this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy

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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!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I'm a bit confused. Like some of the top comments, I've run into problems with how links work when interacting with instances other than my home instance on Mastodon before, and while I haven't been on Lemmy very long, I've already come across that problem but worse. At least on Mastodon, I can just copy/paste the Toot URL into my instance's search box and it comes up. If I get a link to a post on Lemmy I have no idea how to interact with it from my instance.

Some other issues:

At least on my instance, URLs are extremely vague. Reddit makes it easy to glance at the URL to see which subreddit you're on. On Lemmy I would ideally want to be able to see both the home instance of the post and the community within that instance. Instead I get just a single unique ID.

The way that instances sort seems to be different? Or at least there's something going on with sorting that confuses me. When viewing this post on my home instance, the second top comment is by @[email protected], which is the comment I was referencing earlier. But when I click the little colourful connected graph to go to what I presume is the OP's home instance, that post is way down the list and the second top comment is from "Craving0496". Which is another confusing point. I've noticed both here in this thread, and on the main community of my home instance that I signed up to participate in, some users have an @ at the start of their name, and some don't. I don't know why.

Discoverability is definitely also a big issue for me. On Reddit I could just think of a topic I want to explore and go to old.reddit.com/r/. Or I can try variations of the name of that topic to find more options or if my first search doesn't work. Here I have to think which instance to try for that topic, and between the general-purpose instances and the specific ones, as well as the various different ways of phrasing the topic name, it's a huge space to explore. If I want stuff about programming, I might try /r/programming, /r/programmer, /r/programmers, /r/coding, /r/code, etc. on Reddit. On Lemmy I try all 5 of those community names, multiplied by the 10+ major instances, plus programming.dev and maybe other niche instances. If multiple of those are active, then when I'm searching for specific content, or wanting to start a discussion, I might have to do that multiple times across those communities in different instances.

I definitely want this to work. I love the idea of federated instances, and I want a place where I can go to be part of a great community without the bullshit Reddit is currently doing. And I'm going to give Lemmy a really good try. But if I had to guess, I'd say I'm not confident in its ability to provide that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Lemmy.ml performance is... slow due to overloading, and other lemmy servers sign-ins are busted - endless loading circles, endless createPostLike console log spam.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Hello World! It's cool.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Great so far. I am on .word shit just works and kbin. Trying to decide which one I like more and as a fail safe during downtime of one instance. But getting a hang of lemmy (and kbin) I like it so far after 7 years of daily Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I think it's a lot more confusing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I'd be interested in navigation shortcuts, similar to RES. J/K to move up and down, X to expand post content. Made it very easy to navigate Reddit. Not sure if that's a thing on Lemmy or not...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (8 children)

It's turning out confusing. Like I created an account on lemmy.world. Then I saw kbin existed and came over here... or went over there? And created a new account, with the same name. But now I'm seeing that the stuff I comment here... there... on kbin anyway, show up also on lemmy, so now apparently I have two accounts for the same stuff? Except I didn't saw a way from lemmy to log in on kbin with the account from over there. If that's even something that can be done. Kbin looks friendlier. Actually... am I writing this on kbin or on lemmy... what the fuck is going on? Where the hell am I?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

It’s promising, but I miss having Apollo (or similar) as my interface for the service. I very rarely used Reddit via a browser so not having that robust app is a loss. We’ll see if any of the app developers that have been impacted by Reddits API changes look to support the platform.

Started using Mastodon this year and it was conveniently at the time Ivory, Ice Cubes and Mona were all in the process of shipping beta or final releases. It made the whole experience much more seamless. Mastodon benefited from 6 months of prior unrest in the Twitter community and Devs were already transitioning when Twitter pulled the rug out under them. I think Lemmy will be a harder transition in that respect.

Keen to see how it develops but.

Edit: also interested to see how the decentralised nature of it all plays out for this sort of service which focuses on communities. For Mastodon it seems fine to follow people on other services where it’s still a 1:1 interaction (I with one account follow someone with presumably one account). I’m sort of curious to see how things will scale and play out when you have a dozen different Lemmy services all with their own “Apple”, “music”, “tech” communities and if that dilutes the conversation or allows it to be broader. Bit concerned things may get spread a bit thin at the conversation level, even accounting for the fact accounts can cross post.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I'm really hoping for a slick app or community improvements to Jerboa. It's okay, just not as nice as I'm used to.

I'd really like an integrated option in android to "share to Jerboa" (or other Lemmy app) which would make link sharing easier

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

It's a little confusing, the whole fediverse concept takes some time to learn and understand, but I think I'm getting it. I tried Mastodon before and couldn't get used to/understand it, but lemmy feels more my thing. Given some time, with more people joining and more communities forming, this could be great!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Honestly im loving the experience and even though its getting big because of all the reddit drama, im loving the small communities feel that it has for now. I have to say though that navigation cross instances its being a bit of a headache and i hope it gets better, much better. At least it should notify me that i am not able to see the rest of the comments on a post because of some settings of the instances / my account no? Or am i missing something?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

2010 reddit basically, maybe a little more unstable right now due to the reddit exodus. I like it and hope it gets improved with more stability and some features.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I need to familiarize myself to this. I have used RiF for as long as I can remember. So I need to find a new place for my fix.

I think I can get the hang ot it eventually. However, I hope a RiF like Android app for the frediverse gets developed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Jerboa is an Android app for Lemmy, and honestly it's very decent for something that's obviously still a work-in-progress.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Just joined Lemmy, logged out of my reddit account last night. I'm done with reddit, they've fucked around for too long. 13 years on that site for them to absolutely fuck us.

I'm very much enjoying it here though, I can lurk (while still upvoting to ensure I participate), I can get a lot of the same stuff here. Less commentary, but that'll change as this place grows. Unless reddit cedes and spez fucks off, I doubt I'll go back. Thanks for accepting me Lemmy, y'all are dope.

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