’t really customize much or want to conduct a whole study on alternative apps or settings.
Usually I just recommend
- one instance: https://discuss.online/
- one app: Voyager
They can figure the rest themselves later, but that's usually a good way to set people up
Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit.
What about Tesseract?
This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface.
That's something to be discussed per server. You should maybe ask LW staff to open a poll on their announcements community
Why photon? alexandrite is insanely much better imho: https://a.lemmy.world
I'm new to Lemmy and quite tech savvy.
I'd like to get more people I know to join, but the standard UI really wasn't nice. Thanks for showing me Photon, I like it so much more!!
I'm using Sync on mobile, I miss the Upvote & Downvote bar, any idea how to get it back?
Lemdro.id uses Photon as it's default UI, but it's incredibly slow and sometimes it doesn't even load properly. As much as I love the polish, I wouldn't recommend it as default UI. Using photon as an alternative UI is much better option.
I might have missed it, but why is it clear that lemmy is reaching a plateau of users?
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
First graph
it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form.
Good! Lemmy doesn't need to become big, especially since the less techy masses will likely put loads of load on privately hosted instances without bothering to donate.
The growth could actually kill Lemmy.I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user.
Please no!
We're at 44k monthly active users https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
100k or 200k wouldn't kill the platform
Eh, i agree that lemmy shouldn't grow too big (Reddit is an example of why, feels like a circlejerk of bots and reposts), but the userbase feels too small currently. On a lot of communities, The activity is 1-2 posts a week, which makes it feel quite dead. And I especially miss the niche communities that you could join on reddit, for small games or obscure topics.
I mean, yes. And I also like the oldschool interface, it does have its iffy corners but the overall layout and UX is great.
That said, there's a difference between "avoid (success at all costs)" and "(avoid success) at all cost". We should be making lemmy better for the purpose of making lemmy better, we shouldn't be changing it just to please random people so they come over.
I disagree. We want all people and all perspectives. Federarion needs to become the default to put enough pressure on the big tech companies to get all people on a common protocal. It is the ideal that web3.0 promised to be.
Also we need to monitise lemmy so that running an instance is profitable enough to support the usrload. I think we can do this via lemmy gold make it monero based where a golded post/comment get split between instance/community/post/comment. Align profit incentives with making federated media better for everyone.
Mastodon is easy to use, it had no chance to become neo-twitter for other reasons.
Can you accept organic growth and not being the bestest best with three billions people?
I feel like this also was reddits main issue. I started occasionally using reddit way back, probably around when I was also heavy on slashdot. I hated reddits website. Honestly even old is crap. There used to be a simplified app like version of the website you could access, forget what it was though. That was at least user friendly and functional. When I found sync is when I actually got heavy into reddit because something had solved all of reddits glaring issues.
As much as i love photon, i don't think it should be the default. The default lemmy ui is pretty slick and lightweight, even if it is kind of bad. Photon can be sluggish, and overwhelming for some.
I think they should just improve the default UI (which they are currently), and leave it for the user to decide.
People who prefer old Reddit often say the same thing about new Reddit. While old Reddit, or in this case a barebones, simpler UI, is lightweight and "slick," the reality is that if we want Lemmy to grow beyond its current base of tech-savvy users, we need to consider a different perspective, one that focuses on the needs and expectations of the average user.
For example, despite old Reddit being lighter and having its loyal supporters, 80 to 90 percent of users still prefer new Reddit. As someone who used to moderate on Reddit, I can confirm that the majority of traffic came from new Reddit, even though old Reddit was still available. This highlights how a more modern and user-friendly interface is often what appeals to the majority.
From my personal experience as someone who primarily used new Reddit, Photon feels far more intuitive and familiar compared to the default Lemmy UI. That said, I am not claiming Photon is perfect. However, considering that most alternative UIs are currently niche and their development relies heavily on a small group of contributors, Photon stands out as a mature and robust option.
While it is encouraging to see Lemmy’s developers working on improving the default UI, the project is still in its early stages and may or may not succeed. Why start from scratch or bet on something that is just beginning development when we already have a well-developed alternative like Photon? By adopting Photon as the default, we can take advantage of an existing solution that is in good shape, has significant potential, and can continue to improve with more widespread adoption and contributions.
This approach would ensure that Lemmy becomes more accessible and appealing to the average user, while still leaving room for users to choose other UIs if they prefer. First impressions matter, and adopting a polished and familiar UI could make all the difference in attracting and retaining new users.
BTW those who want to can still change to alternative UIs, nothing will stop them from doing so.
I'm fine with the UI filtering out the riffraff
Also that lack of polish reads as sketchy to a lot of people with only basic tech literacy. I've had trouble getting other Healthcare workers to join and they always look at me sideways when they first glance at the layout. I actually agree that making something slicker looking the default would pull more normies without having to sacrifice a customizable interface for the people with enough know-how that they're probably already modding it anyway. A big part of reddit for me was commiserating about my Healthcare job and while some of us are tech literate a lot just... aren't.
I also prefer the new (new-old, the current one sucks) reddit UI and love photon, and i don't think it's too far fetched of an idea to want it as the default UI. I think it should be left to instances, so for example, lemmy.world could use photon for the default, yet lemmy.ml could use the default lemmy UI.
I'm still a little concerned over first impressions of a new lemmy user, when they try to use lemmy.world on a weak device, and realize it is slow, or laggy, and could sour their opinion on lemmy as a whole. A non tech savvy user might not completely understand the idea of lemmy, or clients, or even instances. They'd just blindly choose lemmy.world and assume that's the "main" instance. (I also could just be underestimating the average user's intelligence, lol.)
That's why i brought up performance as a main point to why we should keep the current lemmy UI. Maybe if photon is optimized and is more stable, i could completely agree that it should be the default.
I know I'm tech-savvy, but I actually enjoy the fact that Lemmy (and the Fediverse) doesn't hand everything to me easily on a plate. The hunt for new interesting communities, my long well curated block list, setting up Lemmy apps exactly to my preferences is part of the fun.
If someone handed me a fully configured Voyager app on day one, I wouldn't have had all the exciting experiences trying a bunch of apps to find the best one for me, learning how to block instances and communities, learning how to correctly link to communities and users, finding new ways to discover communities.
All this stuff is part of why I come back here everyday. A ready out-of-the-box solution is kinda boring.
A lot of the comments including yours sound gatekeep-y to me but I have to say I kind of feel the same way.
Everyone who has come here and stuck around found their way through the jank and is joining an exclusive club of high-quality discussion. Like Linux, once you can get past the basics, you can customize your experience nearly limitlessly, but it takes effort, trial and error to get to something you like.
I’m not at all tech savvy[1], but it’s not that hard, honestly.
[1] context: I know that when a steam game doesn’t work, sometimes I need to reinstall a driver, but I never remember how or where to do that. I use an iPhone from 2016, and I unlock it with my fingerprint.
I'm on Fedia. It's pretty solid, UI-wise. I actually find it more usable than Reddit and its terrible way of trimming down threads by default.
What I've seen of Lemmy does seem a bit messier to read, though.
Yeah that's the Mbin UI in general as opposed to Lemmy's. Mbin is definitely taking its own approach UI-wise.
I just use the Voyager app, which has a great UI, with no need to visit the website at all.
I should mention this is mainly for desktop users :), but even for mobile users, people usually check the website first before downloading apps.
Voyager also has a web version web version
I mostly agree. Maybe a nice idea to make it opt-in by default, with the option to switch back to the 'old' UI
Perhaps a modal the first time someone visits that shows the different UI options and directions on where to switch
I've been pretty happy with it as the default on !slrpnk.net
Before that, alexandrite was my go to.
The default Lemmy ui doesn't look good to me.
One thing to consider here is that photon as an spa does not offer great support search engines. Which can help drive organic traffic to lemmy. While, some may see it as a net benefit, from your point of view it's an great disadvantage.