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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    2 years 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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    2 years 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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        2 years 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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          2 years 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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            2 years ago

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

  • Sploosh the Water@vlemmy.net
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    2 years 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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    2 years 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.
  • Higante@lemmy.world
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    2 years 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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    2 years 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.

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years 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.

  • petrichorbreeze@lemmy.ml
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    2 years 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.

  • egg sandwich@programming.dev
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    2 years 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.

  • eldrichhydralisk@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 years ago

    Much like when I went from Twitter to Mastodon, finding “my people” is a lot more work. It’s unpleasantly easy for links to a community to take me directly to that instance instead of leaving my on my instance where I’d be able to subscribe and interact. But also like Mastodon, the experience is much nicer once things start getting set up. Really nice not getting pestered to use the app constantly!

  • Stone4D@beehaw.org
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    2 years 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.

  • WintryLemon@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I’m still a little confused but it’s sinking in. The difference between an instance and a “sub”, as well as how to join or interact with other “subs” without having to join each individual instance, was the part that was toughest to adapt to. I love it, though. Lemmy is giving me the feeling Reddit did when I first joined it a long, long time ago on my first ever account. It feels organic.

  • kadu@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Communities are surprisingly alive, I’m impressed.

    I’m also worried the server I chose could randomly close and I’d lose my account, even though the communities from other servers would remain. It would be good to have shared accounts across backup servers, or servers that agreed to mirror each other’s accounts somehow.