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.
  • 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.

    Once using it though, I like the general feel of it. Better themes and some cleaner UI choices and it will be really nice imo. People are friendly so far and that’s worth a ton right there.

  • Z3DT@feddit.nl
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    2 years ago

    Confusing. There are communities I can’t subscribe to because I can’t access them from my instance, and I have no idea why that is. The experience has been interesting so far, and growing the network is going to be something I’ll be keeping an eye on. For now, though, I’ll have to wait until someone creates the communities I was a part of on Reddit.

    Edit: It seems a community won’t show up on your instance’s community list unless someone in that instance is subscribed to it.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years ago

    I’m so confused!! Still trying to figure out how to tell jerboa to show me communities that aren’t local (and aren’t showing in all - I did find memes and other juicy numbers there!)…

    I might have made the mistake of trying to pick a server that wasn’t struggling under the load of the Reddit refugees, but I still don’t think it was a bad idea…

    Quite a learning curve though. Some cheat sheets or heaven forbid, starter packs would be snazzy :)

  • domsch@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    I’ll be honest. While I like the idea of decentralized social stiff, its also a huge issue. First you have to choose an instance, which isn’t too bad, but you can’t move. I hear Lemmy.ml being under pressure and I want to move somewhere else to help.with that. My account is 4 years old though and I can take nothing with me. Additionally this means all my content is on one instance. If that ever goes down, the network as a whole my keep existing, but my user and all I’ve put into Lemmy will be gone. And while I trust Lemmy instances more than reddit in terms of privacy, I’m not so sure when it comes to uptime and longevity. Finally, the whole concept of decentralized is hard to wrap my head around. My instance being separate from others but still being subscribed to communities of other instances feels unintuitive. Its the she issue I have with mastodon. I keep loosing track of instances, communities, apps etc. All with different names and logins etc.

    For now, I’m trying to get used to Lemmy and just search for communities I’m subscribed to on reddit and see how it goes. It definitely works well enough. Just some conceptual issues I might have to get used to.

  • Mane25@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Interface is better than “new” Reddit, not as good as old Reddit + RES.

    If I click on a link on another instance (for example https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy when I’m signed in on lemmy.world), I’m not signed in to lemmy.ml so I have to manually search for it in lemmy.world to post there - is there a common solution to that?

  • MrBigHead@feddit.de
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    2 years ago

    Just got the account approved and checking things out. It feels comfortably reddity with a hint of newness that invites for exploration. I am curious how the community will shape this site and if and how it will establish itself in the greater vacuum I foresee will be left in reddit’s once great tracks.

  • Wintry@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.

      • terribleplan@lemmy.nrd.li
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        2 years ago

        So I am just jumping into it myself (and straight into the deep end with running my own server, lol), so this may not be 100% accurate…

        My current understanding is that an instance is where you make your account and log in to. The instance keeps track of all the stuff to show you, including things it gets from other instances.

        A “sub” (I think called a “community” in Lemmy parlance) is basically a subreddit, but with the added benefit of being able to subscribe to it from any instance due to the whole “federation” thing. For example, this overall post is on lemmy.ml (in their “asklemmy” community), the comment you replied to is from a user on on the lemmy.world instance, you are a user on the latte.isnot.coffee instance, and I am on the lemmy.nrd.li instance. These instances are all sending messages to each other to keep all of our comments/votes/posts/etc in sync so this can all work (mostly) seamlessly.

        • WhiteBreadBuddha@latte.isnot.coffee
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          2 years ago

          Can I visit other instances and view/interact with their local posts from this instance? I’m getting the hang of communities but the instances are throwing me for a loop lol

          • terribleplan@lemmy.nrd.li
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            2 years ago

            When you subscribe to a a community you can see all posts to that community. You can think of it as the post getting sent to whichever instance created the community, which then distributes the post to any instances that have users subscribed to that community. AFAIK there is no way to view all posts from some other instance other than visiting that instance directly.

            You should be able to see all of the posts from communities that someone on your instance has subscribed to by switching to “All” in the community selector at the top of your feed (Subscribed / Local / All).

            For discovering communities right now I am just going to the top instances listed on https://join-lemmy.org/instances and seeing what communities are active and interesting. The flow to subscribe to them kinda sucks (you have to copy the community name “[email protected]” into the search on your instance, wait for it to do some sort of handshake, and eventually you can then click into and explore that specific community). Apparently there is also a community browser you can use.

          • Siphalor@feddit.de
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            2 years ago

            Well, it’s actually a bit simpler than that.

            You can directly browse a community that technically lives on another instance without ever leaving your instance.

            If you’re on the start page of your instance you can e.g. change between seeing Local, Subscribed or posts from all communities (across instances).
            You can click around and browse from there without having to leave your instance :)

      • Wintry@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Yeah absolutely. An instance is kind of your home group. It’s not a “subreddit,” more just a sorting method for links. The “subreddits” are the boards inside the instances, and the instances work to determine their addresses.

        On Reddit you might have /r/nfl, /r/actualnfl, /r/realnfl, for example, while here you would have [email protected], [email protected], [email protected].

        (People better at explaining or who are further along the process of understanding please feel free to correct me and chime in!)

        • JustinA
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          2 years ago

          An instance is like your email provider. When you get “messages”, like “a new post was created”, or “your comment got upvoted”, it gets sent to your instance for you to read.

          At the same time, instances are also email providers for communities/sublemmies, so when people post in a sub, the instance hosting that sub receives the “messages” from other instances in the Fediverse.

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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      2 years ago

      I actually think the double-split between communities/subs and instances is rather unfortunate overall.

      I’m guessing, many people will end up subbing almost identical subs on different instances. In my opinion, it would have been better to use instances more as identity providers and let the communities be the first level distinction.

      I actually don’t feel it’s organic at all, I have to make an effort to even find this post here on a different instance.

        • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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          2 years ago

          And as I just noticed, it’s really cumbersome to reply to you.

          There’s a “show context” button in my inbox for your comment, but that links to lemmy.ml, where I’m not logged in (since I’m on feddit.de), so I can’t reply. Instead I have to use the reply dialog in my inbox.

          • JustinA
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            2 years ago

            Yeah, this needs to be fixed. There needs to be some way to link between instances and not get your browser stuck on a foreign instance.

            I think this might help as a workaround for now. (browser only) https://lemmy.world/post/48816