this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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Ask Lemmy

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Let’s compose a list of the all shortcomings so that we can address them and eventually hit 100k mau.

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Not enough people around to discuss some more niche topics and hobbies.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] vulgarcynic 21 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Have you tried being more in to US Politics, Linux and Privacy? I've found several very vibrant communities for those here.

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 6 days ago (8 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago

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:

  1. Officially, crossposts are only compared against the URL. The crossposts may have different titles, and one or both may have different text in the post bodies. Which do you display?

  2. Culture clashes. Let's say there's an article posted called "Ford Releases Their New Monstrosity 5000". It gets posted to 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.

  1. It would be confusing for moderators to have multiple communities' comments in the same post. What flies in one may violate a rule in another. Mods would only be able to take action against those in their community and not all.

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.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Too much focus on discussing the news and politics. And rarely is it an inspiring and new perspective. (Sometimes it is, though.)

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 days ago (7 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I hope it turns out well for the people living in the country. We're going to find out soon..

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

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.)

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 days ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

This is comedy gold 🤣. Things get political so fast on here

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 days ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Its always about one of two things:

  1. Instances going down forever. - kbin, even though its not lemmy, had a more appealing UI to me and my little brother. We're on fedia now, but I only really use it to lurk when Lemmy.world won't load randomly. I don't think he even uses it at all anymore.

  2. De-federation. - Beehaw caused several other people I know IRL to go back to reddit within a week. The timing was so perfect to wreck the API boycott that I'm almost convinced the Beehaw mods work for reddit. "Everything was broken" and now lemmy is dead and gone forever in their eyes, some even assuming the whole thing is literally gone now. They're not willing to try again.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago (3 children)

It's my own observation, but a lot of people on Lemmy are smug assholes, including many mods.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (3 children)

How did someone describe it? Like 14y/o 4chan users with the cynicism of a 45y/o?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I feel attacked

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[–] captain_aggravated 7 points 5 days ago
  1. The syntax of linking to users, posts, communities etc. is hard to keep a mental grip on. I know they couldn't exactly copy reddit's u/ for users and r/ for subreddits, but ! for communities and @ for users isn't as schematic. I think it's why you see it used less than on Reddit. And if you start to type a username, and an autocomplete window pops up, it inserts that format in brackets followed by a URL in parenthesis. To the right of the text box I'm typing in, I see, and I'll approximate this as best I can:

**Ask Lemmy**@lemmy.world

[email protected]

Neither has the exclamation point reminding you how to use that feature. My bipolar ex girlfriend had a more consistent UI than that.

  1. Linking to posts and comments is just pure moon logic. Follow me here:

This Post is stored on lemmy.world, right? Where is the comment I'm currently writing stored? on lemmy.world, or sh.itjust.works?

@[email protected] 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."

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago (7 children)

The politics is very left wing and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Agreed, basically if you are moderate, you have to block 2 or 3 major instances to escape from extremist content. That's very unwelcoming for new users.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (13 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (16 children)

What a perfect example of what the top comment meant. "You either 100% agree with us or you are a trumpist/fascist/nazi", no in-between, no nuance, no moderation allowed.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.

Thank you for providing a great example of this

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 days ago

When you block someone, all the subsequent comments made to that person's comment are also unable to be viewed.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

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:

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago (7 children)

Finding instances for sure. Just learned in this thread that sorting by 'all' doesn't show me every instance

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

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.

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