Is lemmy's name holding it back?

I confess that it is always odd to see a musician, now deceased for a decade, when searching for this platform. Mind you, that is an ongoing tribute to their legacy, which is how it came about.
In a 2020 post, Lemmy's co-creator Dessalines wrote about the origin of the name Lemmy. "It was nameless for a long time, but I wanted to keep with the fediverse tradition of naming projects after animals. I was playing that old-school game Lemmings, and Lemmy (from Motorhead) had passed away that week, and we held a few polls for names, and I went with that."
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(social_network)#History
- Pretty weak reasons for picking the name tbh
  
  Why did you pick your username?

some would prefer the limited growth.
i picked moist because who the fuck would want to market that
- I have bad news
  
  freakin canada
- Well, there is that one guy…
  
  Von Lipwig?
  
  Charles Boyle?
- Are you a “Dead like me” fan? Its the code word you set up to let your family know your not dead yet.
  
  nooope first ive heard of it! interesting
  
  I love that show. I just started rewatching it, after rewatching Coupling. Giving me all the nostalgia.
- Greatest and best name ever.

when I say 'fediverse' people think I'm saying 'fetiverse' and sometimes they ask if it's like open source fetlife. 🫠
- TBH the kink community has been needing a replacement for fetlife for a while
  
  Oh my gosh, how nothing changed when all those people were getting murdered through the site? So scary!
- In my native language, fediverse translates to "fédivers" which sounds like "faits divers" the "incidents" or "'news briefs" section of a journal.
  
  On peut faire un site "Faits divers sur le fédivers"
- Better than people assuming it's a joke about it being full of feds, which I've seen before.
- just tell them "yes!". they will figure it out :-)
- I have people asking if it's a site for fans of crumbly cheese.
  
  I do love some crumbly cheese, so I'll allow it.
- Whenever I see’fediverse’ I still think it has something to do with Roger Federer.
- I've seen people ask why the Fetaverse has nothing to do with cheese
- When I mention the Fediverse to my gf she thinks I am talking about the "Fedeverso" an allusion to "Fedelobo" a Mexican YouTuber who looks a lot like a lot of Mexicans (hence the "Fedeverso") I don't blame her lol.
- The Fetaverse. Only Greek cheese.

Eh, names may sound stupid at first, but after saying it a million times it'll start to sound normal. "Google" sounded stupid and silly when they just first started, but now it sounds formal and makes you think of dystopia and dread.
- I mean... reddit?
- It's less about how it sounds and more SEO
  
  Just anecdotal experience to relate, but the opinion I see most commonly in various threads is that being concerned about SEO and growth metrics and the like fundamentally misunderstands the opportunity the fediverse provides.
  At least for me, it's nice to have a corner of the internet where, for the most part, discussions don't escalate to the polemical levels that occur when everyone needs to shout to get a word in edgewise.
  I admit that my logic stems from the impulse to gatekeep, but my intent would be that we tend to our gardens, as it were, and let the folks who are seeking that kind of experience filter in at a natural rate. For example, while I don't think that Lemmy needs to juice it's SEO, I do think it would be a good idea to continue to improve the onboarding process for folks that don't give a rip about the tech running their social media.
  I'm willing to entertain arguments to the contrary, but I think that this approach encourages growth by improving accessibility, while not overwhelming the aspects of the culture that has gotten folks to stick around here at all. The assumption I'm operating under, and I acknowledge its optimism, is that a person who finds themselves on Lemmy is clearly looking for a different experience than what traditional social media offers them, even if they can't articulate what exactly it is that they're missing from corporate owned platforms.
  To that end, I don't think it's necessary to try and ensure our Lemmy beats out Lemmy Kilmeister, who is the singer I'm hopefully correct in assuming people are talking about lol

No issues with the name. My problem is I can’t just do a simple search and add lemmy to make it search lemmy, like you can with Reddit.
- This would change everything.
- Kagi has a fediverse lens that works pretty well for that.

As the name of open source projects go, Lemmy isn't the biggest dumpster fire I've come across. It's clear how to pronounce it, at least.
- I'm curious as to what the worst one is. GIMP is pretty bad, KiCAD has pronunciation problems, nothing else is coming to mind
  
  GNU is the sound a man makes when you force his epiglottis open with a socket wrench.

Based on Twitter’s success, I don’t think names matter much. If it were named something like CockAndBallTorture, sure, but Lemmy is fine.
- To be fair, the food butternut squash is doing fine even though it contains the phrase "nut squash"
  
  Why stop there? "Butt Nut Squash" was right there!

No

“A MUSICIAN”???
You put some respect on Lemmy Kilmisters name, sir.
- Finally a man of culture

The description as a 'link aggregator' on the fediverse page is holding it back.
- Yeah for sure, what is a link agrigater?
  
  Something ornery cause of all them teeth

What's holding it back is not having a button to filter out all the US drama. Eternity had it, but that app isn't working anymore.
- https://lemmy.ml/post/25075979
  
  Hmm so use it in the browser? Lemmy has a pretty terrible web UI, like forgetting where it was when I press back.
- Eternity doesn't work? I'm literally typing from it now..
  
  It does? It hasn't had an update in 5 months and that's how long it has been broken I'd say. I guess the f Droid version is out of date then. Thx!
- You can filter it in the apps.
  
  I've just looked at Jerboa, Voyager and Raccoon and none of those have content filtering.

I have to admit, the name did directly lead to me taking longer to adopt it.
Dead musicians aside, it's not a cool name. It's not a cute-in-a-quirky-way name, and most egregiously, it's an actual name. For a person.
I think that the fediverse is held back by its name, but since I don't have a solution, I usually never mention it. I try not to observe problems unless I have some solution, no matter how weak or terrible.
- Also I am from the American South and I have met people named Lemmy in my life. (I'm older and they were older than me but still.) The one that sticks out in my memory had no teeth from obvious meth use, skin more leathered by cigarette smoke and alcohol than the sun, and tended to wear a leather vest with no shirt.
  If you're imagining someone that was not cool, you would be correct.
  So again, definitely not helping. Made me take a couple extra months after hearing about it before even researching it, because "oh, ew, it's called Lemmy?"
  
  Ive never met any person named "Lemmy", nor seen it in any kind of movie. And the first time I heard about Lemmy the musicion was when I searched for Lemmy the software. For me it mostly sounds similar to cute little lemmings.

Not as much as Loops probably.
- Searching for any information regarding Loops is great way to show off the importance of SEO
  
  What is loops? That video hosting site I sometimes see linked on Lemmy?

I don't think it has that big of an impact. But most open source developers forget that it might end up being used by more people than just them .
Mastodon. Lemmy, do a web search especially for Lemmy on reddit and you are more likely than not to end up on threads about the singer . and don't get me started on the many unpronounceable names of open source projects.

I don't really think the name of the software matters. My server is called The Vegan Theory Club, and that is what I ultimately want people to look for and know. The fact that we are running the lemmy software is a bit incidental imo, it is a good website platform and I think if you are looking for software it is an obvious choice and in that context people aren't going to confuse it with Motörhead

I think it's more the network effect. There aren't many users here. Like, I know the handles of all the usual posters on the Canada community.

It's indeed an odd name but holding it back from what ? Its not a popularoty contest . Why is "widespread adoption" seen as the metric for success? That onky needed for shitty commercial products, to me it's great right now..
- its a link aggregator based off reddit, showing up higher in the resulrs when it's own name is googled would be nice

How dare you besmirch the name of the frontman of the greatest band that has ever existed!

But Lemmy is God

Things we have no interest in changing. The topics of the most popular threads (linux, privacy, open source, niche diy, programming), the makeup of the communities (occupation, gender, political alignment, etc.), non-mainstream opinions (privacy, dangers of AI, how to best spend one's time).
Lemmy will never grow as it stands. The public won't change and neither will we. Our best shot is to pitch it to somewhat technically minded folks while could operate an instance if it is set up for them. Most of us could do this pretty easily with Ansible.
The harder part is the pitch. ESPECIALLY when persuading someone to manage an instance, we need to lighten any of the opinions in the first paragraph. Something we don't historically do very well.
We also need to make things more "fun/useful". Sports trivia, more cat/animal memes, substantially less cynical comics/more "funny ones", more mainstream hobby communities (e.g. cooking, rock climbing, active D&D), random/communities with no "real purpose", communities for differently abled/neurodivergent folks with a large enough user base to provide real support.
Creature comforts. A lot of people are going to find Lemmy to be primative. Something we take for granted is we will happily embrace something "inferior" but belonging to us rather than the bleeding edge proprietary offerings. I've come to find I "love" my freedom oriented software and hardware to the point I don't even care if it shits the bed. It's like my puppy. Sure it will do things I don't like, but I'm patient with it. Most normies won't feel that way. We'd need to polish and grow the code base to include the things people expect in a modern app, but most of us don't have the skill or the time. And these additions may be things we don't want anyway
I don't see this as insurmountable. Less so as folks are becoming more aware of the invasive nature of AI. We just need to balance that et. al with the above.
- I am uncertain what I want. I kinda like what lemmy is now. I don't really want it to become mainstream. On the other hand I want the corporations to fail and lemmy is the best chance we have.
- there is plenty of cooking and cat pics on lemmy and an entire instance dedicated to tabletop RPGs
  
  I don't doubt it, to the extent some want more people on lemmy, do you think what we have is sufficient in quality or quantity in the eyes of those who we would attract? That was my point

Based on what I've learnt, what's holding Lemmy back is that a large amount of users are fucking man babies that brigade any women-oriented communities and drive women in general away from this place, while admins just sit back and allow them to. The Lemmy mouse needs a fedora.
- Leave .world alone! (the answer to the original question is not instance wars)
- If it's anything like twoxchromosomes I could see why, thanking god I've never befriended anyone irl that frequents that place, I assumed the drama site was a lemmy instance and mostly woman oriented but ive never seen it here so I guess not
  
  If you think twoxchromosomes is bad because women there had the nerve to talk about their bad experiences, then actual feminist subs must've terrified you.

Perhaps. First name that came to me was remmy but the real nane is remy from the movie

musician
Who?

what would be a better name?
lemming
lemorian?
lemmy is okay
- Lemmino. Wait, a Swedish YouTuber already uses that name.

Maybe, but it would be hard to pivot at this point. There's other things that would be a way better use of dev time.

We could retcon it as named after the koopaling.
As much as I love Motorhead, it's not a great name.
- I have long contended there is no good band name. All are terrible.
  
  Counterpoint: Ninja Sex Party.

Lemmy needs better marketing. The name is lame an non-descriptive of what it is. The UI, while awesome to the tech savvy is not modern enough to compete with alternatives. For Lemmy to succeed it has to become "cool" and it's not there yet and seems to lack that sort of direction.

I think the political culture is holding it back more than the name. People poke their heads in and see an environment that is far more left than they’re used to so they head back to Reddit. It can be a shock to see all the moe/loli and communist stuff when they aren’t used to it.
- Good.
- 👍 best tip I got in my early days on Lemmy was to not hesitate with blocking instances

Yeah but Lemmy is dead. Also a lost oppurtunity for the metal community to not just go by Kilmister. could flipped it to be Mr. Kill